Romantic, Realist, and Modernist Poetry: Key Themes and Poets

What years define the Romantic Era?

1790-1850

What did Romantic poets value more than reason?

Emotion, imagination, and individual experience

How did Romantic poets view nature?

As powerful, spiritual, inspiring, and uncorrupted

What themes are common in Romantic literature?

Emotion, nature, the supernatural, the sublime, nostalgia for the past, and individuality

What is 'the sublime'?

An overwhelming feeling of awe, terror, or grandeur often inspired by nature

How did Romantic poets portray ordinary people?

As important and worthy subjects of poetry

How did Romantic poets view poets themselves?

As inspired visionaries with deep emotional insight

What is William Wordsworth known for?

Nature poetry and emotional reflection

What is the main idea of 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'?

Nature's beauty brings lasting joy and comfort

What flowers appear in 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'?

Daffodils

Who wrote 'Kubla Khan'?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What is 'Kubla Khan' known for?

Dreamlike imagery and supernatural elements

Who wrote 'Ozymandias'?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is the message of 'Ozymandias'?

Power and human achievements are temporary

What years define the Realist Era?

1850-1900

What did Realist writers focus on?

Everyday life and ordinary people

What social issues did Realists discuss?

Industrialization, poverty, class divisions, and urbanization

What social classes were commonly represented in Realism?

Middle and working classes

Who wrote A Doll's House?

Henrik Ibsen

What is A Doll's House about?

Nora realizes she has been controlled and leaves to find independence

What themes appear in A Doll's House?

Gender roles, identity, freedom, and societal expectations

What is free verse?

Poetry without fixed meter or rhyme scheme

What are characteristics of free verse?

Natural speech rhythms, variable line lengths, and flexible structure

Realist Literature

ordinary characters in everyday settings, avoids emotional language, portrays stark realities, makes political and social commentary

Characteristics of Romanticism

Artistic and literary response to IR, focus on the past, daring, independent, imaginative, focused on the individual rather than society

Romantics

optimists who believed in the possibility of progress and reform for individuals and societies

Romantics believe…

Humans are innately good, but we are corrupted by society’s institutions (religion, education, government)

Goals of Romanticism

Liberate the individual spirit from oppression, romantics attempted to rediscover the mystery and wonder of the world, go beyond ordinary reality

Romantic Poets

William Wordsworth, William Blake, Robert Burns, John Keats, George Gordon, Lord Byron, etc.

William Blake

anti-organized religion, considered mad by many of his contemporaries, he thought that politics and şéxüality were linked, tried to bring a concubine into his home (wife said no) “The Garden of Love”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

William Wordsworth’s collaborator, Lyrical Ballads (1798) - poetry collection that launched Romanticism, Rime of the Ancient Mariner - epic poem, Kubla Khan not published until 1816 “Kubla Khan”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

wrote a piece on the “Necessity of Athiesm”, was kicked out of college and was in difficult financial straits, at 19 he eloped with Harriet Westbrook, fell in love with a schoolteacher who inspired his first major poem “Queen Mab” , political pamphlets - distributed by hot air balloon, glass bottles, paper boats. “Ozymandius” “Prometheus Unbound”

John Keats

lost parents at a young age, studied medicine but became a poet instead, died of TB around age 25, friend to Shelley and Wordsworth, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Wordsworth

"The World is too much with us” “I Wandered Lonely as a cloud”