British Romanticism

Charlotte Smith

(1749-1806) - married at 14, lost child? - abusive/infedelity in husband, leaves him -very popular -modeled after Shakespeare's rhyme scheme (in "Elegaic" Sonnets) "Written at the Close of Spring," "To Sleep," "To Night.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(1772-1834) Biographia Literaria ch 14, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan." - used opium, reflected in poetry Romantics mystical; thought poetry was a product of the imagination; died in 1834; youngest of 14 children and was spoiled and undisciplined which led to him being easily influenced as an adult; attended Cambridge then entered into a very unhappy marriage; developed very painful rheumatism and became addicted to the opium he took to control the pain; famous poem: "Kubla Khan" written in opium-induced dream; evoked an atmosphere of mystery that seemed strange yet true • considered theological

Mary Shelley

(1797-1851, Romantics, Frankenstein) • Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley went to Swiss alps & everyone wrote a reaction to the trip => Frankenstein was Mary's reaction

Introduction to Songs of Experience

(Blake) • Bard - poet/profit, hearing word of God, who's calling lapsed soul? poet? unfallen, fallen - Adam & Eve • 2nd part - calling for light and innocent world again • Imagery : someone (Bard) omnipresent, all knowing, creationism - light celestial - starts, chaos, juxtaposition Ocean vs. Sky • Tone : dreary, hopeless, but calling for hope, passion (rational order of sea vs chaos) • Meaning : we've fallen from grace since beginning, calling for a return to order & light

Songs of Innocence & Experience

(Blake) • Motifs : Humble Life, Natural Sexuality Poet/Christ Mature Sexuality Blighted Innocence Healthy Purgation

Don Juan (Lord Byron)

(Epic satire, "immoral content" but still very popular) • Feminist reading of the text - Julia - coy, seductive, letter- selfless passionate (195), forced to play in patriarchal role (194) but then Julia goes into convent in end? • poetic approach - (201-222) • Why does Byron address audience? - Class Opinion : arrogant, vain, snide comments about others, acts as Byronic Hero himself • Summary : - Don Juan - womanizer, but portrayed in this as someone easily seduced by woman (satirical that way), -Don Juan raised by very strong/educated mother, but hindered in this way too, - falls in love with Julia (married woman), scene where husband storms in and doesn't find him -Juan sent away by mother but still in love with Julia, sleeps with some other woman though (later throughout story) - 3rd canto - digression from story, and Byron badmouthing other poets, the other cantos of his wild adventures and womanizing

Ode to a Nightingale (John Keats)

(Romantic Ode) • intimacy with death (pillow talk) • bird represents death & missing loved ones • coping with grief through poetry, poetry as a craft (enlightenment) • bird is immortal "I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."

The Tyger

(part of songs of experience) • Imagery : eyes, god's work: humanity toying of steel, Smith - fire, hammer, God - vulcan, hephaestus • Tone : revere, awe, inspired • Meaning/Motive : who dared create this creature? God made both lamb & Tyger - Good and Evil? how good God really is? balance seen

Ballad

A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style.

conversation poem

A poem whose light, colloquial treatment of a serious subject is intended to resemble informal conversation. • utilized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth • usually set in a localized, outdoor setting • Honesty; view of the world and love • Interacts mind and nature EXAMPLES: "The Eolian Harp", "The Lime Tree Bower is my Prison" (1797), "Frost at Midnight" (1798) by Coleridge, "Tintern Abbey" (1798) by Wordsworth

John Clare

A poet and a rural labourer, who protested against enclosure, the loss of peasant's customary rights and the "improvement" of the landed state at the cost of the great many families who had to leave the countryside and go live in the slums of big cities. Themes include Nature, and how that reflects, connects to memory Spent time in Asylum, later poems reflect this His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self."

