Romantic Poetry: The Big Six PDF

Romantic poetry: The Big Six [The "mind-forg'd manacles I hear"] - 'London' -- William Blake - Organization by the city - There is no sublime nature there - Laws restricting our freedom - J.J. Rousseau (French Enlightenment) - "Man is born free, but everywhere he i...

Romantic poetry: The Big Six [The "mind-forg'd manacles I hear"] - 'London' -- William Blake - Organization by the city - There is no sublime nature there - Laws restricting our freedom - J.J. Rousseau (French Enlightenment) - "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains" - A child is more pure, innocent and less chained (like an adult) child = representation of freedom - Idea noble savage: belief that savages (non-western) are somehow more noble, more free, less constraint - William Wordsworth + Coleridge: inspired and intrigued by the French Revolution -\> went to France - Edmund Burke - Pamphlet: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) - Conservative: maybe things are going too fast, we do need reform but we need some preservation -- democracy is hard to maintain, can turn into tyranny - This book started the pamphlet war - A Philosohical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) - Made the sublime into a philosophical concept - Productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling an experience beyond reason; it inspires terror, wonder, and awe - Thomas Paine - Rational figure - 'Common Sense' (1776) rational argument why US should become independent, first person to suggest this - 'Rights of Man' (1791) reflection on the French revolution (reply on 'Reflections on the Revolution in France') - Idea of democracy: they're trying it out in France but it's failing the people have the right to overthrow the government if they don't act in favor of the people - Mary Wollstonecraft - 'A Vindication of the Rights of Men' (1790) \-- (reply on 'Reflections on the Revolution in France') we are not sovereign, we are not free - 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' (1790) adding a dimension for women, women are also rational creatures (not just emotional - William Godwin (husband Mary Wollstonecraft) - The father of anarchism, as a philosophical idea: if we organize our society according to rational ideas, we will eventually not need a government true democracy - 'An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice' (1793) minimal government interference - (reply on 'Reflections on the Revolution in France') [Anna Laetitia Barbauld] - Spirit of revolution, very interested in the French Revolution, very involved with reform - 'The Rights of Woman' (1792) -- direct response to Wollstonecraft (W. named her one of the few female intellectuals of the time she wasn't happy about it) - Addressing a - Lyrical poem - Traditional form: 4 lines per stanza - Language: heavily standardized, typical poetic diction, classical form, inversion (classical style) - Typical romantic would be: voice of the people, common language, not the classic idea of beauty - Burst of language (shouting) - Irony: she says women shouldn't strive for equality but that they should turn things around - She says that they maybe already have equal rights we shouldn't distance ourselves from each other (love), no revolution - Once you learn to love each other, you shouldn't try to 'conquer' - In nature you will learn that separate rights will disappear in mutual love (between all human beings) - Very ambiguous poem: both conservative and romantic [The Lake Poets: Wordsworth and Coleridge] [William Wordsworth] - Poet philosopher - Designated poet of the country (by queen Victoria) - Travelled to France (French Revolution) because of the Terror forced to go back and leave his wife and child -\> couldn't return because of the Napoleonic Wars - Moved to the Lake District with Coleridge became the Lake Poets - 'Lyrical Ballads' - Write poetry in the voice of the people - "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" - 'Lines Written in Early Spring' (1798) - Lyrical poem - 1^st^ person speaker is reflecting on personal experience - Quatrains - Highly stylized way but in the voice of the people you can read the lines as if they were spoken - He is listening to songbirds (a natural song) -- a songbird is a natural poet - It speaks to the human souls, it connects him to nature - Reflection on nature - 'What man has made of man' mind-forg'd manacles OR technology is very different from his experience with nature, why isn't everything like this? This thought makes him sad, he can't experience this happiness (of the birds, the nature) -- every person is marked by misery - 'The World Is Too Much With Us' (1807) - Sonnet - We remove ourselves from the world we no longer recognize our connection to nature -- we try to control it, we even destroy nature - We are no longer controlled by nature, we are controlled by the mind-forg'd manacles - Exclamation (not seen in classical literature) - Volta: 9: starts lamenting - He doesn't want to be disconnected from nature - He'd rather be a forgotten nature God -\> pre-rational religion, before we started to remove ourselves from nature - Pagan = savage - 'Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey' (1798) - Ruin abbey (there aren't a lot in GB) - Thinking about an experience walking in nature 5 years ago - Nature with a capital N connection with the world - Thinking back about the poet he once was - Rhyme scheme thrown out of the window enjambments - The nature wants to find the experience from 5 years ago remembrance of lost time, bring back the experiences he once had - The beauty is still there after 5 years, he tries to re-experience his connection with nature - Recollects his emotions in tranquility - Deeper than