Written by: Kelley Stewart McConathy

• Use creative imagination

• Focus on nature

• Importance of myth and symbolism

• Focus on feelings and intuition

• Freedom and spontaneity

• Simple language

• Personal experience, democracy and liberty

• Fascination with past

What Is Romanticism?What Is Romanticism?

• Changing political and social conditions

• Reaction against Industrial Revolution

• Revolt against Enlightenment and literary styles

• Working long hours in dangerous factories

• Development of modern cities

TrendsTrends

TrendsTrends

• Interest in chaos and nature

• Changing religious views

• Rebellion against authority

• Crime, madness, suicide

Neoclassic Trends

• Stressed reason and judgment

• Valued society

• Followed authority

• Maintained the aristocracy

• Interested in science and technology

Revolt Against NeoclassicismRevolt Against Neoclassicism

Romantic Trends• Stressed

imagination and emotion

• Valued individuals

• Strove for freedom

• Represented common people

• Interested in supernatural

• John Constable: British landscape artist

• George Walker: English painter

• Joseph Mallord William Turner: English watercolorist

Art ReconceivedArt Reconceived

Constable

Turner

• Théodore Géricault: French painter

• Eugène Delacroix: French painter

• William Blake: poet, painter, engraver, illustrator

Art Plumbs Emotional DepthsArt Plumbs Emotional Depths

• Conveys freedom and individuality

• New ways of producing musical instruments

• Emotionally charged music popular

Musical InnovationsMusical Innovations

• Ludwig van Beethoven

• Frederic Chopin

• Carl Maria von Weber

Music GreatsMusic Greats

Beethoven

Chopin

Von Weber

• Philosophers valued:

– Art

– The self

– Creativity

– Imagination

– Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant: examples of such philosophers

Philosophers’ ViewsPhilosophers’ Views

Rousseau

Philosophers’ Views WidenPhilosophers’ Views Widen

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von SchellingVon Goethe

Von Schelling

• William Blake

• William Wordsworth

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• George Gordon, Lord Byron

• John Keats

• Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poets of the Romantic EraPoets of the Romantic Era

Blake Coleridge

KeatsShelley

Wordsworth

Byron

Thoughts of British Romantic PoetsThoughts of British Romantic Poets

“…I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” William Blake

“ Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” William Wordsworth

“Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Blake

Coleridge

Thoughts of British Romantic PoetsThoughts of British Romantic Poets

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.” George Gordon, Lord Byron

“What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.” John Keats

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Visions of ghostly and angelic figures

• Possessed mystic “gift of vision”

• Born in London November 28, 1757

• Educated at home by mother

• Enrolled in drawing school at age ten

William BlakeWilliam Blake1757-1827

Blake’s Education & MarriageBlake’s Education & Marriage

• Apprenticed to engraver at 14

• Completed apprenticeship at 21

• Journeyman copy engraver for London publishers

• Admitted to the Royal Academy of Art’s Schools of Design

• Married Catherine Boucher

Blake VideoBlake Video

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Blake UnappreciatedBlake Unappreciated

• Lived in poverty

• Moved to Felpham, Sussex

• Accused of assault and sedition

• Final projects included illustrations and/or watercolors for others’ writings

Blake’s DeathBlake’s Death

• Suffered from unknown sickness

• Experienced stomach pain and chills

• Died on August 12th, 1827

• Buried in unmarked grave

Blake’s WorksBlake’s Works

• Songs of Innocence

• Songs of Experience

• Poetical Sketches

• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The Lamb” and “The Tyger”“The Lamb” and “The Tyger”

• Most popular poem: “The Tyger”

– “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

– “What immortal hand or eye,/Dare frame thy fearful symmetry”

• Companion poem to “The Lamb”

– “Little Lamb, who made thee?/Dost thou know who made thee?”

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William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth1770-1850

• Born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England

• Mother died 1778

• Attended St. John’s College, Cambridge

• Had affair with Annette Vallon

• “Vaudracour and Julia” for lover and daughter

Losses and TriumphsLosses and Triumphs

• Married Mary Hutchinson

• Five children

• Lived with sister Dorothy

• Brother John died at sea

• Lost friendship with Coleridge

• Two children died

• Granted honorary Doctor of Civil Law degrees

Wordsworth in DespairWordsworth in Despair

• Named Poet Laureate

• Death of third child, Dora

• Stopped writing poetry

• Abandoned Romantic beliefs

• Died in 1850 at Rydal Mount

• Buried at St. Oswald’s Church, Grasmere

Wordsworth’s WorksWordsworth’s Works

• Lyrical Ballads “Tintern Abbey”

– Wordsworth used “real language of men”

– Definition of poetry: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility”

• An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches

An Evening Walk VideoAn Evening Walk Video

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Works and ThemesWorks and Themes

• Recurring themes in Wordsworth’s poetry

• The Prelude

• Poems in Two Volumes

• The Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey

Tintern AbbeyTintern Abbey

Five years have passed; five summers, with the lengthOf five long winters! and again I hearThese waters, rolling from their mountainspringsWith a soft inland murmur. Once againDo I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,Which on a wild secluded scene impressThoughts of more deep seclusion; and connectThe landscape with the quiet of the sky.

