ROMANTICS ~ context

What religious background did Blake’s family come from?

Moravian Christianity; grace through Jesus, not the institutional church.

How did Blake experience visions in childhood?

Spiritual visions from a young age; non-traumatic, seen as visions of change; walked countryside to realign himself.

Where did Blake live and work most of his life?

London; a major metropolis shaping his political and social awareness.

What mystical movement did Blake later join and reject?

Swedenborgianism; rejected it as another form of institutionalised religion like the Church of England.

Which major European political event shaped Blake’s thought?

1789 Storming of the Bastille + wider French Revolution (huge cultural impact).

How did Blake express anti-monarchism in early writing?

Tiriel traces the fall of a tyrannical king.

Which radical thinkers did Blake associate with?

Mary Wollstonecraft and other radicals.

Where did Blake engage in radical political discussion?

At publisher Joseph Johnson’s house.

What did Rousseau publish that influenced Romantic ideas of childhood?

Emile, or On Education. 1762

What key ideas about childhood does Rousseau propose?

“Give nature time”; childhood is the “sleep of reason”; hold childhood in reverence.

Which classical educational idea does Rousseau reference?

Plato (The Republic): children educated through play.

How does Blake respond to these ideas in his poetry?

Exposes destruction of childhood through child labour (The Chimney Sweeper).

What are Songs of Innocence?

Blake’s early poems engraved and published by himself.

What did Blake publish in 1794?

Songs of Experience, paired with Songs of Innocence.

What does the title page of the combined work announce?

“The two Contrary States of the Human Soul.”

What themes dominate many Songs of Experience poems?

Sexual repression, hypocrisy, social oppression.

Which poem links repression with “free love with bondage bound”?

Earth’s Answer.

Why is sexual disease important in Blake’s context?

Gonorrhea and syphilis were incurable.

How does Blake link Christianity and sexual repression?

Marriage doctrine oppresses sexuality, fuelling secrecy and prostitution.

How does The Sick Rose use disease symbolically?

Disease as natural consequence of sexual freedom; parallels unnatural political constraints (monarchy, corrupt parliament).

How was The Sick Rose presented visually?

Published with an engraving; petals resemble surreal contorted figures.

How did Blake advocate for women’s rights?

The Book of Thel, Visions of the Daughters of Albion.

What period shaped Blake’s optimism about child welfare?

1782–1787; newly married; observed parish childcare initiatives.

What event does Holy Thursday depict?

Ascension Day service for London charity school children (many orphans).

What is the significance of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Holy Thursday?

Most sacred London site; historic centre; royal religious authority.

How did Blake spiritually view London?

As a fallen Jerusalem.

What does the Beadle symbolise?

Hypocrisy; wardens pocketed money meant for poor children.

Why does Blake attack institutional religion in Holy Thursday?

Church–monarchy alliance; religion segregates rich and poor, limiting grace.

How is Holy Thursday illustrated in Songs of Experience?

Dark colours; barren tree; dead child; grieving woman.

Where did Wordsworth grow up?

Lake District, near the River Derwent.

What early family trauma shaped Wordsworth?

Both parents died within five years.

When did Wordsworth begin writing poetry?

As a young boy at grammar school.

What formative journey did Wordsworth take before graduating?

Walking tour of Europe.

What landscapes most affected him on this tour?

The Alps; experience of the sublime.

When did Wordsworth arrive in France?

On the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille.

Which revolutionary events disillusioned Wordsworth?

The Terror; executions incl. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; Napoleon’s dictatorship.

How did Wordsworth defend revolutionary ideals?

Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (Apology for the French Revolution).

How did Wordworth’s political stance change by 1818?

Endorsed “softened feudalism” while retaining sympathy for common people.

What language did Wordsworth advocate in poetry?

Vocabulary and speech of common people.

What kind of poetic language did he reject?

“Arbitrary and capricious habits of expression.”

What phrase summarises Wordsworth’s linguistic ideal?

“The real language of men.”

What is The Prelude?

Autobiographical poem examining origins of poetic imagination.

What do Books 1 and 2 of The Prelude focus on?

Childhood and early communion with nature.

How was The Prelude composed?

Through adult memory and retrospection.

When was Lyrical Ballads published and with whom?

1798; with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Which poem reflects on nature and humanity’s moral failure?

Lines Written in Early Spring.

