The Romantic Age

The Romantic Age 1798 - 1837

 Began with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their co-operative production of Lyrical Ballads.

 1798 preface: Wordsworth expressed the changing ideas about the nature of poetry. Poetry was referred to as experiments in how everyday language could become the language of poetry.  1802 preface: Poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquillity" "All good poetry is the spontaneous flow of powerful feelings" -process of writing poetry -perception brought to life again -something similar to the original emotion is evoked in the mind of the reader.

 moving away from earlier poetry in which ideas were expressed. Poetry of passionate feeling popularized.  Duality: prose used to argue ideas, poetry used to express emotion.

The Romantics worship nature -- huge, powerful force of the universe is manifested in nature.

The Romantic Movement became popular at that time because:  W. Wordsworth supported the French Revolution.  perfect world to be born of revolution  feeling, along with much of the public, that social solutions to the problems of mankind fail. It is only through individual experience that the soul is uplifted.  Romantic poets write not of the problems of society, but of individual experience/

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 1 Contrasts between the features of the Neoclassical and Romantic ages (English Literature with World Masterpieces 390):

Neoclassical Romantic tradition experiment society individual urban rural artificial (man-made beauty appreciated) nature loving intellect, reason imagination, emotion public (concerns of society, indiv. not central) private, subjective logical, solid mysterious, supernatural aristocratic common (common man glorified) cultivated primitive conformist (classical tradition) independent (independence, newness valued) constraint (balance) spontaneity formal diction natural diction (everyday speech)

 Though one period came so quickly after the other, there are obvious differences  As early as 1794 Coleridge was writing similar poetry.

 Wordsworth announced the literary ideals of the English Romantic Age  Opportunities to commune with nature had an effect on his poetry  He supported the French Revolution, championed the causes of freedom. Had to leave France because it was dangerous for him to be there.  Became disillusioned as French Revolution became more violent.  Met Coleridge

 ideals of spontaneity, excess, power, emotion as cornerstone of English Romanticism  Gray, Burns, Blake were pre-romantics.  Dryden, Pope, Jonson had seen poetry as an intellectual pursuit (endeavour of head more than of heart.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 2 In Romantic Poetry:

 people speaking to people in natural, commonplace language (not heroic couplets)  importance of subjectivity. Poet's subjective reaction to reflections.  in humble and rustic people there is genuine and unspoiled emotion.  in the primitive world there is more nobility.  focus on the natural and the ordinary rather than the artificial.

Wordsworth's later work seems repetitious of his earlier work. His ideas were no longer revolutionary because they had been adopted by the mainstream.

Example of Romantic Poetry:

"My Heart Leaps Up"

 Rainbow based on natural piety rather than covenant between man and God.  Nature had not really been honoured in the new world. Savageness considered the Devil's work.  Christianization of the colonies had a lot to do with economics.  Natural piety was a new concept.  Philosophical distinction: Was man evil or good in the natural state?  "The child is father of the man" The feelings of the child shape the man that is to come.  Life isn't worth living without a passionate response to nature. subjective | passions My heart leaps up when I behold ------Actual experience recollected in tranquillity A rainbow in the sky | Childlike wonder in response to nature/simple diction

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 3  simplicity of diction  Diction is more natural; the voice of ordinary people not aristocracy.  Sonnets were re-popularized (by Wordsworth) but not as predictable. Passionate about nature and the universe rather than stylized.  Passion  Imagination  Idealization of childhood  Response to nature is spiritual: Wonder and piety in response to Creation.

"The World is too Much With Us"

 Humanity too caught up in commercialism. Does not appreciate nature.  Typically romantic in theme  Implies that we put most of our energy into making money and spending it.  Lost connection with nature, loss of natural passionate response.

 Tendency to worship power of nature in romantic poetry. Fascination even with destructive and threatening power of nature.  Personification of moon, sea. Nature has closed eyes of modern man to the joys of the world.  comparison with the ancient Greeks - allusion to ancient Greek poetry is common.  Love of Greek imaginative creation  Imaginative response  Pagan upbringing preferable to that in which one is out of touch with nature. There is a sense of loss. The Greeks could respond imaginatively to nature. Desire for earlier religion.

"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free"

 visiting seashore, possibly accompanied by a child  awareness of power of Nature  child not touched by solemn thought in response to Nature

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 4  child naturally attuned to Nature as he is a part of Nature all the time and closer to Heaven.

