SUCCESSFUL BUT DOCTOR JOHNSON DECLARED MACPHERSON'S POETRY A FRAUD

• interest in past civilizations purer, more spontaneous

• description of wild and exotic natural settings which include supernatural elements

• grief, tearfulness, nostalgia, contemplation of mortality emotional responses to death

1 - description of the countryside

2 - description of the village, the graveyard and the forefathers

3 - more personal, Gray describes his death and funeral

they relate mainly to form: structure, poetic diction, linguistic style, vocabulary and metaphors specific to poetry, solemn tone

they relate to its content: realistic setting, rural landscape at twilight, vivid description of the graveyard; powerful lyricism, he expresses private emotions, introspective dimension; sympathy for the simple life of the poor and the oppressed

he was self-taught, received formal schooling whenever possible

1787 he meets the editor of the Scots Musical Museum and this marks the beginning of his enthusiasm for recollecting old folk songs of Scotland

• complete move away from poetic diction of Augustan Age towards a natural correspondence between language and content*

• deep humanity and simplicity of feeling

Auld Lang Syne traditional old folk song, today sung during New Year's Eve at midnight

born poor and died poor engraver he used to engrave his works. Enthusiastic supporter of French and American Revolution

• great mysticism against rationalism, materialism and atheism

• unorthodox religiousness

• POWERFUL SYMBOLISM

• POWER OF IMAGINATION and the POET AS A PROPHET

• concern with political and social problems he supported abolition of slavery

• DIALECTICAL OPPOSITION OF THE CONTRARIES good and evil, purity and corruption, innocence and experience

• Vala or the Four Zoas
• Milton
• Jerusalem

• The French Revolution, a Prophesy
• America, a Prophesy
• The visions of the Daughters of Albion
• Europe
• The song of Los

lambs, flowers, happy children

tormented nature, contaminated by civilization, pessimistic view of life

most famous part of the book Proverbs of Hell

born in the Lake District, Grand Tour France and the Alps. Sympathizer of French Revolution but when it turned to tyranny he suffered a disillusionment and became increasingly conservative. Back in England with sister Dorothy poet and diarist. 1797 meets Coleridge PREFACE LYRICAL BALLADS MANIFESTO OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM. Appointed Poet Laureate

ORDINARY SUBJECTS

• poetry must be written in ordinary language

• poetry = spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings which originates from emotions recollected in tranquillity

• poet = a man speaking to men who has a more lively sensibility, enthusiasm and tenderness, a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul moral teacher, teacher of feelings

childhood = original state of harmony with nature

the countryside, rural landscape

a source of feelings and sensations: man and nature inseparable and part of the natural world

natural world has a spirit and a life of its own present in both animate and inanimate objects (pantheism)

• The SolitaryReaper;
• I wandered Lonely as a cloud;
• Composed upon Westminster Bridge;
• Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey;
• My Heart Leaps up

in the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads, the poet's unrequited love for the deceased Lucy, idealised figure

The Prelude = autobiographical and philosophical poem in 14 books in blank verse

The Excursion = philosophical and dramatic poem in 9 monologues spoken by pastoral characters, 1st part of longer poem The Recluse which he never completed

a poem in 11 sections in which he expresses his ideas about man and nature

At Cambridge he never graduated but met Southney (Pantisocracy = government of equals, he wanted in America, Southney Wales) Project never realised.
He met Wordsworth and they toured Germany. Then settled in the Lake District.
He had marital problems, opium dependency, lack of confidence in his poetic powers.He quarelled with Wordsworth in 1810 but they made peace. He regained confidence in himself and became conservative and Anglican. Publication of Christabel and other poems 1816 and Biographia Literaria 1817 his major prose works, made him famous

Primary imagination = common to all men, power by which we perceive the world through senses

through it man becaomes aware that he is an organic part of the life of the universe, trascends the data of experience and recreates the world

fancy = inferior to imagination; it only gives the poet the power to aggregate and associate material already provided by following mechanica and logical principles but it cannot build new worlds

• poet as a prophet

• supernatural elements

not a moral guide or a source of consolation but manifestation of the presence of the ideal in the real

