Comprehensive Guide to Romantic Poetry and Poets - Vocabulary Flashcards

55 vocabulary flashcards drawn from the lecture notes on Romantic poetry, its themes, poets, major works, and philosophical influences.

Romantic poetry

A movement focusing on nature, emotion, imagination, and individual experience, reacting against Enlightenment rationalism.

Nature

The natural world celebrated by Romantic poets as a source of beauty, truth, and moral insight.

Emotion

Deep feelings central to Romantic poetry's aims, over rational calculation.

Imagination

The creative mental faculty celebrated by Romantics as a source of truth and art.

Individual experience

Emphasis on personal perception and inner life.

Sublime

A feeling of awe and terror inspired by nature's vastness or power.

Transience

The quality of lasting only for a short time; a theme in Romantic works like Ozymandias.

Impermanence

The fleeting nature of life, power, or achievement.

Power

Human achievements seen as fleeting when opposed to nature or art.

Ozymandias

Shelley’s sonnet about a ruined statue and the vanity of rulers.

Ruined statue

The central image in Ozymandias symbolizing decline and hubris.

Inscription erosion

The weathered inscription in Ozymandias signaling decay.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Romantic poet known for themes of change, impermanence, and nature's endurance.

Ode to the West Wind

Shelley’s poem where the wind embodies destruction and renewal to spread his words.

Wind as destroyer and preserver

Wind's dual role representing nature's power to destroy and renew.

Social change

Romantic aim to inspire political or societal renewal through art.

Byron

Romantic poet famed for a rebellious persona; juxtaposed with softer themes in She Walks in Beauty.

She Walks in Beauty

Poem praising harmony of inner goodness and outer beauty.

Inner goodness

Virtue within a person that contributes to beauty.

Outer beauty

External beauty that complements inner virtue.

Coleridge

Romantic poet noted for imagination and dreamlike verse; theory of willing suspension of disbelief.

Kubla Khan

Coleridge’s dreamlike, imaginative poem about a magical realm.

Xanadu

The mythical palace in Kubla Khan, symbolizing a wondrous, imaginative landscape.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Coleridge’s narrative poem about a mariner’s curse, guilt, and redemption.

Albatross

The bird killed by the mariner; symbol of guilt and nature's moral authority.

Guilt

Remorse arising from moral transgression, central to the Mariner’s journey.

Redemption

Forgiveness and moral restoration after wrongdoing.

William Blake

Poet who fused social critique with spiritual symbolism.

Chimney Sweeper

Blake poem condemning child labor and social injustice.

Lamb

Blake poem celebrating innocence and divine creation.

Tyger

Blake poem questioning the paradox of creation’s power and danger.

Wordsworth

Poet who celebrated nature as moral and spiritual guide and advocated reform.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Wordsworth poem about daffodils and nature bringing lasting happiness.

Daffodils

Flowers in Wordsworth’s lyric that symbolize nature's joy.

The World Is Too Much With Us

Wordsworth poem critiquing materialism and loss of nature’s value.

Pagan reverence for nature

Idea of returning to nature with a spiritual, pre-Christian reverence.

Tintern Abbey

Wordsworth poem reflecting on memory and nature as moral guide.

Moral and spiritual guide

Nature and landscape serving as teachers of virtue and wisdom.

Robert Burns

Scotland’s national poet; celebrated Scottish identity and nature.

To a Mouse

Burns poem on humility and the fragility of human plans in the face of nature.

Keats

Romantic poet concerned with mortality and beauty.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keats poem asserting art captures eternal beauty; includes 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

Keats’s line equating beauty with fundamental truth.

Ode to a Nightingale

Keats poem where the nightingale’s song symbolizes timeless beauty and mortality.

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be

Keats sonnet about fear of dying before fulfilling artistic goals.

Mortality

The finite nature of life; a central Romantic concern.

Lyrical Ballads

1798 collection by Wordsworth and Coleridge; defined Romantic poetry’s focus on emotion and everyday life.

Willing suspension of disbelief

Coleridge’s concept allowing readers to accept fantastic elements in poetry.

Dare to know

Kant’s call to use reason and seek knowledge beyond tradition.

Sapere aude

Latin for 'dare to know'—Kantian motto influencing Romantic thought.

Immanuel Kant

German philosopher whose ideas encouraged subjective perception and moral autonomy.

Wordsworth as Poet Laureate

Wordsworth’s role as official poet laureate and its influence on poetry and politics.

Revolutionary change

Romantic belief in broad social and political reform.

Monarchical power critique

Romantic critique of monarchy and centralized authority.

Romantic ideology

Core values: reverence for nature, celebration of emotion and imagination, critique of injustice, and examination of mortality and beauty.