rational the feeling of unremembered pleasure - Sublime: something he cannot put into words - A world that you cannot put into words, rationalize that would limit it - We no longer separate ourselves with the world, we are one - In this moment there is life and food for future years the experience is nourishing - 'My dear, dear friend': his sister, who went on the walks with him - 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from recollections of Early Childhood' (1807) - The stanzas end with a question - Childhood is the closest thing we have to the divine (freedom) - Same tale as 'Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey' (1798) - Natural imagery - Where has the time gone? The experiences are lost - The first experience in nature is unique you cannot get it back - Recollection of early childhood innocent, young, fresh, unbound, uncivilized - 'Shepherd boy': a child in nature, almost prophetic - 2 questions at the end of the 4^th^ stanza: why have the experiences gone? - Why can the child see something that he cannot? Why can I no longer paint what once I was/saw? - Here the poem originally ended, but later writes an answer himself - When we're born we somehow move away from the ideal world (Socrates) OR pre-existence of the soul: religious meaning: something that exists before and after us, the soul emerges in the divine -\> existence of the soul, the soul as something different from the mind - As a child it's the closest we can ever be to these things - Shades of the prison-house (67): the mind-forg'd manacles -\> we are prisoners - Small exterior, but divine soul - The child is a prophet - Stanza 9: not talking to the child anymore, talking to Joy even though we cannot bring back those experiences we once had, maybe there is somethind in nature still that lingers and yet remembers that what is fugitive something divine he can see in a leaf of grass - Positive ending: it is normal, natural that those experiences flee from us - Fleeting hint of immortality, something in us connects us to the divine [Samuel Taylor Coleridge] - Poet philosopher - Exotic poet - "Lyrical Ballads" - Willing suspension of disbelief - Got addicted at a very young age used medication: opium + alcohol - That's what makes his poems dreamlike - Saw himself as a prophet-poet - Two types of poems: ecstatic poetry or dark poetry - "Dejection: An Ode" (1802) - Dark Romanticism - Natural imagery - Aeolian lute: a wind harp nature is playing the song nature's poet - Depression, a darkness that's too much to rationalize - Addressing a lady - \(30) he is gazing at something, he knows he should feel something but he doesn't he no longer enjoys nature even = the darkest of the dark - \(39) I cannot write like a poet anymore poetic paralysis - \(44) green light in the sky - (45-46) There is nothing outside that I recognize in myself (answer to Wordsworth) poetic paralysis - "Kubla Khan, Or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" (1796,1816) - Ecstatic Romanticism - A vision that came to him in a fragment - In an opium dream the poem came to him he received it from the divine - The man from Porlock = most known unknown figure in English literature - He forgot big parts of the perfect poem -\> it fled from him still remembers scattered lines - Xanadu = exotic place - Kubla Khan = historical figure, grandson of Genghis Khan - Willing suspense of disbelief - Sacred river river of inspiration, it cannot be controlled - Violent, energetic, something that cannot be stopped - \(21) fragments: his information comes in big fragments, it just comes to him genius: a poet is the mediator of what comes to him - Inspiration is violent, energetic (you cannot measure it) - Tone-switch: a first person speaker instead of Kubla Khan - More direct appeal to poetry: 'I once saw a damsel play...' - Could I bring back the vision, something I once had (Wordsworth) - Ending: His poetry is so divine, people should be warned - (50-55) drunk the milk of paradise: poetic genius poet should capture those visions - "Biographia Literaria" (1817) - Book about his literary life - Vision what literature and poetry should be - First part: on Wordsworth and poetic genius - To carry on the feelings of childhood (sense of wonder) into the powers of manhood - Difference between talent and genius - Second part: on 'Lyrical Ballads' and the objects originally proposed - Attempt to put visions into words - Willing suspension of disbelief = poetic faith - Experience instead of explanation - Third part: on fancy and imagination - Primary imagination (all of us have this): human perception, how we experience the world = interpretation of the world, reconstruction of the world\ Eternal act of creation = God, our soul is eternal and God-given - Secondary imagination (genius): echo of the primary, attempt to make sense of the world as it eternally is closest we can be to the eternal - Fancy is something we all have the ability to make a beautiful phrase [Lord Byron ] - Second generation emulate 1^st^ generation - Celebrity during his lifetime - Member of the House of Lords poet isn't his job, had enough money - Very curious romantic romantic lifestyle but not romantic writing style poetry is belated neo-classicism - 1812: famous speech in the House of Lords about the Luddites (people who were against industrialization -\> destroyed machines because people were losing their jobs to machines) - "So, We'll Go No More a Roving" (1818) - Based on a popular song - 1-4: Typical romantic imagery: nature + nostalgia - 5-9: I have aged - "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812-1818) - Elegy - Neo-classicist style - Invocation of the muses - Indications that Childe Harold = Lord Byron - Child: Ada Loveless first computer programmer