English Literature: Poetry Context

The Romantics’ Beliefs

• Innocence and wisdom of children

• Eternity of the arts and their power

• Disliked the new and industrial world

• Don’t like systems that are “created to control” e.g. church, monarchy, government, some schools

• Emphasis on imagination and emotions rising above all else

• Nature is a spiritual and emotional guide

Ozymandias - Percy Shelley

• Written at the same time as a statue of Ozymandias was being moved to the British Museum

• Shelley was a Romantic

• Shelley was a Radical: against the government and the monarchy at the time

Hawk Roosting - Ted Hughes

• He enjoyed country pursuits

• Hawks are associated with hunting showing his link

• He was fascinated by nature and many of his poems were written about nature and animals

• He spent a lot of time in Devon and Yorkshire countryside where he may have seen hawks

London - William Blake

• First generation romantic

• It was originally released with a painting of a child guiding an old man into something, showing the wisdom of the child 

• he wasn’t wealthy

• he had no formal education

• he was strongly opposed to the industrial revolution

• not religious

Death of a Naturalist - Seamus Heaney

• Born in Ireland 1939 and was a proud Irishman

• His poems were often triggered by small intimate memories of his rural upbringing

• Same anthology as midterm break which is about the death of his brother

Excerpt from The Prelude - William Wordsworth

• romantic poet

• extract from an epic poem that is supposed to be about his whole life

• He was born in the lake district which is where the poem is set

• memory from before his parents died

• written after the scientific movement

To Autumn - John Keats

• A romantic

• Lost his parents to tuberculosis

• Wrote poem after a walk along the River Itchen 1819

• Celebration of a season he loved