Romanticism: A Revolution of Emotion and Individuality

A: So, when people call Romanticism a revolution, it’s not just about art, right? It’s like a total shift in the way people thought and felt. They’re flipping the table on the cool detachment of figures like Samuel Johnson, who was all about reason and social order.

B: Yeah, exactly. Augustans like Johnson took pride in observing society from above—almost clinical, you know? They wanted to ‘let observation... survey mankind,’ that sort of thing. Romantics found that approach... maybe a bit hollow. They craved urgency—emotion, something raw. And really, that mirrored all the political revolutions happening at the time.

A: Right! The whole vibe shifts: liberty, individuality, letting yourself feel deeply, even the terrifying stuff. Then you have someone like William Blake treating imagination almost like a divine spark. It’s such a contrast to the Augustans, who might’ve deemed that 'delusion.'

B: Absolutely. Where Augustans had rules, heroic couplets, and city life as their muse, the Romantics sought wild countryside inspiration—poet as visionary, form dictated by emotion. Blake’s 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' are so striking: simple, even childlike, deliberately rejecting the polished couplet. It’s like the poem’s shape is whatever the emotion needs it to be.

A: I always think of how 'Lyrical Ballads' just dropped like a bomb in 1797–8. And at the same time, you’ve got the Gothic craze—'The Mysteries of Udolpho,' Lewis’s 'The Monk'—suddenly, darkness and terror are cool topics. There’s this hunger for mystery that Augustan satire couldn’t touch.

B: But there’s tension too, right? Even among the Romantics. Politically, you’ve got Burke pushing back against revolution in his 'Reflections,' while Thomas Paine writes 'The Rights of Man,' arguing for equality and reason as tools for ordinary people. It’s kind of wild how those contradictions sit side by side.

A: And philosophically. People like Rousseau argue for natural goodness, freedom from society’s chains, shaping government to the people's will. Godwin’s all-in on reason and abolishing hierarchy—although both radicals and conservatives thought he went too far. Meanwhile, Wesley’s Methodism is about feeling your way to the divine, not reasoning your way.

B: Yeah, and then there’s the economic angle: Bentham’s utilitarianism, Malthus’s grim math on population, Adam Smith’s call for free markets. There’s this sense of optimism in some directions, and utter anxiety in others. Blake encapsulates the contradictions as a visionary, critic, even a prophet warning where all this might lead.