"Lines composed within a few miles above Tintern Abbey"  Speaker had taken experience of an earlier visit with him. The memory had helped him through a difficult time.  Visits five years later with others  Criticises people for not being passionate enough.  Recollections of Nature move the individual and comfort him.  Nature is elevated to a kind of religion because it is the way in which God is revealed. Nature parallels Heaven.  Attributes kindness, love, compassion, to connectedness with Nature, because a connectedness with Nature creates a blessed mood where all conflicts of life become bearable.  When intellect is asleep, soul is released from burden of life  Even in the city, he is comforted by his scene of nature -- mystical experience.  His absorption of the scene feeds his soul so he will be able to deal with his future life.  On his return to the place five years later, he discovers that his childlike spontaneity is gone. He becomes philosophical, and a remoter charm is added to the scene by his thought. He feels the force of Nature and is more aware of it than ever  Passionate basis of the poem makes it more rustic and moving.  Speaker sees his sister responding to the scene the way he used to: not reflectively, but excitedly. He tells his sister that Nature informs one of forgiveness and acceptance. Nature will take care of her and be her guide if she truly loves it.  Shift in language. Archaism in formal respect for or prayer to Nature.  Nature is a kind of religion: (line 152, worshipper of Nature)  defines romanticism as a passionate, childish reverence for nature that is a force that moves all things:  "A motion and a spirit that impels all Thinking things, all objects of all thought

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 5 And rolls through all things."

 Man is not separate from nature. The speaker wishes to reunite man with Nature: "A presence whose dwelling is the light of setting suns and in the round ocean and the living air and the blue sky, and in the mind of man." (94-99)

Ode: “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

 Belief that the soul exists outside of the body before and after life  Belief in pre-existence, MASS SPIRIT. Not exactly Christian orthodoxy  implies that children can still remember being a spirit as they grow up, and have glimpses of their connectedness to the spirit.  has lost view of world in celestial light as he ages. Some magic is missing in the view of his adulthood.  seeing a child of nature helps him to remember his celestial connectedness.  "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." Stanza five is the most important stanza. a child comes from God "trailing holy light". Something dies away as he becomes a man. Celestial light turns to light of common day.  Earthly pleasures take us away from spiritual pleasures. Man is nursed by Earth as a foster child. Man forgets the glory of his origins, but the embers of recollection still exist.  metaphor of sea as power of Nature. Returning to beach where children play upon the shore. Will never be quite the same, but will go back in thought to join the children. Philosophic mind helps us to understand something more of the universe.  now something is added to the charm of Nature. Thought intervenes between nature and heart.  life as prison house whose burdens distance man from the spontaneous, glorious response.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 6 Sonnet: “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”

English Literature with World Masterpieces

 speaker in the city looking at the river while everyone is sleeping.  some metrical variation  Form of sonnet: 14 line poem written in Iambic Pentameter

History of the Sonnet

Petrarch (1304 - 1374)

 sonnets were originally love poems  Petrarch was largely responsible for influencing its emergence.  speaker was generally male. Object of love on a pedestal. He wishes to gain the love of her idealized form.

Pattern of the Petrarchian Sonnet:

Divided into an octave and a sestet 8 line octave: abbaabba 6 line sestet: cdecde or cdccdc

The Octave presents a situation or raises a question that is resolved or answered in the sestet.

"CONCEIT" -- A poetic metaphor in which the poet draws an inventive parallel between two elements having little or nothing in common. eg) Military imagery compared to love In sonnet 169, a battle is envisioned. It seems unlikely at first.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 7 Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586)

English Literature.

 a proper renaissance man during the English Renaissance -re-birth of learning -beginning to write in the vernacular -national literature

"Loving in Truth"

 subject matter similar to that of the Petrarchan sonnet. The speaker wishes to win the affections of a disinterested lady.  he looks at the writings of others for inspiration, but words come halting forth. Harder he tries, the more invention leaves him.  "feet" of others' poems trip him up.  Conceit: compares the writing of poetry to giving birth.

Sidney wrote Astrophel and Stella, a collection of 110 brief poems examining love from different perspectives.

Sonnet 31

-moon must have experienced rejection in love

"APOSTROPHE" -- Type of personification in which the speaker is addressing a non-human object. Technique also often used by the romantic poets. The lines are written as if the speaker were talking to the moon. (other terms that mean the same thing: Apostrophic speech, apostrophizing.)

English Sonnet and Italian Sonnet

 iambic pentameter  end of line rhyme

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 8 Rhyme scheme of Octave: abbaabba or abababab

Rhyme scheme of Sestet: cdecde or cdcdee

If by line 5 the rhyme scheme continues with a's and b's, one may be fairly convinced that it is an Italian sonnet. If by line 5 the rhyme scheme introduces 'c', it is an English sonnet

English sonnet = Shakespearian sonnet = 3 quatrains (4 line stanzas) and a rhyming couplet.

Rhyme scheme is usually: abab / cdcd / efef / gg

In the English sonnet the last two lines are a rhyming couplet that is a conclusion or theme statement. The answer usually comes in the final two lines, but you also have took to see if line five is a new sound or part of an octave (an 8 line stanza).