Romantic/ Gothic Novel

Frankenstein (Shelley), Jane Eyre (Bronte)

Period of Turbulence

Industrial Revolution; Social Revolutions

Miltonic sestet

John Milton created the Miltonic sonnet as a variant to the then highly popular Petrarchan sonnet. The Miltonic sonnet keeps the Petrarchan length and rhyming scheme, but does away with the stanza break between the octave and the sestet.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (John Keats)

Keats; 2 narrators (unnamed man and Knight); Uses: metaphor (to describe Knight's appearance), imagery Romantic characteristics: setting in nature, supernatural woman, symbolism in the dream, emphasis on emotions, sensual Point: do not become too obsessed with the ideal love because perfection does not exist and you will therefore be consumed with something that is unattainable

Sonnet Revival

Revival began with poets like Thomas Edwards and Charlotte Turner Smith before later including the other Romantics such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley Like Milton, the Romantics wrote relatively few love sonnets and the sonnet of the Romantic era include politics, nature, friendship, art, history, religion, life and death- most prominent is nature In fact some of the Romantic poets even wrote sonnets about sonnets. Wordsworth's Scorn not the Sonnet is an example of this. Keats also wrote about sonnets, most notably in On the Sonnet (1819), which like Wordsworth's poem defends the form in content and by using it himself The sonnet form humbled many of the Romantics who are usually noted for their strong "I" assertion in lyric narratives. Coleridge too felt unsure of himself saying, "The sonnet has ever been a favourite species of composition with me; but I am conscious that I have not succeeded in it"

Preface to Lyrical Ballads continued

What is a poet? - better person, more reflective & ability to understand things better feel/explore human conditions - Poetry should access the Truth pleasure through reading/writing poetry can be tragic moment - but recognizing feelings; poet derives pleasure/excitement -language = command - Wordsworth sees himself as a spokesman but not belonging to class, educated, but feels he should concern himself with them gives example of poetry - defending poetry, why? "Emotion Recollected in Tranquility" -poet = unmoored, open, emotive, empathic, - feet on ground of Earth, planted through reason & tranquility, can reflect on vareity of feelings - authentic - can culminate these emotions, real reality of them in mind, - pleasurable for poet to access

I wandered lonely as a cloud (William Wordsworth)

Wordsworth; connects to "The Solitary Reaper" because it is a simple moment that had a long-lasting effect Uses: Simile (comparing his wandering to cloud), metaphor, hyperbole (number of flowers), personification (daffodils), imagery (natural setting) point:he is in the moment and has a spontaneous overflow of emotion at first but emotions remembered in tranquility have the power to change the mood

primitivism

a belief in the value of what is simple and unsophisticated, expressed as a philosophy of life or through art or literature.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (William Blake)

a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets from etched plates containing prose, poetry and illustrations. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell, published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake in several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral strictures and his Manichaean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order; hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell." "The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast." "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."

anti-intellectualism

a philosophical doctrine that questions or denies the ability of the intellect to comprehend the true nature of things.

iambic pentameter

a poetic meter that is made up of 5 stressed syllables each followed by an unstressed syllable

Petrarchan sonnet

a sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd

Nature

acted as a source of inspiration for all of the poets; thought nature reflects God in this world and is the key to the mysteries of life and the universe

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

followed Wordsworth's style • summation : mariner (old man) talking to wedding guest about his experience, story : on ship in icy region, only sign of life = Albatross, albatross is good omen at first making the winds blow but then he suddenly kills, and becomes bad omen, sailors blamed mariner revenge, wears bird around his neck - guilt , curse ensues -> see ship and think its hope but really only a ghost of a ship, and on it are Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, who takes the form of a pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and "thicks man's blood with cold, they play a game and cause all the shipmates all die except the one mariner, see dead spirits, ghost ship, mariner wants to die angel spirits finally leave dead men's bodies, fuel ship onwards, finally curse lifted • Ballad form, generally four line stanza • Language of dropping below • Albatross = hope, sign from God • "Cross" albatross - double meaning: sign of cross • God through nature • Innocence can be reflected in sin: albatross around neck • the ancient mariner receives damnation as well as mental and physical weight • ABCB

Medievalism

gothic mystery and darkness

humanitarianism

inherent worth in each individual

Prometheus Unbound (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

romantic 4 act play (closet drama), published in 1820 (drama about Prometheus' torments at the hand of Zeus after giving fire to humans, Zeus overthrown => Prometheus released) • Prometheus - one mind, Jesus (byronic hero) • Jupiter (Zeus) - tyranny • Furies - spirits of crucifixion Prometheus - connects himself to sacrificial lamb Demogorgon defeats Jupiter, overthrows Prometheus - forgotten part singularity (Blake idea (??)), unrestrained, Hated, curse (784-785) -gave humans fire (Satan brings light), knowledge, words, science • not totally consumed, repents, doesn't resent humanity Act 3 - Demogorgon - eternity, time, inevitability, "hours" process, change Act 4 - 2nd Ending, tools needed for new age (Blake like), don't forget oneness, singularity Zeus- can we sympathize? he is a father, and brings Order & stability

shared themes in Romantics

sought refuge in the imaginative past, Utopian future, distant and exotic present, picturesque retreat in nature; shared political ideas, sought to plumb their psychological, imaginative and creative depths in poetry

