Romantic Poetry ( 1 ) (1798-1832)
[The Lyrical Ballads collaborated by Wordsworth and ColeridgeThe death of Walter Scott]
I. Historical Background
Politically The most important
event is the French Revolution (1789), which at first gave British people great hope for a better future with rights and independence for all men but later brought them despair and nightmare.
I. Historical Background
“Declaration of Rights of Man” (1791-2) ---Thomas Pain
“Inquiry concerning Political Justice” (1793) ---William Godwin
“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”(1792) ---Mary Wollstonecraft
I. Historical Background
Ideologically
the principle of Ration was giving way to an individualized, free, liberal, imaginative attitude towards life; a tendency to turn or escape from the tumultuous and confusing Here and Now
Economically the great Industrial
Revolution: • continued fast
changes both in the country and in the cities; • many farmhands driven out of land into the
city;• women and children employed as cheap
labor;
I. Historical Background
• new machines set up, rendering many out of work;
• growing disparity between the rich and the poor;
• expansion abroad continued: (America), Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, the West Indies and other nations
II. Literature
Prose• familiar essays of journals and newspap
ers (Charles Lamb, Lee Hunt, de Quincey)
• literary criticism/reviews as authority (Charles Lamb, Lee Hunt, de Quincey)
• novelists: Jane Austen, the realist Walter Scott, the 1st historical novelist/ ro
mantic poet
Poetry the Age of (Romantic) Poetry; the voice of the agedeveloped from sentimental and gothic literature1. differences between 18th-century and 19thcentury; between Neoclassicism andRomanticism:• reason vs passion• reason vs imagination • commercial vs natural
II. Literature
• industrial vs pastoral
• present vs past
• society vs individual
• order and stability vs freedom
• decorative expression vs simple and spontaneous expression
II. Literature
2. New Poetic Features A. language: simple, everyday life
speech, common vocabulary and accent, dialect (Wordsworth, Blake);
B. form: Lyrics---sonnet, ode Narrative---ballad (instead of
mock epics, romance)
II. Literature
C. subject: Nature
the rural/pastoral
the past/historical
the alien/exotic, oriental
the supernatural/mysterious (dreams or
dream like)
II. Literature
the personal the common/low class the revolutionary/justice the patriotic
D. purpose: lyrical (emotional)
confessional visionary/prophetic
II. Literature
E. Principles /ideas: imagination
“the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, which originates in emotion recollected in tranquility”
Preface by Wordsworth
3. Schools of Romantic Poets:
A. Pre-romantic poets
Robert Burns: Scottish dialect, ballads
William Blake: mysterious, philosophical, visionary
Songs of Innocence Songs of Experience Marriage of Heaven and Hell
B. Lakers/Lake Poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, 2 Poet Laureate) radical youth; conservative old
age; long lifeWilliam Wordsworth: Nature, country, poor people, anti-industrialization Lyrical Ballads (Prelude) Nature & country poems
II. Literature
Samuel Coleridge:
mysterious/demonic, dreamy, oriental, visionary
The Rime of Ancient Mariner
“Kubla Khan”
C. Satanic school: rebellious, revolutionary,
romantic, short life George Gordon Byron: r
omantic, revolutionary, satiric, proud, angry,
“Byronic Hero”
Don Duan Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Manfred
III. Text Study
Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” ( p. 103)
Theme: Through describing a scene of joyful daffodils recollected in memory, the poet hopes to put illustrate his theory of poetic inspiration --- “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, which originates in emotion recollected in tranquility”
III. Text Study
Image: dancing daffodils
“fluttering”, “dancing”, “tossing”, “dance”,
“danced”, “dances” “sprightly”, “glee”, “gay”,
“jocund”, “pleasure”
III. Text Study
Metrical pattern:
a short lyric of 4 sestets (a quatrain-couplet)
of iambic tetrameter lines rhyming
ABABCC
III. Text Study
Structure: 1st stanza occasion 2-3rd stanza happy sensation
at the sight of the dancing flowers
4th stanza happy sensation experienced again
at the memory of the scene
Stanza Summary:
1. The speaker was wandering like a lonely
cloud when he encountered a field of dancing daffodils beside a lake.
2. Stretching endlessly along the shore the
flowers danced happily.
III. Text Study
3. The waves of the lake danced merrily, but the daffodils outdid them in glee, and the poet could only be happy in such a joyful company.
4. Since then, the memory of the happy scene would often come back to refill him with pleasure.
Questions for Next Week:
“The World Is Too Much with Us” p.116-7 1. What is the theme, i.e. the meaning, of t
he first line? 2. What romantic ideas does it advocate? 3. What type of sonnet form it is? 4. What romantic spirit does it represent? 5. Paraphrase the poem in your own words.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” p. 109-1101.What is the theme of the poem?2.What is the rhyme scheme?3.What romantic feature does the poem
reflect?4.Summarize each stanza in one or two
sentences.“The Tiger” p.1151. What is it about?