There is rejection of romantic hero. Instead of heroic figure they make use of what could be called a “non-hero”. The members of the group wanted to stress the fact that: “in a Welfare State democracy everyone was of equal importance, that everyone had an equally vital part to play” (Morrison 172).They did not want their heroes to rebel, but to be an example of serving the community. The poet should not be an exception either. This can also be seen as a reaction against the Romantic belief in the poet as a special human being.
Anti Romanticism:
The reactionary mood of the Movement is not limited to Modernist and the poets of the thirties but similar attitude is expressed towards the poetry of the forties also. These poets gave a strong expression…show more content… C.B .Cox finds that the Movement poets were extremely cautious of poetry as an inspired and frenzied utterance which frightened the readers into meek submission by its sheer primitive energy. For them poets were just like civilized and cultured neighbors who spoke with wit. Further Davie in his book Articulate Energy published in 1955 only two years after Thomas’s death pointed that the Movement poets were in reaction against every kind of excess whether of emotion or expression:
In his brilliant book Articulate Energy (1955, Donald Davie accused Thomas of indulging in “pseudo- syntax”, abandoning the task of articulation so that the objects to which he refers, tumbled Pell-mell together, can no longer be identified ….. Davie placed Thomas among those modern poets who fail because their work falls into isolated units. The sentences that seem to drive forward in time through…show more content… A reaction against the hysterical tone of war literature and against the memory of the emotional life of that period was apparently felt to be in order. (Rosenthal 199)
Although this anti-romanticism stance was important in defining the style of the group in the earlier years, it was later to lose significance. As the poets developed and became more confident in their writing and in their standpoint, they were soon to be seen as defined more by what they stood for, rather than what they stood against. Indeed, critics have argued that the position of the Movement poets regarding Romanticism was later to turn full circle. “Since 1960 the Movement’s participation in a continuing Romantic tradition has become more apparent” (Morrison 191).
Typical Movement Poetry represses and ridicules sentimentality and feeling which formed the bulk of neo- romantic poetry. Movement poetry is a “model of restraint; the tightness of its form enacts the speakers’ evocain of controlled meaning. In place of welsh howl comes English stiff upper lip. They reacted against what Harold Bloom said. ── ‘clear imaginative space for