• Born October 21, 1772

• Father was a parish vicar

• Sent to London boarding school

• Not allowed to return home for holidays

• Attended Jesus College at University of Cambridge

• Won Browne Gold Medal for ode

Samuel ColeridgeSamuel Coleridge1772-1834

Coleridge’s ErrorsColeridge’s Errors

• Left college to join 15th Light Dragoons

• Reenrolled in college

• Left without degree

• Joined poet Robert Southey to build a Pantisocracy

• Married Sarah Fricker

• Unitarian minister

Opium, Travel & TranscendentalismOpium, Travel & Transcendentalism

• Friends with William Wordsworth

• Started taking opium

• Granted annuity of 150 pounds to write

• Traveled to Germany with Wordsworth

• In Germany: Coleridge studied German and Transcendentalism

ColeridgeColeridge

• Opium addiction

• Lost friendship with Wordsworth

• Lived with a apothecary for care

• Died of heart failure

Coleridge’s WorksColeridge’s Works

• First publication: Poems on Various Subjects

• Published Lyrical Ballads

• Most famous works

– “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

– “Kubla Khan”

– Biographia Literaria

The Rime of the Ancient MarinerThe Rime of the Ancient MarinerDay after day, day after day,We stuck nor breath nor motion: As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, every where,Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!That ever this should be!Yea, slimy things did crawl with legsUpon the slimy sea.

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• Parents separated before his birth

• Born in London

• Named George Gordon Noel Byron

• Born with club foot

• Moved to Aberdeen, Scotland

• Inherited family title at ten

George Gordon, Lord ByronGeorge Gordon, Lord Byron1788-1824

Byron’s Early YearsByron’s Early Years

• Attended Aberdeen Grammar School, Harrow, and Trinity College, Cambridge

• Kept a pet bear at Trinity College

• Fell in love with choirboy John Edleston

• John Edleston died

• Byron wrote a series of elegies

Byron’s ExploitsByron’s Exploits

• Defended Roman Catholicism

• Bragged about sex with women in Italy

• Rumored incestuous relationship with sister

• Traveled on customary Grand Tour

• Made speech at House of Lords

Byron’s ExploitsByron’s Exploits

• Married Anne Isabella Milbanke

• Divorced Anne

• Left England forever

• Befriended Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Created child in affair

• Seduced Italian Countess Guiccioli

• Gave 4,000 pounds to refit Greek fleet

Byron’s DeathByron’s Death

• Fell ill; remedy of bleeding caused fever

• Greek national hero

• Heart buried under tree

• Westminster Abbey refused body

• Monument in Westminster Abbey 145 years post-mortem

Byron’s WorksByron’s Works

• “Epigraph to a Dog”

• Byron’s masterpiece: Don Juan

• “She Walks in Beauty”

• “Darkness”

• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

She Walks in BeautyShe Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that’s best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes:Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

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• Born in London

• Four siblings

• Keats’ father died

• Mother remarried two months later

• Children sent to live with grandmother

• Mother died of tuberculosis

John KeatsJohn Keats1795-1821

Keats’ Medical CareerKeats’ Medical Career

• Apprenticed to apothecary/surgeon

• Student at Guy’s Hospital

• Wrote first poem

• Became junior house surgeon and dresser

• Qualified as apothecary

• Quit medicine

Keats’ VideoKeats’ Video

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Writing, Relationships & IllnessWriting, Relationships & Illness

• Published Poems

• Friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Brother George left for America

• Brother Tom died of consumption

• Fell in love with Fanny Brawne

• Symptoms of tuberculosis

• Traveled to warmer climate to recover

Keats’ DeathKeats’ Death

• Died in Rome at 25

• Buried in Protestant Cemetery in Rome

• Tombstone reads: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

• Fanny Brawne mourning for years

• Poetic career lasted 3.5 years

Keats’ WorksKeats’ Works

• Endymion

• Hyperion

• “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

• “Ode to the Nightingale”

• “Ode to Autumn”

• “The Eve of St. Agnes”

Ode to the NightingaleOde to the Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness painsMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk;Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,But being too happy in thine happiness—That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,In some melodious plotOf beechen green, and shadows numberless,Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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• Born near Horsham in Sussex, England

• Tutored at home

• Attended Sion House Academy of Brentford

• Educated at Eton College and University College at Oxford

• First publication: Zastrozzi

Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley1792-1822

Shelley VideoShelley Video

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Shelley’s ExploitsShelley’s Exploits

• Published The Necessity of Atheism

• Eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook

• Daughter named Ianthe

• Often left wife and child

• Met Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

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Shelley’s Complicated LifeShelley’s Complicated Life

• Left pregnant wife for 16-year-old Mary

• Traveled to Switzerland

• Claire pregnant with Byron’s child

• Mary Shelley began working on Frankenstein

• Shelley took Claire and daughter to Venice

Losses and ViewsLosses and Views

• Son and daughter died

• Wrote Adonais upon Keats’ death

• Wrote essay on radical political views

• Essay on vegetarianism

• Believed in rights of all living things

Shelley’s DeathShelley’s Death

• Drowned during storm at 29

• Possibly assassinated

• Body washed ashore

• Wife kept Shelley’s heart

• Shelley cremated on beach

• Ashes buried in Rome

Shelley’s Works Shelley’s Works

• “Ozymandias”

• “Ode to the West Wind”

• “The Masque of Anarchy”

• “To a Skylark”

• Prometheus Unbound

“Ozymandias” Video“Ozymandias” Video

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Ode to the West WindOde to the West Wind

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blow.

• Beyond poetry

• Topics still popular today

• Lasting impact

In ConclusionIn Conclusion