Percy Shelley

symbolic; died in 1822; extreme heretic and non-conformist; frail child who was bullied which made him see the cruelness in man's nature; wanted to be the advocate of the oppressed; attended Oxford and published "The Necessity of Atheism" for which he was expelled; eloped but hated the institute of marriage then took up the Catholic cause in Ireland; meets Mary Goodwin and falls in love and lives with both Mary and his first wife in England (she later kills herself); believed poetry influences people's thoughts; remained idealistic despite society's criticism

Spenserian stanza

the stanza used by Spenser in The Faerie Queene, consisting of eight iambic pentameters and an alexandrine, with the rhyming scheme ababbcbcc.

The Romantic Period

• 1785-1832 • belief in "poet-prophet" • trust in "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" • dissatisfied with well-achieved mediocrity of neoclassical style • distrust in forced and artificial composition of poetry • human experiences through natural phenomenon filter • an attempt to reach the zenith of human achievement • marked by outbreak of French Revolution

Bryonic Hero

• Bryon used for self revelation & self concealment • Milton's Satan traits : tortured by pains of Hell & emotional, psychological pain, yet unashamed • a persecuted, flawed & ultimately lovely genius • antihero, reader sympathizes with, romanticized but wicked • conventionally : young & attractive male (Don Juan, Hamlet) • destructive passions, alienation • selfish, brooding indulgence in own sorrows a dark, passionate, moody, remorse-torn yet unrepentant sinner who exiles himself from society

The Lamb

• Imagery : lamb, stream, meadow, soft clothing, child • Tone : preachy, religious, God • Meaning : God's sense of purity in creating lamb - repetition & rhetorical question - confidence revelation of mysteries, leads to central point - the lamb = Christ = child, hint of sacrifice, of youth/innocence - give up for growth (part of songs of innocence)

To the Snipe (John Clare)

• Intimacy, harmony • Swamp - inhospitable place, hospitable for bird • Bird's superiority over humans? • Psychically adapted to environment: long build, bill to drill down • Nest = mystic • Disembodiment - snipe himself in hiding • Moral ending "From year to year Places untrodden lie, Where man nor boy nor stock hath ventured near, Naught gazed on but the sky. And fowl that dread The very breath of man, Hiding in spots that never knew his tread, A wild and timid clan. Tis power divine That heartens them to brave The roughest tempest and at ease recline On marshes or the wave. Yet instinct knows Not safety's bounds:—to shun The firmer ground where skulking fowler goes With searching dogs and gun."

Tintern Abby (William Wordsworth)

• Lyrical Ballads; 1798 • Vastness of the world, being lifted, landscape tunes in • Ends with blessing • Line 50 - doubts himself • Line 60 - nostalgia - pain that comes with passage of time • Trade off between gains and nature • Nature acts not as an escape from humanity, but as a teacher • "I" - all things; human connection makes nature • "Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses." "My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee"

Romantic Characteristics

• Medievalism • orientalism • primitivism • anti-intellectualism • humanitarianism • democracy • sentimentality • confessionalism • love of the wild and picturesque in external • human nature • elevated language • heroic individualism • era of the common man

Ode on a Grecian Urn (John Keats)

• Miltonic sestet • "but those unheard are sweeter" imagined better than reality something from the past (John Keats, Romantic Ode) • ekphrasis = capturing art through another work of art • "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty" (capital T & B -> Truth & Beauty) • perpetual beauty captured on urn yet cannot change (tree can never bloom) • Reverence at eternal beauty • Sadness/Melancholy ? (never kiss, never bloom..etc), • envious of urn & its eternal beauty, hopes his work will have the same lasting effect • "A flowery tale more sweetly than rhyme" potter and poet • "emptied of this folk why are't though desolate" line between reality and fantasy

The Flitting (John Clare)

• Moral ending, inversion of hierarchy • note of defiance, resistance • time favoring nature to mankind, endures • political and social change • valedictory tone, mourning • lost things that were tied with memory • displaced from himself • "David's crown hath passed away" "I've left my own old home of homes, Green fields and every pleasant place; The summer like a stranger comes, I pause and hardly know her face. I miss the hazel's happy green, The blue bell's quiet hanging blooms, Where envy's sneer was never seen, Where staring malice never comes." "Time looks on pomp with vengeful mood Or killing apathy's disdain; So where old marble cities stood Poor persecuted weeds remain. She feels a love for little things That very few can feel beside, And still the grass eternal springs Where castles stood and grandeur died."