What does “bower” symbolise in Paradise Lost?

Yonic symbol of prelapsarian, God-blessed sexuality.

What physical condition was Byron born with?

Clubbed right foot.

How did Byron’s mother affect him psychologically?

Emotionally unstable; mocking, proud, excessive tenderness.

What religious ideas influenced Byron early?

Calvinist doctrines of innate evil and predestination.

When did Byron inherit his title?

Age 10.

What attachments did Byron form at Harrow School?

Passionate attachments to younger boys.

What eccentric act did Byron commit at Cambridge?

Kept a bear because dogs were forbidden.

What lifestyle led Byron into debt?

Gambling, theatre, fencing, demimondes.

Why was Byron’s first poetry criticised?

Frank eroticism.

What losses affected Byron in 1811?

Death of his mother and two friends.

How did Byron experience his mother’s funeral?

Watched from gate at Newstead Abbey.

Why did Byron go on the Grand Tour?

To escape debt and scandal (including incest rumours).

Who described Byron as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”?

Lady Caroline Lamb.

Lady Caroline Lamb.

What is the origin of the skull-cup?

Skull (likely a monk) found at Newstead Abbey.

What is the anticlerical subtext of the skull poem?

Monk’s skull used for pleasure.

What society did Byron form around the skull?

The Order of the Skull.

What classical phrase does the ‘Skull…’ poem echo?

“Veni, vidi, vici.”

When and where was So We’ll Go No More A-Roving written?

Venice; end of Carnival, start of Lent.

What does the poem express?

Ageing, exhaustion, retreat from hedonism.

What song inspired the poem?

Scottish ballad The Jolly Beggar (tone made mournful).

Where was Byron when he wrote On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year?

Greece, during the Greek War of Independence.

What cause was Byron fighting for in Greece?

Liberation from Ottoman Empire; Romantic ideals of liberty.

What literary allusion appears in “yellow leaf”?

Macbeth’s soliloquy on life’s meaninglessness.

How does Byron’s tone differ from Macbeth’s?

More heroic; continues to fight despite decline.

Why was Shelley bullied at Syon House Academy?

Hallucinations, sleepwalking, eccentricity.

What academic interests did Shelley develop early?

Astronomy and chemistry.

What nicknames did Shelley receive at Eton?

“Mad Shelley” and “Shelley the atheist.”

What was Shelley’s first published work?

Gothic novel Zastrozzi.

Why did Shelley use a villain to express ideas in Zastrozzi?

To air heretical atheistic views without direct authorial attribution.

To air heretical atheistic views without direct authorial attribution.

What pamphlet did Shelley publish at Oxford?

The Necessity of Atheism.

What is the core argument of the pamphlet?

Nature of belief; burden of proof lies in senses, reason, testimony.

Which philosophers influenced Shelley’s scepticism?

Locke and Hume.

Why was Shelley expelled from Oxford in 1811?

Refused to disavow atheism pamphlet.

What earlier offence had Shelley committed?

Attempting to raise the devil in a crypt.

How did Shelley view marriage?

Ideologically opposed to it.

How did this belief affect his personal life?

Abandoned multiple wives; several children died.

When was The Cold Earth Slept Below written?

Around 1816.

What historical context informs The Cold Earth Slept Below?

Post-Napoleonic War Europe; industrialisation, poverty.

What personal tragedy shadows the poem?

Death of Harriet Westbrook.

What range of forms did Keats write in?

Sonnets, Spenserian romance, Miltonic epic.

What family tragedies did Keats experience?

Father died after riding accident; mother died five years later.

How was Keats encouraged at school?

Freedom to read widely; supported by headmaster Charles Clarke.

Which radical figure influenced Keats through Clarke?

John Cartwright.

Who publicly supported Keats’ poetry?

Leigh Hunt.

How did conservative critics attack Keats?

“Vulgar Cockney poetaster”; uncouth language.

How did Keats defend literature?

As “realms of gold.”

When did Keats quit medical school?

1816.

What personal responsibility did Keats have in 1817?

Caring for brother with tuberculosis.

When was Sonnet on the Sea written?

April 1817.

How was Keats’ first collection received?

Ignored; Clarke joked it could’ve appeared in Timbuctoo.

What is unusual about Sonnet on the Sea’s form?

Petrarchan structure with unusual sestet rhyme scheme.

What tradition do sonnets often explore?

Unattainability.