romantic poetry anthology UNFINISHED

blake poems in the selected anthology

Blake:

• songs of innocence: holy thursday

• songs of experience: holy thursday

• songs of experience: the sick rose

• songs of experience: the tyger

• songs of experience: london

byron poems in the selected anthology

• so we’ll go no more a roving

• on this day i complete my thirty-sixth year

• lines inscribed upon a cup formed from a skull

keats poems in the selected anthology

• ode to a nightingale

• ode on a grecian urn

• ode on melancholy

• sonnet on the sea

shelley poems in the selected anthology

• the cold earth slept below

• stanzas written in dejection, near naples

• ode to the west wind

• the question

wordsworth poems in the selected anthology

• lines written in early spring

• lines composed a few miles above tintern abbey

• ode: intimations of immortality

blake life context

• did not attend formal schooling, frequently escaping to the surrounding london countryside

• 1780 gordon (anti-catholic, anti government) riots caused exposure to violence influencing social-oppression inspired art

• critiques the monarchy and celebrates democracy, likely triggered by gordon riots and french revolution

• disregard for religion, considers church and state oppressive (he was a nonconformist christian)

• radical political views provoked fear of persecution

songs of experience: the sick rose, blake - form

• two sentences divided into two quatrains

• anapestic dimeter, rough meter

• particular occasional stressed words

songs of experience: the sick rose, blake - context

religious/social

• repression of female sexuality/identity and its disastrous effects

• worm = biblical serpent in the garden of eden; invisible force perpetuating anti-religious rhetoric

• blake’s advocation for free love; liberation of human desire from institution of social, religious, legal convention

• wife incapable of bearing children - reinforces precedent of enjoyment of intimacy rather than exclusive reproduction

literary - the garden of love

• ‘The garden of love’ ‘filled with graves’ ‘and priests in black gowns’ shows ironic religious corruption of free love

★ songs of experience: the tyger, blake - form

• six quatrains, AABB rhyme scheme

• cyclical structurre

• trochaic tetrameter with variation in stanza endings, disrupting harmonious universe

★ songs of experience: the tyger, blake - context

• french revolutionaries depicted as tigers in the reign of terror

• inconsistent triad of god - omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience

• if the tiger is a symbol of evil, blake’s poem is a reiteration of theodicy

literary:

• ‘better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n’ - milton, paradise lost

☆ songs of experience: london, blake - form

• four quatrains - rigid, orderly, monotonous

• ABAB rhyme scheme

• iambic tetrameter

☆ songs of experience: london, blake - context

• rosseau’s rhetoric imposed, evident in ‘mind-forg’d manacles’

• industrial rev of 1700s provoked child labour/slavery

• transitional global economic period commencing in GB due to rapid urbanisation w/o scientific knowledge

literary

• ‘a little black thing among the snow’

• ‘holy lamb of god’

• ‘dark satanic mills’

byron life context

• famed poet w/ notoriety for whoring, adultery, incest, sodomy

• exiled from england’s ‘hypocrisy and can’t

• described as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’

• considered the french rev ‘the greatest and best event in the history of the world’; political consciousness shaped by idealised napoleon perception

so we’ll go no more a roving, byron - form

• syntactic parallelism; symbiotic nature + emotion

• cyclical structure

• three quatrains, iambic pentameter, ABAB rhyme scheme

• often set to music

so we’ll go no more a roving, byron - context

• ‘the wild rover’ - 17th century folk song w/ associations with drinking

• byron is acutely aware of his demise, unlike other poets seeking transcendence through spirituality

• ‘sword and sheath’ phallic reference to his hedonistic lifestyle

literary

• ‘man, being reasonable, must get drunk; // the best of life is but intoxication’ - don juan

☆ on this day i complete my thirty-sixth year, byron - form

• one sentence stanza, reflection across central colon

• polyptoton - repetition of words derived from same root; change of experience, not principle

• ABAB rhyme scheme w/ half rhymes

☆ on this day i complete my thirty-sixth year, byron - context

• philhellenism - love for greece; romantic and intellectual movement

• written in missolonghi, shortly before death

• follows rejection by significantly younger lover, heightened passion of love and desire

• self-indulgent thinking barred in the name of greek revolution

• stoicism vs epicureanism

  • stoicism - feelings=destructive

  • epicureanism = pleasure is the highest good

literry

• ‘though he loved but one, // and that loved one, alas, could ne’er be his’ - childe harold’s pilgrimage

keats life context

• Used his poetry to grapple with erotic passion

• Desperately in love, frustrated with fame, struggling financially, failing health

• Suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage, sailed to and died in Rome in solitude

★ ode to a nightingale, keats - form

• Quatrain + petrarchan sestet

• Stanzas commencing with apostrophe

• Shift from sonnet 14 -> 10 lines

• ABABCDECDE

• Iambic pentameter primarily; eighth line in iambic trimeter

★ ode to a nightingale, keats - context

• Did not find a moral guide or philosophical doctrine in nature - a social product!

