A Biographical Approach to Romanticism

There is a tendency in literary criticism to state that literary works can be interpreted from the biographical or social context where writers lived in. For example, in Romanticism there were several British writers such as Samuel Coleridge, John Keats or Mary Shelley, which works refer mainly to their own life experiences. In the present essay I will argue that life experiences as its romantic characteristic was the driving force behind this movement.

First of all, it is important to point out that Romanticism was “a literary, complex artistic, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution ”. In addition, one of the characteristics of this movement was that writers introduced new features in their writing as the individual self and experience. Also, they started to write in a more free way works based on a new connection with nature and went beyond achieving the Supernatural.

In order to explain how these romantic characteristics were so powerful in the authors’ writings, it is necessary to name Coleridge as an essential one at the moment of writing about his own pure experience. In Kubla Khan or, a Vision In a Dream: A Fragment (1816), although he said that he had these visions while he was drugged, Coleridge depicted marvelous landscapes connected with the Supernatural. These images of liberty were his own individual experiences, his feelings and affections throughout his life. What is crucial the most is that this author achieved, from his own fantasy, deliver to the readers the sense of being there or at least the feeling of recreating those beautiful images.

Another writer which also wrote from his own experiences was John Keats. This author who suffered lots of pain during his life was also in charge of writing from his own individual thoughts. “His humble family background had a great impact on his poetry and so did his studies at the medicine school ”. Besides, his works were not well received by critics of that period because it was said they did not accept his works because of his origins. Despite of these issues, he wrote very powerful poems and sonnets in which the main topic present was death. Due to his illness he used to write about his own escape from this death trying to recreate interesting and warm places in where he could at least avoid all the pain he had been suffering.

One of the influential romantic women authors who again suffered from her own societal context was Mary Shelley. She created the work Frankenstein, in where she represented her own self experience towards life but in a totally complete fictitious novel. The creation of this novel and its character Frankenstein depict her own life in where she was rejected by people who thought she was against all the moral and values established. However, this fact was necessary step for her in order to create the novel. It sounds contradictory but that was the reason. In the novel, there are many influences from her life for instance the lots of suicides in her family and the lack of love during his childhood and adolescence. Another important one was the theme of knowledge in order to point out what are the limits for humans beings in terms power. Through her novel the theme of power and human beings seeing as god in terms of creation is nothing more than the trigger for the self destruction. The theme of love as opposite of reason was going to be the main subject of discussion in the following years.

In conclusion, what I wanted to demonstrate through this essay was that the main and central reason of why romanticism became so powerful in the 18th century, was because of its desire of expressing the inner self, the self experiences through writing. Besides, it was my purpose to state that through the author’s novels one can relate them as a biographical interpretation. However, in the novels before mentioned there are worlds inside each of them. Therefore, biographical information it is used as part of finding out the meaning behind them through interpretation.


Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Viewed on Sunday 14th, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

C. Trajtemberg. Power Point presented in class on August 20th, 2008.

Outline - A Biographical Approach to Romanticism

1.- Introduction

2.- A brief definition of Romanticism

3.- Biographical Approaches:
3a.- Coleridge
3b.- Keats
3c.- Shelley

4.- Conclusion

Frankenstein

It is a very interesting novel in which is discussed the theme of power, knowledge, pregnancy, moral values, responsibility, etc. According to the article “The Birth of a Monster” is crucial the theme pregnancy as a women’s fear factor. Here is shown this topic in relationship with the author Mary Shelley, who had a lot of problems during her nurturing. In fact she lost two babies.
In addition, power and knowledge are quite dense topics to discuss about. This is because Victor Frankenstein believed that he had an unlimited power and he could challenge God’s creation. Therefore, he created this creature which once he saw it he rejected immediately. There is no parental responsibility at all and the creature started to “growing up” alone. While this monster begin to acquire knowledge it started to realize how different is from the rest of the humanity and therefore rejected for being such a creature.
Another valid topic to discuss from the novel is what the limits are for knowledge? Is it really legal that someone play with a child’s life? Well, this monster wasn’t a child but it needed love as the other child have. Nowadays, there are lots of experiments including human cloning which is something similar to what the novel represents, and one of the points to consider is the human power of destroying himself in his search or ambition for new discoveries.

Existential Problems on Keats’ Life

On Keats’ sonnets is clear that his own life experiences are taken and written. That is one of the romantic characteristics we can find. Also we find that the use of image “vision of the sky” represents the sense of connection with nature.
I think that the sonnets show how he lived with so much pain that he considered himself as a weak person”. In the same way these sonnets express an image of death as a form of escape of that reality. I imagined because of Keats’ pain.
These sonnets represent an idea of opposition. Because he describes some interesting places but he is not feeling quite well. It is like he is not totally complete. There is also present the idea of heart vs brain.