Romantic Transformations

Abstract

During the Romantic period—stretching from the few years adjacent to 1800 to the later 1830s—the literary currents of the eighteenth century discussed in Chapter 2 developed considerably and became somewhat less stratified. The number of actual narratives pertinent to the development of fantasy increased dramatically: during the first half of the period, these were almost exclusively poetic, but during the latter half, there were some notable developments in prose fiction. The quasi-Oriental tale, the major prose development of the eighteenth century, migrated almost exclusively to verse; shorter narratives using traditional ballad verse forms, as well as longer narratives drawing on the vocabulary of the metrical romance, proliferated during the first half of the period. During the latter part of the period, the classical and Elizabethan-cum-medieval aesthetics that had developed in reaction to the Augustans merged, particularly strongly in the work of Keats. At the very end of the period, much of this was drawn together in the first work—unless one excepts the Eastern-hued Eovaai of Eliza Haywood—unambiguously embodying the core elements of the BAFS template: Sara Coleridge’s Phantasmion.