• The nightingale’s song described as one of the most beautiful sounds in nature

• The river Lethe - river of forgetfulness (greek mythology)

  • Dead souls drank from waters to erase past lives’ memories, necessary for reincarnation/peaceful afterlife

• Dryad (greek mythology)

  • Nature spirit of an oak tree, beautiful young women

• Hippocrene (greek mythology) - sacred fountain

  • Sacred source of creative energy

• Horatian odes

  • Lyrical poetry that is contemplative, personal, structured

  • Prioritises individual emotion and introspection

ode on a grecian urn, keats - form

• Iambic pentameter

• Two-part rhyme scheme

  • ABABCDE + variable but distinct last 3 lines

ode on a grecian urn, keats - context

• Ekphrasis - literary practice of vividly describing a work of art/scene/object

• ‘What imagination seizes as beauty must be truth’ - aesthetic religion

• Aesthetic beauty and ultimate truth are connected and interchangeable

  • Aesthetic - artist’s goal = capture a deep, spiritual/emotional truth

  • Spiritual - beauty as manifestation of higher consciousness

  • Eternal - fleeting beauty of nature vs. permanence of urn transcending natural decay

• Negative capability - the capacity to remain in uncertainty without fact or reason

ode on melancholy, keats - form

• Iambic pentameter

• ABABCDECDE x2, ABABCDEDCE x1

• First four stanza lines - imperative, followed by six-line sestet

  • Two part thematic structure

ode on melancholy, keats - context

• Opium addiction to manage physical and mental pain of terminal illness

• Trained as a surgeon and apothecary

• Proserpine - failure to resist temptation

universal literary context - lyrical ballads preface

• ‘The real language of men’

• ‘Interest mankind permanently’

• ‘Make the incidents of common life interesting’

• ‘Speak a plainer and more and more emphatic language’

• ‘My habits of meditation have so formed my feelings’

• ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’

• ‘All these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight’

universal historical context

The Industrial Revolution (1750s-1850s); The French Revolution and its ultimate failure, symbolising a failure of romantic ideals (1789-1815); the Enlightenment/The Age of Reason (Pre and Post Newtonian worldview).

Literary/Philosophical

Publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 - the beginning of English Romantic Verse; Rejection of formalistic Augustan poetry with its strict meter and latinate language.

European Romanticism: Rousseau's Heloise 1760 and  Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) celebrate youth and passion over reason; use of Greek forms of the Ode rather than Latin; Romanticism as a movement as defined by David Wright in the introduction will be useful here.

wordsworth life context

• Provincial poet born outside of wealth and power

• Orphaned - ‘let nature be your teacher’

• Lived in lake district 

• Repelled by competitive pressure of Cambridge, idling through university

• French revolution’s reign of terror

• Rousseau’s inversion of the hierarchy; children > parents

lines composed a few miles above tintern abbey, wordsworth - form

• Blank verse

• Unrhymed iambic pentameter

• Euphony vs cacophony

  • Euphony = assonance, liquid alliteration

  • Cacophony = consonance, fricatives, plosives, dentals

lines composed a few miles above tintern abbey, wordsworth - context

• Industrial revolution!

  • Vast population growth; quadrupled

  • Urbanisation of cities

  • Doubling economic growth 

  • Shift from agriculture to machinery

• Expressionism 

  • Expression of the inner world of emotion rather than external reality

• Negative capability

☆ ode: intimations of immortality, wordsworth - form

• Ceremonious lyric poem

• Irregular rhyme scheme

  • stanza/line length varied to mimic style of philosophist Pindar

☆ ode: intimations of immortality, wordsworth - context

• Orphaned as a child

shelley life context

• ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’

• Defence of poetry

• Philosophical anarchist; hated tyranny, institutional religion

  • Caused a sense of isolation from ‘normal’ society

• Fascinated by science, unlike others who feared it

• Work characterised by intense positive and negative emotions and their tensions

• Atheist, believer in non-violent political change

  • Critic of the British monarchy and industrialisation

the cold earth slept below, shelley - form

• Heptastitch (seven lines)

• Tight and symmetrical structure

• Each stanza transitions from external description -> image of decay, motion, death

• ABCCAAB - pattern of circularity

• Iambic tetrameter with variation

• Line indentation - tiered, descending visual shape, insinuating sinking, burial

the cold earth slept below, shelley - context

• Wife died by suicide by drowning

• Heavy gothic influence on his work - dark, melancholic, despairing tone

•  Elegiac poetry - serious reflection; typically a lament for the dead

• Moon as a symbol of femininity….

stanzas written in dejection, near naples, shelley - form

• ABABBCBCC

• Iambic tetrameter, last line in hexameter to slow pace and add finality

stanzas written in dejection, near naples, shelley - context

• Written in a period of deep depression following his daughter’s death

  • Speaker incapable of appreciating beauty; clouded by grief

• Later died by drowning in a storm

• Marital strife and estrangement following his daughter’s death

• ‘Cup runneth over’ - abundance of blessings from god in generous provision

★ the question, shelley - form

• Five octaves of iambic pentameter

• ABABABCC - alternate rhymes + concluding couplet

  • Measured and harmonic

★ the question, shelley - context

• Written while he lived in Italy, reflecting on desire for beauty and solace

• Entire family DEAD

• Fleeting and transient beauty of nature reminiscent of mortality and human life