Example of an Italian sonnet which ends in a couplet: Sidney's "Sonnet 31"

With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies! a How silently, and with how wan a face! b What! may it be that even in heavenly place b That busy archer his sharp arrows tries? a Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes a Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case; b I read it in thy looks -- thy languish'd grace b To me, that feel the like, thy state descries a Then, even of fellowship, O moon, tell me, c Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit? d Are beauties there as proud as here they be? c Do they above love to be lov'd and yet d Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess? e Do they call virtue there ungratefulness? e

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 9 Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599)

English Literature

The Faerie Queene  The Elizabethan age telling the legends of King Arthur. The knight in each tale represents certain values. obstacles encountered were evils.  Wrote a death lament called "Astrophel" to Philip Sidney.

Structure of the Spenserian Stanza:

9 line stanza, rhyme: ababbcbcc first 8 lines are iambic pentameter, the last line has 6 iambic feet instead of 5 and is called an ALEXANDRINE.

 wrote a collection called Amoretti of 88 sonnets recounting the courtship of a woman. Sonnet 75 - temporary nature of love -the woman will not be forgotten. she will be written about. -love as a counterweight to death that makes life bearable.

Shakespeare's Sonnets (1564 - 1616)

English Literature

154 Sonnets  tell a story with a fragmentary plot.  number of characters (young nobleman, a 'dark lady', a poet, and a rival poet.  themes regarding time, beauty, love, and relationships between those things.

Sonnet 18  woman eternalized in lines of poetry

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 10  better than a summer's day, explains why the woman and the day cannot be compared.  all beauty must decline over time as a result of chance or nature's changing course.  will not die in poetry.

Sonnet 116 page 136  opening lines explain what love is not, then go on to describe the true nature of love.  time is seen as reaping both years and beauty.  true love is not lost with time.  if a lover changes, love should not change.  tempests in a relationship should not shake love itself.

 obvious English form in sonnet 116  Elizabethan poetry is a blend of both the intellectual and passionate traditions.

John Donne (1572 -1631)

English Literature with World Masterpieces

 known as the beginning of the Metaphysical poets. (philosophical, intellectual, revival of the conceit)

English and Western Literature

Sonnet 10

 Donne's Holy Sonnets reveal thoughts on love and death. Subjects are often religious and dealing with the inevitability of death.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 11  apostrophe in the first line. Donne is talking to death. He cuts death down throughout. He says that Death is proud and inevitably fails in the end. Mocking tone.  pities Death because of the illusion that makes him think he can kill people.  Death as slave to "fate, chance, kings, and desperate men." He is not powerful enough to be feared. He lives with poison, war, and sickness  death is a nap, after which the sleeper wakes for eternity.

The Second Generation of Romantic Poets:

John Keats (1795 - 1821)

English Literature

 Humble ancestry, sent to a private school where he was encouraged by the Headmaster's son, one of his teachers.  He had originally studied medicine, but gave up the study in favour of poetry.  Wrote his first great poem at 21. "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"  His most productive period was during the time he was sick with tuberculosis  went to Italy, died a few years later. His greatest poems were written in the spring of 1819.

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

 translation of Homer by George Chapman

 Opening lines: Had read of such world travels and kingdoms of the past and had been moved by those things before. He was told of the great wisdom of the realm of Homer's work and of what a great place it was to visit.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 12  reading Homer revealed new things to his view.

"When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be"

 aware of his impending death.  he is afraid that he will die before he is able to write all of the poems in his mind  simile of books and poetry as granaries for the harvest of ripened grain. Ideas, as grain, must be ripened before they may be harvested.  Fear that his dreams will remain cloudy and that he will not be able to experience them as reality as others will: When I behold, upon the night's starred face. Huge cloudy symbols of high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance... (5 - 8)

 will never truly know "Unreflecting Love"

 3 Blows: -won't write everything -won't be able to trace chance into reality -will never know the power of unreflecting love

 Way of dealing with his fears is to withdraw and meditate. A longing for Fame becomes unimportant.

Ode: An ode is a long lyric poem, serious and dignified in subject, tone, and style, often written to celebrate an event, person, being, or power -- or to provide a vehicle for private meditation. Sometimes an ode may have an elaborate stanzaic structure. Almost all odes are poems of address, in which the poet uses apostrophe... In English poetry the ode exists in one of two manifestations. Irregular odes have no set rhyme scheme and no set stanza pattern. Dryden's ode (A song for St. Cecilia's Day) on page 238 is an example of the irregular ode form. By contrast, the Horatian ode, named for the Roman poet Horace, follows

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 13 a regular stanza pattern and rhyme scheme..." (English and Western Literature, p. 388)

"Ode to a Nightingale"

 Classical allusion, yet highly imaginative and passionate.  Odes often depend upon a particular device throughout: Apostrophe

 desire to escape from pain implied in poem.  dullness of rationality  Poet's soul escapes with the happiness of the bird. Slight symbolic overtone of how he wants to be freed.

