Meyer Howard Abrams - Natural supernaturalism: tradition and revolution in romantic literature

"THE literature of England," Shelley wrote in A Defence of Poetry, "has arisen as it were from a new birth." "We live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty," and these men have in common "the spirit of the age." In a letter to Charles Ollier of October 1819, he further remarked that the great poets derive "from the new springs of thought and feeling, which the great events of our age have exposed to view, a similar tone of sentiment, imagery, and expression," and that such similarity in the "best writers" of an age attests to "the spirit of that age acting on all." Some of Shelley's contemporaries, as we shall see, made similar assertions. Suppose that we abstract the factual claims in Shelley's pronouncements and restate them as follows: A number of major poets, who differed markedly from their eighteenth-century predecessors, had in common important themes, modes of expression, and ways of feeling and imagining; the writings of these poets were part of a comprehensive intellectual tendency which manifested itself in philosophy as well as in poetry; this tendency was causally related to the drastic political and social changes of the age. It seems to me that the claims, so stated, are valid; and I would add that they are valid not only for English but also for German literature and philosophy during the lifetime of Shelley.