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Second Generation of English Romantics: Themes

• This generation viewed nature as powerful, dynamic, and sometimes destructive, unlike their predecessors.

Theme of Nature

• Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" presents nature as an agent of change and emphasizes destruction and renewal.
• Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" portrays nature as a vast and untamed force reflecting individual emotions.
• Keats' "To Autumn" captures nature's transient beauty and decay, celebrating its sensuous and melancholic aspects.

Theme of the Beautiful and the Sublime

• The sublime, as defined by Edmund Burke, is an overwhelming, sometimes terrifying beauty that inspires awe.
• Shelley's "Mont Blanc" portrays nature in this light, emphasizing its power and grandeur.
• Byron's "Manfred" engages with the sublime in the vast Alpine landscape, reflecting the protagonist's turmoil.
• Keats focuses on the aesthetic and sensual experience of beauty, as seen in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," exploring eternal beauty frozen in art.

Comparison of Second Generation Romantic Poets

• Byron's poetry contains irony and a Byronic hero who struggles against society's constraints.
• Shelley's poetry is idealistic and revolutionary, advocating for political and social change.
• Keats' poetry focuses on themes of beauty, mortality, and art, with an introspective and sensory approach.

Comparison of "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

• Both poems explore supernatural encounters and their consequences.
• Keats' poem depicts a knight bewitched and abandoned
• Coleridge's poem tells of a mariner cursed for killing an albatross.
• Both employ imagery and an eerie atmosphere to highlight the dangers of succumbing to mystical forces.

Comparison of "Ode to the West Wind" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

• Both poems address the passage of time and the roles of art and nature in contrasting ways.
• Shelley's poem is dynamic and revolutionary, portraying the wind as destroyer and preserver, and nature as renewal.
• Keats' poem contemplates the permanence of art versus the fleeting nature of human life, and the urn's images capture moments of beauty frozen in time.

"Ode to the West Wind" - Shelley

• The poem is passionate and revolutionary, exploring nature as a force of transformation via five cantos.
• Terza rima, a verse form associated with Dante's Divine Comedy, is used to lend urgency.

Themes in "Ode to the West Wind"

• The West Wind is depicted as both destroyer and preserver, symbolizing the cycle of death and rebirth.
• The wind symbolizes political and social transformation, reflecting Shelley's advocacy for radical change.
• Shelley identifies with the wind, longing for it to spread his ideas and inspire others.
• The poet yearns for personal renewal, comparing himself to nature undergoing constant cycles.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" - Keats

• The Poem meditates on art's permanence and ability to capture beauty beyond human experience, with the contrast between transient life and eternal art.

Themes in "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

• The urn's images are frozen in time, representing beauty that never fades.
• The figures on the urn are locked in anticipation, unlike real life with inevitable decay.
• "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" suggests that aesthetic beauty and deep truth are one and the same.
• While human life is fleeting, art endures across generations by preserving a moment forever.

"Manfred" - Byron

• The Poem is often considered part of the "Byronic hero" tradition, where the titular character seeks solace in nature and supernatural forces but finds no redemption.

Themes in "Manfred"

• Manfred is haunted by a deep sin (often incestuous love) and isolates himself in the Alps.
• The Alps serve as a sublime backdrop to Manfred's struggles, reflecting his inner turmoil and grandeur.
• Manfred defies supernatural beings and God, embodying the defiant spirit of the Byronic hero.
• Manfred offers no resolution with stoic acceptance of death without divine intervention.

Manfred - Byron

• Dramatic poem aligned with the sublime.
• Manfred seeks oblivion from spirits for forgetting the secrets of Astarte.
• Manfred is an outcast, auto-marginalized with a peculiar character hiding a secret.
• Nature and love addressed, the Moon envies earth wishing to find someone worthy of its constancy.

Byronic Hero

• A defining element of Romantic literature involving a mysterious, brooding, passionate, deeply flawed character possessing a dark past, intense guilt/suffering, or a rebellious spirit.

Beauty

• Romantic poets believed beauty transcended suffering and mortality.
• Keats: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."
• Saw beauty as eternal, Shelley found it idealistic and ethereal, and Byron viewed it as passionate, sensual, and dangerous.

Nature as a Reflection of Emotion

• Nature mirrors character's struggles.
• Byron's Manfred: Swiss mountains reflect isolation and torment.
• Shelley's Ode to the West Wind: wind is for spiritual renewal
• Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci: landscape mirrors despair.

Sublime

• Inspires awe and evokes terror where nature is powerful and indifferent to human suffering.

Overreacher

• A character who seeks transcendence but is ultimately doomed.
• Byron's Manfred, Shelley's Frankenstein, and Keats' Hyperion all embody this theme.

Commonalities Between "Ode to the West Wind" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

• Stylistically: both follow a formal, lyrical ode structure.
• Thematically: both deal with the passage of time.
• Shelley sees nature (wind) as powerful/changing.
• Keats sees art as eternal contrasting mortality.

Common Aspects of Byron, Shelley, and Keats

• Part of the Romantic movement.
• Valued emotion/imagination over reason.
• Liberal thinkers.
• Love for nature as a source of beauty.
• Tragic lives, with early deaths/struggles.
• Interest in the sublime experiences are overwhelming and awe-inspiring.
• Restless spirits, in exile/traveling.
• Controversial lifestyles for Byron and Shelley..
• Keats was introspective
• Poetry as a way to reach the eternal.
• Death as a recurring theme.

Theme of Beauty

• "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." (Keats)
• Romantic poets saw beauty in nature/art/love.
• Shelley connects beauty to inspiration/the divine
• They all believe beauty, in its many forms, provides meaning to existence.

Nature in Byron, Shelley, and Keats

• Byron: wild/dramatic, reflects human emotions
• Shelley: force of change/revolution
• Keats: Focuses on sensual beauty, eternal yet fading

Endymion and "To the Moon" – The Theme of Beauty

• The poem reflects idealized/eternal love expressing a longing for beauty.

Knight-at-arms

Is discovered, and is close to death in the third standza.

• Described as as having "a lily on thy brow".
• Another flower metaphor is used"a facing rose".
• Images convey life is not only drained away from the night also from nature as well.

The Lady

• Is met by the knight and the lady.
• There is something pearthy about her.
• described as "a fairys child" "wild eyes
• Knight wants to won her as his possession.

The knight

• Was given "roots of relish sweet, wild honey and manna-dew".
• Enachment will ultimately destroy him.

Deeper meaning

• Saw pale kings and princes too, death-pale were they.
• hor rid warning gaping wide.
• Meaning it ends with the knight, pale, and wandering.