영국 낭만시의 특질 -영국낭만시의 존재론적 인식론

Abstract

This paper proposes to investigate the characteristics of English romantic poetry from an ontological and epistemological point of view. English Romantic Poetry is a by-product of divergent changes taking place in political systems and social structures in the early Nineteenth Century England, which has witnessed a series of revolutions in Europe and America: the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and others. These revolutions, however, are not the pace-setters for social changes; they are rather the result and reflection of the changes that have been and are still going on in various fields of society. One significant aspect of this change is found in man's changed perception of himself, his society, and the universe. Social and political relationships have been so far seen in terms of vertical hierachy, with the king at the top and the common people at the bottom. Political revolutions have brought about a change in man's perception of this fixed vertical hierarchy, opening the way to an open and horizontal relationship based on equality and freedom of man. Philosophers and their theories that have enabled these changes to take place have been examined: empiricism, transendentalism, J.J. Rousseau, William Godwim, among others. Romantic theories of the imagination proposed by different Romantic poets such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron have been examined in this paper, because a proper understanding of Romantic poets and their poetry cannot be achieved without understanding their theories of the imagination and their practices of it.