Romantic Poetry - Context

What is Romanticism, and what inspired it?

The glorification and appreciation of Nature.

Main features included: Subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature.

Inspired by: American Independence, and

The French Revolution; The death of William Chatterton, a young, talented poet who took his own life at 17. (MORE INSPIRATION THAT INFLUENCED THIS MOVEMENT)

What is The Sublime?

Nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders

Which poets were First Generation Romantics, and Second Generation Romantics?

William Blake was before the Romanticist movement- but shared many ideas with the movement.

William Wordsworth is a First generation Romantic poet.

Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Keats were all Second generation Romantic poets.

Context behind Blake's: 'Holy Thursday: Innocence'

The charity-school children of London going to St. Paul's Cathedral on holy Thursday, Ascension Day

Wealthy benefactors donated money to certain schools - often exploited

Context behind Blake's: 'Holy Thursday: Experience'

A response to 'HT: Innocence'

Blake critiquing the upper classes warped perspective, critiques the Church for making people see 'what they want them to see' - aka, only positive things.

He critiques rather than praises the charity of the institutions responsible for hapless children.

Context behind Blake's: 'The Sick Rose'

Society believed that marriage was a woman's duty.

According to the Church, sex was only for: Procreation, a remedy to prevent sin, or to avoid fornication.

Blake supported the 'Free Love Movement' - freedom of sexual expression, authentic love

Context behind Blake's: 'The Tyger'

Questions the morality of God, and despite his 'goodness', he is able to create suffering - represented as the Tyger.

Blake was a Nonconformist. Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church, the Church of England.

Context behind Blake's: 'London'

Poet's feelings towards the society he was living in.

England became very oppressive due to fears of recreating the French Revolution. Therefore, there were little rights for the working class.

Blake's unpublished stanza which criticised the monarchy in particular - Marxist attitude

Context behind Wordsworth's: 'Lines Written in Early Spring'

Wrote this during a country walk - described it as a 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling'. The speaker laments over the relationship between man and man, and the impact that nature leaves on the speaker's mind.

Context behind Wordsworth's: 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey'

Pantheism - Everything within the Universe is a part of God

Nature is a redemptive force, a place where we feed our souls and commune with the divine. Second, it is a place of memory. Third, it arouses our emotions.

Context behind Wordsworth's: 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality'

Pre- existence: The idea that we are a soul before we are guided to a mortal body

The epigraph that appears before the first stanza of the poem represents the theme of the poem - the idea of growth and the continuity of man.

Wordsworth wants to seek those feelings and experiences he once had as a child growing up with nature.

Recognising that when we are children, we are closer to Heaven. But, as we grow older, we lose this spiritual connection.

In Wordsworth, we find Rousseau's well-known fundamental tenets: he has the same semimystical faith in the goodness of nature as well as in the excellence of the child

Context behind Byron's: 'Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull'

Memento Mori: Remember you shall die' - a reminder for people about the inevitability of death.

Symbols of MM: Sand timers, skulls, rotting fruit

Response to the ideas of Christianity and its ability to dictate a person's life. Byron response with the idea of living a good life, as life is short - enjoy yourself!

Less emphasis on status & wealth, just so you can appreciate your life.

Context behind Byron's: 'So, We'll Go no more A Roving'

Fled England to Venice a year prior to writing this poem to escape debt and scandals.

Had a dissolute lifestyle and was exhausted to a point of illness due to excessive alcohol, sexual activity etc.

Wrote this to a friend - Venetian life began to weary him.

Context behind Byron's: 'On This Day I complete My Thirty-Sixth Year'

His father was a scandalous war hero - perhaps wanted to be like his father in regards to find worth and meaning in his life?

Byron was going to fight in the Greek war of Independence - Greece vs The Ottoman Empire. Led his own Battalion, but did not have the chance to fight as he passed away.

Then died a few months after writing this poem due to contracting a fever - considered a war hero in Greece

Context behind Shelley's: 'The Cold Earth Slept Below'

Arguable this could be about his dead ex-wife, Harriet, that was discovered in The Serpentine, London.