Frankenstein : Which is worse, trying to play God or Negligence?

• Nature vs . Nurture, go hand in hand • scientists have god complex • Victor : immature thinking, didn't anticipate necessary care, what scares him - how successful he really was • knowledge - how do we know something? other? question grounds of knowing, seeing creature beyond - outside

Don Juan canto 11 (Lord Byron)

• Ottava Rima • abababcc • Narrator interruption conscious of ones self • Pokes fun at contemporaries Coleridge and Wordsworth • a great Shipwreck • "All are not moralists, like Southey, when He prated to the world of 'Pantisocracy;' Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy; Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath)."

Don Juan Canto 1 (Lord Byron)

• Ottava Rima • abababcc • variation of the epic poem; Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire" • Narrator interruption; conscious of ones self • plot gives detail of Don Juan's background and his affair with Julia • "I want a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not care to vaunt, I 'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan— We all have seen him, in the pantomime, Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time."

William Blake

• Poetry comes out of 18th century enlightenment • Romantic desire for social reform: education, religion, marriage • Calls our attention to the world around us • sees humanity as divine • Religious, but against institutions • sees self as seer, profit (Romantics) • Believed Poets should be in touch with destitute emotions & deep emotions (psychosexualized) • poetry as vehicle - convey deep psychosexualized experiences/emotions EXAMPLES: Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Milton: A Poem, The Book of Thel

Blake (Songs of Innocence and Experience) - Why did he explore innocence and experience, and juxtapose?

• Regarding world in downcast manner: Is the relationship to his childhood? or childhood & essential to experience? dissatisified w/ adulthood or greater nostalgia? but recognition of something wonderful in adulthood? - nostalgia, - things overlooked, new subjects for poetry, relatable - cynical look at life, raw, balance, innocence as something sacrificed - theological, fall from Edenic state - Songs of Innocence - innocents of childhood - Songs of Experience - evils of adulthood, downcast

The Chimney Sweeper 1 (William Blake)

• Songs of Innocence; 1789 • AABB • Gives names: Tom • Compares Tom to lamb • Looking back on past • "Weep, weep, weep": pun on word, child's cries and sound of sweep; their job • "And by came an Angel who had a bright key": real angel or political savior - people campaigning this law • Using religion as a way of compensation?

I Am (John Clare)

• Statement of God's being • Sees death as solution "I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky."

Preface to Lyrical Ballads (William Wordsworth)

• a poetic manifesto • The Prelude : most renowned, most necessary to understand, autobiographical, explains life phases • reaction to Neoclassical style • establishing new form • 262-273 : lowly & rustic life why chosen? - "ordinary things presented in unusual way" - less under restraint, somewhat Patronizing of working people, emphatic language - transforming us into simpler experiences, soil, sun, work -straddles rustic & intellectual world • spontaneous flow of feeling, excess - powerful, yet need sensibility & deep reflection • Goal of poet : feel deeply, ability to summon (read) emotions & use for purposes & yet savor "taste it"/"feel it" - to pace into poetry - tapping into unrestrained emotions/sexuality , but also harnessing it - Importance of feeling, excited, agitated, and using for poetic advantage

Lord Byron

• aka George Gordon • (1788-1824) "Don Juan" Canto 1 • close friends with Percy Shelley • His faceted personality found expression in satire, verse narrative, ode, lyric, speculative drama, historical tragedy, confessional poetry, dramatic monologue, seriocomic epic, and voluminous correspondence, written in Spenserian stanzas, heroic couplets, blank verse, terza rima, ottava rima, and vigorous prose. dark, brooding, rebellious; died in 1824; epitome of the darker side of romanticism; eccentric family; born with a club foot that made him very self-conscious and becomes a womanizer to make up for it; attends Cambridge, where he pushes authority and took walking tour of Europe; autobiographical poem: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (coming of age poem); member of the House of Lords; had tempestuous love life; involved in revolutions (tried to join Greek army but died of malaria before he could fight); created the Byronic Hero; admired Swift and Pope (wrote satire) and explored the Gothic style

