Romantic Poetry Presentation

The Romantic Movement… brief overview The Romantic Movement was a revolt against the Enlightenment and its focus on rational and scientific thought. The characteristics of Romantic literature involved an emphasis on passion, emotion, spontaneity, subjectivity, mortality, and nature. Throughout the 19th century, romantic poetry, in particular, became the most significant work of the period. William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats are the notable British Romantic poets. Nature, religious fervor, emotional response to beauty, and Ancient Greek aesthetics, are some of the common themes in their work. Note that each Romantic poet had his own style and emphasized different aspects. That’s where you come in with your research.

BRIEF notes about each Romantic Poet…. To help you make a selection!

William Blake In his Life of William Blake (1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake "neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work'y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself 'a divine child,' whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth." Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of men.

Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and political change that profoundly influenced his writing. Poet, painter, and engraver, Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Blake’s two famous volumes of poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience show "the two Contrary States of the Human Soul." (Blake) Blake had a unique religious, spiritual viewpoint based on a visionary idea, freedom, and individualism, and he had radical political views.

William Wordsworth Wordsworth's mother died when he was eight--this experience shapes much of his later work. Not long after, his father died, leaving him and his four siblings orphans. Wordsworth's poetry centers around the interest and sympathy for the life, troubles and speech of the "common man".

Wordsworth was influenced by his wanderings and his preoccupation with nature and man’s obsession with materialism. He was friendly with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth's most famous work is The Prelude. The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry. Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life, the poem was published posthumously. Wordsworth spent his final years settled at Rydal Mount in England, travelling and continuing his outdoor excursions. Devastated by the death of his daughter Dora in 1847, Wordsworth seemingly lost his will to compose poems. William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850, leaving his wife Mary to publish The Prelude three months later.

Percy Bysshe Shelley As the eldest son, Shelley stood in line to inherit not only his grandfather's considerable estate but also a seat in Parliament. He attended Eton College and Oxford University. Shelley had heretical and atheistic opinions. Shelley eloped and married, only to later elope and marry Mary Shelley (who wrote Frankenstein).

Shelley was influenced by Godwin (Mary Shelley’s father) and his freethinking Socialist philosophy. Shelley was also a good friend of Byron’s. He traveled and lived in various Italian cities throughout his life. His poetry emphasizes individualism, freedom, nature, and the importance of the subjective imagination.

John Keats Keats lost both his parents at a young age. He was a licensed apothecary, but never practiced as one; instead, he dedicated himself to writing poetry. Keats’ poetry focuses on mortality, the beauty of nature, and includes many myths and allusions to Greek mythology and aesthetics.

Keats contracted tuberculosis and died at only twenty- five years old. Because he was ill for a time before he died, many of his poems address his awareness of death, the importance of beauty and God, and frequently reference mythology and the ancients.

George Gordon, Lord Byron The most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was also the most fashionable poet of his day. He created an immensely popular Romantic hero (known as the Byronic Hero)—defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt—for which, to many, he seemed the model.

Byron is also a Romantic paradox: a leader of the era's poetic revolution, he named Alexander Pope as his master; a worshipper of the ideal, he never lost touch with reality; a deist and freethinker, he retained from his youth a Calvinist sense of original sin; a peer of the realm, he championed liberty in his works and deeds, giving money, time, energy, and finally his life to the Greek war of independence. 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. In his dynamism, sexuality, self-revelation, and demands for freedom for oppressed people everywhere, Byron captivated the Western mind and heart.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge published The Lyrical Ballads with William Wordsworth in 1798, an event later seen as the beginning of the Romantic movement in England. Coleridge held imagination to be the vital force behind poetry, and distinguished among different kinds of imagination in his long prose work Biographia Literaria.

Coleridge is probably most noted for the haunting imagery of his poems “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan”. He was influenced by Plato's Republic, and co- constructed a vision of pantisocracy (equal government by all). Coleridge suffered from financial problems, and later ill health. He became addicted to opium (evident in much of his poetry), and lived off of financial donations and grants until he died.