The Romantic Period brings us a new circle of writers and a new thought process. Instead of relying on rules, structure and theologian themes, we see a period that begs for freedom and writers who incorporate the supernatural into their works. We also see more women writers who are educated and publishing works.
The diversity of the writers defied categorization, but yet were deemed fir to be placed into distinct schools, which are defined as The Lake School (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey), the Cockney School - a defamatory term (Hunt, Hazlitt and Keats) and the Satanic School (Percy, Shelley, Byron and their followers). (Greenblatt, p. 1369)
Hazlitt, nearly a century after Milton wrote Paradise Lost, "lecturing in 1818 on the history of English poetry," named Satan as the "most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem," implying that the rebel angel's Heaven-defying resistance was the mirror image of Milton's own rebellion against political tyranny. Moreover, "a year later, Percy Shelley maintained that Satan is the moral superior to Milton's tyrannical God, but he admitted that Satan's greatness of character is flawed by vengefulness and pride." (*I mention this point in particular because prior to the Restoration, most all the literature, poems and prose written was based on religion, God, morals and theologian values.*)
These changes brought forth a new school of thought as writers "rethought apocalyptic transformation so that it no longer depended on the political action of the collective community but depended instead, on the individual consciousness. The new heaven and earth promised in the prophecies could, in this account, be gained by the individual who had achieved a new, spiritualized, and visionary way of seeing." (p. 1369)
All of that seemed to apply to writers of the Romantic Period with a "new language for individual variations in perception. According to Wordsworth, the source of inspiration is not derived from Nature," but rather from the psychoses of the writer. This freed up writers to embrace their imaginations which afforded them the opportunity to express themselves artistically and in the manner they chose. Although, censorship still existed when dealing with plays. (p. 1370)
This period also explored the supernatural, witches, hauntings and more. The Romantic Period, recognized as the Medieval Revival, was promoted by women and encompassed "the strangeness of beauty, which sparked an interest in the mysteries of mental life and determination to investigate psychological extremes." (p. 1375)
Work Cited:
Greenblatt, S. et al. (Eds.) The Norton Anthology of American Literature: The Romantic Period through the twentieth Century and After. (8th ed., Vol. B). pp. 1369-70 and 1375. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.