Biographia Literaria (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

• autobiographical Chapter 14: • recalls time with Wordsworth • excites readers - writing about nature & imaginative colors • Two types of writing : 1) Supernatural - Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads 2) Subjects from ordinary life - Wordsworth • controversy surrounding Wordsworth, who he admires but sometimes differs • describes what a poem should be, poet etc • defense of new style - mentions Wordsworth's poems • burden of responsibility on a poet - "synthetic & magical", "plastic" , "artificial" - artifice (manmade) vs Nature - visualizing nature through synthetic things (poem, painting) - not linear, meditative

ekphrasis

• capturing art through another work of art, art mirroring art (writer grapples with but brings something more, 2ndary work may leave much different mark) i.e. "Ode to a Grecian Urn" (Keats), "Mussée des Beaux Arts" (Auden)

This Lime Tree Bower is my Prison (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

• conversation poem: Coleridge injures himself; is forced to stay behind under a lime tree while his friends continue their outdoor excursion • Bower: acts as haven, grove, place of rest, refuge now acts as a prison, keeping the narrator from gaining memories he would have made with his friends • Animated energy in nature; photographic imagery • Blesses friend - blessing • Directing nature to do their job • Line 60: presence of God, lesson from experience - joy in others, happiness love, • Coleridge transforms setting from prison into beauty; refuge, a liberation, redeemed self • Bird: connection between his + Charles' experience "Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost Beauties and feelings, such as would have been Most sweet to my remembrance even when age Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile, Friends, whom I never more may meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge, Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, To that still roaring dell, of which I told" "Henceforth I shall know That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure; No plot so narrow, be but Nature there, No waste so vacant, but may well employ Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes 'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good, That we may lift the soul, and contemplate With lively joy the joys we cannot share. My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook Beat its straight path along the dusky air Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)"

Frost at Midnight (Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• conversation poems • Frost: stealthy, inexorable, silence, bringer of intimacy, creative force • Relationship of "being there" and memory • Infant reminds him of responsibilities, grounded • School interruption of dreaming • Blesses son and to foster curiosity of nature • Sky serves as reflection of Earth • Reflecting light, light of God - things that aren't seen • "But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike! But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask."

Frankenstein : What do we think of the creature's presence in text, its very existence, how does that impact the theological view?

• creature's existence seems to complicate Christian principles/values, conflicts with • Romantic Point of View : creature not loved, & not created by God => not loved, can love but not be loved, and driven into isolation • Religious standpoint : play god, things created by men don't belong here • Prometheus (unbound) & Victor - both wanted to create something beautiful, similar intentions, & to give something to humanity • Victor - tries to thwart death (death of mother important) • God & Man / Creator & Creature - shows creatures feelings, something born out of creator's negligence

Prometheus (Lord Byron)

• emphasizes the idea of using a problem to your own advantage • death as victory immortalized • addresses him 'titan ' • godlike sympathy for human suffering and to relive that suffering • the poet stealing fire; taking divine knowledge what the poet does and distributes to people • greek mythology similar to cruxifixction of christ • prometheus immortal; doesn't get the human death as victory scenario • ABBACCDDEEFGGF • a response from his age where power is not just rivalrous, but reciprocal • "his wretchedness and his resistance and his sad unallied existence to high his spirit may oppose itself an equal to all woes and a firm will and a deep sense • "Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless."

Coleridge's definition of the sublime

• encounter the Beautiful • no object sublime in itself, until made symbol of some idea • interaction, stirs you • undersatnding measureless/depths i.e. "awes of ice" in kublah khan, ungraspable • rational mind halts & spirit opens up to the sublime

John Keats

• extinguishes "self" • contemplation of mortality (through art) sensual (engaged the senses); thought poetry was acted as a wording of the reader's highest thoughts; died in 1821 (youngest poet); frail, sensitive child whose parents die when he is young; attended the John Clarke school who encouraged his writing career; 1818 was a year of disasters (1st poem fails, brother dies, contracts TB himself and has ill-fated affair; 1819 was a year of triumph (almost all of his great works were written in this year; writing has slow-paced flow, tries to freeze time and uses sensual imagery to immerse himself in the moment; had overwhelming premonition of an early death and wrote his own epitaph (1795-1821) - Romantics "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to a Grecian Urn,"

