page_title: Lyric poetry
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Lyric poetry / History / 19th century
context_page_description: Lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though they are often in the lyric mode. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, which was defined by its musical accompaniment, usually on a stringed instrument known as a lyre. The term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry: lyrical, dramatic, and heroic.
context_section_description: In Europe, the lyric emerged as the principal poetic form of the 19th century and came to be seen as synonymous with poetry. Romantic lyric poetry consisted of first-person accounts of the thoughts and feelings of a specific moment; the feelings were extreme but personal.
  The traditional sonnet was revived in Britain, with William Wordsworth writing more sonnets than any other British poet. Other important Romantic lyric writers of the period include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. Later in the century, the Victorian lyric was more linguistically self-conscious and defensive than the Romantic forms had been. Such Victorian lyric poets include Alfred Lord Tennyson and Christina Rossetti.
  Lyric poetry was popular with the German reading public between 1830 and 1890, as shown in the number of poetry anthologies published in the period. According to Georg Lukács, the verse of Joseph von Eichendorff exemplified the German Romantic revival of the folk-song tradition initiated by Goethe, Herder, and Arnim and Bretano's Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
  France also saw a revival of the lyric voice during the 19th century. The lyric became the dominant mode of French poetry during this period. For Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire was the last example of lyric poetry "successful on a mass scale" in Europe.
  In Russia, Aleksandr Pushkin exemplified a rise of lyric poetry during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Swedish "Phosphorists" were influenced by the Romantic movement and their chief poet Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom produced many lyric poems. Italian lyric poets of the period include Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, Giovanni Pascoli, and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Spanish lyric poets include Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rosalía de Castro, and José de Espronceda. Japanese lyric poets include Taneda Santoka, Masaoka Shiki, and Ishikawa Takuboku.
caption: Benjamin Haydon's 1842 portrait of William Wordsworth
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