The date was possibly edited by his current wife, Mary Shelly.

Nature can be an extremely deadly and destructive force.

Context behind Shelley's: 'Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples'

Was grieving the loss of his daughter, Clara. Mary blamed him for her death because they moved whilst Clara was still very sick.

Was considered an unfit father (due to him being an Atheist) to his other children with his ex-spouse, Harriet.

Was also feeling down and discouraged due to his poetry and loss of friends (due to Harriet's death).

Was also suffering from illness at the time.

Context behind Shelley's: 'Ode to the West Wind'

Response to the Peterloo Massacre - A peaceful protest which resulted in the death of 18 people and the injury of 400 - 700 people.

The protestors wanted political reform. At that point, only the richest landowners could vote and large swathes of the country were not adequately represented in Westminster.

Written during a walk.

A call for political change/ revolution.

Poem is an extended metaphor - north wind represents change in England

Context behind Shelley's: 'The Question'

Writing about a dream that he had about a beautiful scenery

> idyllic landscape

> banks of a river

> lots of wildflowers

Living in Pisa, Italy during the time he wrote this.

In 1819, Shelley's son, William, passed away - the couple then had another son the same year, called Percy.

Has a cyclical structure - final line ends with a rhetorical question

Shelley's work did not receive huge commercial fame during his lifetime - only earned £40 for his poetry in total

Critical reviews were mostly unfavourable -a attacked for his scandals, atheism etc.

Context behind Keats': Ode to a Nightingale

Written in 1819

- The year where he fully devoted himself to poetry

- A very creative & prolific time in his life

- Also a time of conflict and pleasure

Significant financial struggles

- concerns for his brother over financial troubles

In 1818, Keats' brother had died of tuberculosis

- Keats also began to experience symptoms of tuberculosis

Poem is dominated by themes of death and immortality and on the finite nature of joy

> Nightingale was a symbol of love, art, music, and poetry - artistic inspiration/ imagination

> Tale of Philomel: Raped and mutilated - tongue cut off - she was turned into a Nightingale and had a beautiful singing voice - feminine imagery :)

Context behind Keats': Ode on Melancholy

> In Medieval Medicine, melancholy was a condition caused by an excess of black bile- one of the body's four humours, or fluids.

> Symptoms included: bad temper, motiveless anger, a dark, brooding disposition and unsociability.

> In the Renaissance, it became a fashionable, carefully cultivated sadness, with connotations of pensiveness and sensitivity; often linked with creativity

Keats enjoyed reading Robert Burton's, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy'. The book was first published in 1621, and it was an investigation of the causes and symptoms of melancholy including specific melancholies resulting from love and religion. Burton also proposed a range of cures that could be used to overcome melancholy, including exercise and diet - purging, blood-letting, and drugs & potions.

In Keats' poem, he argues that melancholy is inseparable from pleasure, as human life is essentially changeable and all things transient. We must live with melancholy and accept it.

Context behind Keats': Ode on a Grecian Urn

Written in May, 1819.

Addresses a Greek Urn - Urn's were used to store food, water, wine, cosmetics, or ashes of those who passed.

Urn's were often highly decorated - images of young girls, Gods chasing each other, two lovers about to kiss, a piper and a priest leading a procession (On the specific Urn that Keats is describing)

Keats made frequent visits to the British Museum where the Elgin Marbles now live - inspired him. They were apart of a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures removed from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

In the early 19th century, Greek sculptures represented formal perfection and ideal beauty.

Context behind Keats': Sonnet on the Sea

Written in April, 1817 on the Isle of Wright

Had travelled to escape London to make a grand poem, Endymion - also ended up writing this, Sonnet on the Sea. In which he included the poem in a letter to his friend.

Keats was 'haunted' by a passage in Shakespeare's 'King Lear' - 'Do you not hear the sea?' - Act 4, Scene 6 in which the Earl of Gloucester had been horrifically tortured after being betrayed by his younger son - wants to die by falling off the cliffs of Dover, but the Earl is saved by his older son in disguise.

The Sea in this poem is a great and mighty force that has been personified.