Frankenstein : Victor

• guilt - talks about it, but doesn't really reflect, not empathetic i.e. sees creature as having a menacing grin, but creature was only smiling • who is more monstrous? Victor or creature? (Creature slays people but has a twisted upbringing) • Creature = shadow self of Victor • Victor = opposite of God, no empathy, not orthodox, questions were souls come from, back to Nature - boundaries with Nature/sublime, not God's Love - if it had been there, for creature, or for Elizabeth, perhaps it was justice, Victor was self centered, Victor doesn't love enough • father complex - can't have babies, women have ultimate creative power what it means to be an artists, or a scientist, father figure, and boundaries on all of those

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again (John Keats)

• iambic pentameter • Petrarchan sonnet style • narrator refusing damnation like King Lear • moral, spiritual challenge, evoking shakespeare and spirit of english • ABBA • "but when i am consumed in the fire give me new phoenix wings to fly at my desire" • phoenix rising transcend to artistry = giving him inspiration for writing • fire being reborn echoes of Dante • king Lear connect with negative capability

To Sleep (Charlotte Smith)

• invocation to sleep, reference to Greek God, residual of Neoclassical period • anxiety referred to • sleep so helpful, but doesn't help the poet, not giving relief

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

• just because you can do something, should you? • who is the monster? Victor Frankenstein or the Creature? • Nature vs. Nurture (in regards to the creature) • Frankenstein must tell his story (similar to the Ancient mariner) • folly: I am a man and I will do as I will/want • Robert Walton needs to hear Victor's tale, to caution him (again like Ancient Mariner), Victor warns Robert to live within limits • Victor tried to prove himself as a god, by creating a new human, not just re-animating a dead one

Frankenstein in class discussion

• man can't create beauty like God, but can create benevolent creature (at first), inspired to learn (some positives) • Significant that Victor succeeds in creating something • What is animating the creature? - electicity? - surface animations only? is there depth there? - does it have a soul? or are we souless? is it necessary to have a soul? • Victor abandons creature • Creature : calculating energy to seek out "destruction" Or move so for Victor to experience what he went through?

Frankenstein : Creature

• name of creature, not given? suggests love & ownership, relationship s just like how Adam names beasts creature does say basically " should have been Satan, should have been thy Adam" • morality/personality/spirits - understdoo through outside characteristics (Creature slays people but has a twisted upbringing, Victor abandons creature, misunderstood by world and Victor)

Sublime

• of things in nature & art affecting mind without sense of overwhelming grandeur or irrestible power, calculated to inpsire Awe, deep reverence or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, grandeur • of persons, their attributes, feelings ,actions, standing high above others by reason of nobility or grandeur of nature or character, of high intellectual, moral or spiritual level, achieving perfection, supreme - come in contact w/ "the perfect" , the "Beautiful" terror - can be sublime, "awe" sublime in landscapes, characters being faced with divine, and having experience

Michael: A Pastoral Poem (William Wordsworth)

• pastoral poem • Idealizes nature • Draw attention to ordinary things that are extraordinary • Michael: stout and strong, idealizes him as well? • Pastoral life: keeping family together and longevity • City life is corrupted • plot: Michael lost half his land when he used it as a surety for a nephew who had met with financial misfortune. When Luke reaches the age of 18, Michael sends Luke to stay in London with a merchant that he might learn a trade and acquire sufficient wealth to regain the land that Michael has lost. It breaks Michael's heart to send Luke away and he makes Luke lay the first stone of a sheepfold as a covenant between them that Luke will return. However, Luke is corrupted in the city and is forced to flee the country and Michael must live out his life without his son. He returns sometimes to the sheepfold but no longer has the heart to complete it. "And hence this Tale, while I was yet a Boy Careless of books, yet having felt the power Of Nature, by the gentle agency Of natural objects, led me on to feel For passions that were not my own, and think (At random and imperfectly indeed) On man, the heart of man, and human life. Therefore, although it be a history Homely and rude, I will relate the same For the delight of a few natural hearts; And, with yet fonder feeling, for the sake Of youthful Poets, who among these hills Will be my second self when I am gone."

Ode to the West Wind (Percy Shelley)

• personifies wind, omnipotent, carries time & death along • wants wind to fly through "make me thy lire" - like other poem - "Eolian harp" "O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!"

William Blake Mythology

• poet, mythologial, artist • 4 states - Universal man is divided into 4 mighty "Zoas" 1) The Unfallen state (Eden) 2) The Fallen state (Beulah, pastoral garden) 3) The Realm (Generation) 4) Ulro (Hell, filled with isolated selves and tyranny) • isolated selves - i.e. when in nature or in city, being a part of womb continuously, one with singularity, comfort in womb • Zoa's aspects of humanity : Specters (masculine) and Emanations (feminine)

How does Samuel Taylor Coleridge divide imagination?

