Formerly “Expressionism” is a German movement in painting but later on, it extended its access to other literary arts too. Expressive criticism treats a literary work primarily in relation to the author. It defines poetry as an expression, or overflow, or utterance of feeling, or as the products of poet’s feelings.

     The theory tends to judge the work by its sincerity to the poets’ vision or the state of mind. Such views were developed mainly by the Romantic critics and remain current in our time too. Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility” is taken as the ground idea of the expressive theory of art.

     The most powerful impetus in expressive critical thought was the Romantic Movement that began in late eighteenth century. This movement has deeply affected our modern consciousness and the common sense discourse of literary commentary. The three key concepts associated with this movement are: imagination, genius and emotion. Expressive theorists firmly stick to these three key terms. They believe that authorial individuality is something to be conveyed by a literary work, and to go beyond objectivist theorists’ prescription that a poet’s effort should be to flee personality and that criticism should focus on the poem not on the poet. Wordsworthian notion that “a poem is inner made outer” puts an emphasis on the poet in a poem, and this emphasis has never eased.

     Despite Eliot’s effort to reintroduce the idea that intellect should be equally important for poetry, Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility” remains a common sense and popular attitude.Two Romantic concepts are foreshadowed in Edward Young’s “Conjectures on Original Composition”. Firstly, there was a shift of interest from the work and the reader to the author and his work. Secondly, the emphasis was given more to originality and innate genius than literary rules and conventions. He submits to the opinion that the proper object of imitation is not the ancient author’s work but his ‘spirit’ and his ‘taste’. Thus, Young takes the expressive mode of thinking.

     Blake believes that imagination is truly creative and man does not come in the world with Lockean tabularasa. He considers the creative act to be unified, and agrees to some extent with Croce that intuition and expression are similar.

William Wordsworth      William Wordsworth's preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads" is a major expression of the spirit of English Romanticism. This present essay simply shifts emphasis from the relationship between poem and reader to that between poet and poem. But it does not mean that Wordsworth gives up the concern for his reader. He is deep interested in speaking to the reader by the moral effect of his work. Nevertheless, he defines the poem primarily in term of its author's creative activity. He approaches the idea of poem after discussing the idea of poet. In this sense, a poet is a man who speaks to men; he has great knowledge of human nature, and a mass comprehensive soul.It is true that a poet is endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness. Read More...

Samuel T. Coleridge     The essay is a tribute to Shakespeare who possesses all the qualities and conditions of a true poet. Coleridge tries to unveil some misconceptions popular about Shakespeare by formulating some romantic conceptions. He is a genius who well expressed himself in his dramas and poems. The ideas that he was immoral are totally groundless.The organic form he exposes is true to his genius for it is innate that shapes, as it develops, itself from within, and the fullness of its devolvement is one and the some with the perfection of its outward form.Shakespeare himself is nature... Read More...

P.B. Shelley      P. B. Shelley, a great Romantic poet and critic, defends poetry by claiming that the poet creates human values and imagines the forms that shape the social and cultural order. Read More...

Charles Baudelaire      Baudelaire is a French Romanticist and the precursor of symbolic movement in European literature. He considers imagination as the “queen of faculties”, truly creative power. The imagination must shape what nature makes....Read More...

John Keats      Last Poet of a Romantic period, John Keats' critical speculation is found in his letters, which he wrote to different persons in different walks of life. He believes in sensation rather than thought. Later he is also known as sensuous poet. He is sensuous poet because he makes use of that poetic image, which directly affects... Read More...

Edward Young      Conjectures on Original Composition primarily attack the subject. Young distinguishes' originals' from 'imitations' the former far better than the latter despite the former is fewer in number. Read More...

Friedrich Schlegel     Schlegel is the leading German Romantic theorist. He was the editor of the periodical Anthenaeum(1798-1800). They published a variety of thoughts literary, morals philosophical, political and other critical fragments. In Schlegel's critical essays, we find a sense of Romantic ideas. These ideas are the initial expression of Romanticism. Read More...

Friedrich Von Schelling     Schelling is a German-Idealist, in the post Kantian development in German philosophy. He rejects Kant’s idea that' things in themselves' are unknown. Instead he posited a subject and object that are joined in aesthetic activity. This joining is a creative act. Man's creativity is analogous to the unconscious creativity of nature. Read More...