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness -- That thou, light-wingŠd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. (5 - 10)

 image of Dryad adds a classical quality to the nightingale as well as something of the symbolic quality of immortality

 seems he is longing for a magic potion to take him away from the pain of the world: "That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, / And with thee fade away into the forest dim:"

 images of hopelessness: "Weariness, the fever, and the fret.  wants to deaden the capacity to think. The bird is not weighed down with fears of immortality and death. He can sing.

 wants to escape, "Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, / But on the viewless wings of poesy." (32 - 33)  power of reason tugs him down, retards the escape through imagination

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 14  world of imagination: Queen-moon, starry fays.  seems to escape and fly through the woods in darkness, appreciating nature without seeing it. Greatest joy is in nature.

 reflects on desire for escape through death  personification: I have been half in love with easeful Death Called him soft names in many a musŠd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -- To thy high requiem become a sod. (52 - 60)

 will death be like this?  would he no longer appreciate nature after death?  contrasts immortality of bird with knowledge that humanity is merely a series of generations. The highest people and the lowest people throughout history had heard the nightingale's song.

 -the word forlorn is applied to his imagined fairyland  "Forlorn! the very word is like a bell / To toll me back from thee to my sole self"  Usually the sound of a bell calls a spirit from life. His spirit is called back to life from its flight  Which is really life? Which is really death? Escape is the true life of the spirit. Life is imprisonment.  "Do I wake or sleep?" Was that fantasy really being awake. Perhaps when imagination is freed from reason one can be more alive.  vehicle for escape is nature. Imagination guides him to it, but is perhaps a "deceiving elf"

"Ode on a Grecian Urn"

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 15 English Literature page 456

 based on literal examination of a work or art. He abstracts, commenting on beauty and the creations of the imagination.  apostrophe. The urn is personified as a "still unravished bride of quietness, / Thou foster child of silence and slow time". This implies a virginal quality of its beauty and purity.  product of ancient times

 compares different works or art. No poem can tell a story as sweetly  urn shows sylvan and idyllic pastoral scene from ancient times  females being pursued stanza 2  had heard sweet melodies, but those only to be perceived by the spirit are sweeter. He imagines that the music that the urn plays is eternal.  art transcends the temporal nature of existence.  moment of anticipation is captured forever. The moment of anticipation is captured in eternity, and does not fade. stanza 3  eternal springtime  melodist's tune is always new and appreciated when captured in a frozen moment  that which is eternal is to be found in art but not in life. stanza 4  image of a priest leading a calf to sacrifice  empty village, nothing to tell where the people have gone  capturing a mystical moment: "O mysterious priest" stanza 5  graceful architecture of vase stimulates the imagination.  passion and imagination important: "tease us out of thought"  after the poet's generation has passed, the urn shall communicate to other generations the nature of art and art in life.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 16  "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" -- that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."  all the truth we need on earth is that which is eternal. Eternal wisdom is revealed through art.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

English Literature

 social rebel who refused to accept the values of his society  expelled from Oxford for distributing pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism"  First Wife: Harriet Westbrooke. Rescued her from her father's tyranny.  later fell in love with Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin, the daughter of radical philosopher William Godwin and writer of "The Vindication of the Rights of Women", Mary Wollstonecroft. Shelley married Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin when his wife Harriet committed suicide.  Shelley was not terribly popular in his own time.

"Ode to the West Wind"

English Literature

 alliteration and apostrophe in first line: "O wild West Wind"  symbolic quality: seeds scattered will become new buds in spring cycle of life

 written in Terza Rima: aba bcb

 wind is a dirge of the dying year  worship of the power of nature as a destroyer and preserver  world is awakened from summer dreams  kind of incantation to the wind

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 17  speaker wishes to fly away with the wind  had seemingly been freer in his boyhood. If the wind could blow him as it did when he was a child, he would not be forced to pray to Nature to lift him from his suffering.  life has changed him and chained him down. He has been burdened by time and experience.  life has taken from him all that is "tameless, swift, and proud."  wants the wind to bring out in him the music of his soul as it brings out the music of the aeolian harp.

 He reflects that his dead thoughts, like leaves scattered by the wind, will be scattered through the universe to bring new understanding and soil for new growth.  wants wind to blow his words as sparks and scatter them through the universe so that they can cause new fires in others.  prays for a figurative springtime for the earth -- a new beginning.

K. Clark, River East Collegiate Page 18