• primary imagination: attributed a divine quality, namely the creation of the self, the "I Am." However, because it is not subject to human will, the poet has no control over the primary imagination. It is the intrinsic quality of the poet that makes him or her a Creator; harking back to Wordsworth, the primary imagination can be likened to poetic genius. • secondary imagination: an echo of the primary. It is like the former in every way except that it is restricted in some capacity. It co-exists with the conscious will, but because of this, the secondary imagination does not have the unlimited power to create. It struggles to attain the ideal but can never reach it.

The Eolian Harp (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

• prose-like, coherent meter - pleasure from text • metaphors : mind, spirit, & musical instruments Aeolus - God of Winds Tress themselves - Eolian Harps • Love : appreciative tone of wife & God • "We are all organic harps" , all animated nature, and inspiration comes from the breath of God • result of "breeze" = Poetry

Lyrical Ballads

• published 1789 by Wordsworth and Coleridge • considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature • The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. • the focus on simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry was a signal shift to modern literature. • One of the main themes of "Lyrical Ballads" is the return to the original state of nature, in which people led a purer and more innocent existence. Wordsworth subscribed to Rousseau's belief that humanity was essentially good but was corrupted by the influence of society. This may be linked with the sentiments spreading through Europe just prior to the French Revolution EXAMPLES: "We are Seven", "Goody Blake and Harry Gill", "Michael: A pastoral poem", "Tintern Abbey", "The Tables Turned", "Lines Written in an early Spring", "Expostulation and Reply", "Two Part Prelude" all by Wordsworth and "Rime of the ancient Mariner" by Coleridge

We Are Seven (William Wordsworth)

• published in Lyrical Ballads; 1798 • ABAB rhyme scheme • Difference in perception • innocence + experience • Death is very real; a part of nature • Child understands something adult doesn't • "What Should it know of death" narrator shuts down her credibility, trying to impose views on child • Where the child's sister dies - laid back to earth; once again returned to nature • God releases people of their suffering • "There graves are green they may be seen": child suggests organically live on. children all spiritually connected"Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother."

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & the Sublime

• reference for all living things • hypnotizes guest & freezing rational mind, wedding guest potentially experiences - response is sad and silence for Mariner's experience • old man communicates with forces of sublime and transformed by encounter/interaction and he is terrified, must process & change by sublime Sublime = manifestiation/reaction to anything, object, image that evokes tremendous emotional response, particularly reverence, terror, & makes one experience feel smaller • why does mariner choose particular guest? -perhaps people that Need to hear it • Albatross : -changing, good omen => bad omen - guilt, mistake, original sin - holy spirit, Christ-like - needless killing or.. -God - benevolent & malevolent, sublime - albatross itself sublime

The Romantics

• seeing beauty in grotesque, convalesce • flowery writing - ornate, fancy, descriptive •but less ornate than Neoclassical, not as classical , more prosaic (ordinary), • Don't need Church, God, can encounter divine in Nature, spiritual sense of nature

William Wordsworth

• seen as both Pre-romantic & Romantic poet (1770-1850) contemplative; thought poetry was a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling; only poet to live a long life (died in 1850); born in the Lake District and had a happy childhood; attended Cambridge and took a walking tour of Europe; met Coleridge and published "Lyrical Ballads"; his autobiographical poem was "The Prelude"; created beauty from the simple things in nature • picturesque farmer, or rundown cottage - tried to speak to common folk, almost demeaning in a way • "I wandered Lonely as a Cloud" - flowery,, very long poem, even rhyme scheme seems contrived

A Poetic Manifesto

• some in Lyrical Ballads, in the Prelude (Wordsworth mostly) • Biographia Litteraria (Coleridge) • What a Poem should be used for? What a Poet does? Their role, what they should be doing, definition and use of devices, etc

The Eve of Saint Agnes (John Keats)

• spensarian stanza • juxtaposition of love • "forest dim? awaken dream or vision" nightingale • older than actually is • she thinks he has ill intentions • hyper sexual her language • "now wide awake" • narrator vicariously living through the characters • "her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone, upon his knees he sank pale as smooth sculptured stone" he has become statue pygmalion inversion • "and those sad eyes were spiritual and clear, and how changed thou art how pallid chill drear" mortality