• interest in exotic places or the Middle Age

• use of archaic language: alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeia

• The Eolian Harp;
• Frost at Midnight;
• The Nightingale;
• Dejection: an Ode dedicated to Sarah Hutchinson

Part1 description of wonderful palace and the ground surrounding passing from peaceful images of creative genius to images of destructive power: woman wailing for her demon-lover and voices prophesing the war

Part2 the poet recalls the memory of a maid playing a dulcimer. Inspired by her his genius would be like that of Apollo or Osiris

incomplete Gothic ballad about a pure young girl who falls under the spell of Geraldine, a sorceress

Biographia Literaria;
Lectures on Shakespeare

story of a mariner who narrates to a wedding-guest the events which followed his terrible deed: the shooting of an albatros. The ship is becalmed and approached by another ship with 2 spectres, Death and Life-in.Death, who roll dice for the ship's crew but Life-in.Death wins only the mariner. The members of the crew are punished by the devils because they justified the mariner's crime and they die of thirst. The mariner, instead, lives on with the albatros hung around his neck. When he recognizes the beauty of all the creatures in the world and prays for his sins, the albatros falls from his neck; his offence against the power of nature is forgiven and eventually he is able to return home

• description of the wedding feast;
• position of the sun as the ship changes hemisphere;
• changes of weather at sea;
• hints at the mariner's native country;
• the boat and the pilot who saves the mariner.
  

• appearance of the old mariner who seems to exert a hypnotic power upon people he meets;
• the albatross, always accompanied by strange phenomena;
• presence of unearthly creatures;
• description of unnatural events

features of the traditional ballad, but also variation in form and content. Each stanza formed by 4 lines but in some stanzas there are 5. Typical ballad rhyme scheme not very regular

• literary output of a dream induced by opium in which the mariner is Coleridge, the albatros one of his lovers and the mariner's sufferings the result of his addiction and moral collapse

• allegory of life: crew= mankind; albatross = pact of love among God's creatures; ship= microcosm in which the evil of one person has repercussions on others

• parable of the Romantic artist who breaks the bounds of convention in his search for beauty and self-knowledge, passes through bad times, is saved by the power of his imagination

• parable of modern man: from original sin through punishment, repentance and possible final redemption

father libertine died and he stayed with his doting but also violent mother. After his great-uncle's death he got the title Lord. Graduated at Cambridge despite wild conduct. At 22 Grand Tour of Portugal, Spain, Albania, Turkey and Greece lasted 2 years. Back in England notorietyfor his good looks and love affairs. In 1815 he married Anna Isabella Milbanke unhappy marriage. She eventually demanded a separation when she discovered the affair with his half-sister Augusta. SCANDAL. 1816 Byron left England and never came back. He went to Switzerland where he stayed with the Shelleys. He travelled to Venice, affair with Countess Guiccioli and followed her to Ravenna, where he took part in the Carbonari conspiracy against Austrians. Lived sometime in Pisa and Genova. 1823 went to Greece to support the Greek liberaton from Turkey but he caught marsh fever and died in 1824.

• titanism;
• satanism depiction of criminal hero or fallen angel;
• individualism struggle for self-affirmation;
• exoticism and orientalism;
• medievalism and Gothicism;
• liberty and nationalism (Carbonari);
• nature in its sublime aspects;
• interest in past ages and fallen empires;
• melancholic mood.

• Manfred 1817 and Cain 1821 (drama);
• The Giaour ;
• The bride of Abydos;
• The Corsair;
• Lara;
• The Siege of Corinth

long autobiographical poem describes the travels and reflections of his protagonist CHilde Harold,a man disillusioned with a life of pleasure who decides to leave for foreign countries. 4 cantos. First 2 inspired by his Grand Tour.Childe Harold praises glorious past and famous monuments and landscapes. 3rd canto written during his exile in Switzerland; 4t canto written in Italy and contains description of Italian cities, Venice and Rome. Best expression of Byron's Romantic style

• rebellious spirit;
• outcast or outlaw;
• moody, passionate nature;
• superior emotional and intellectual capacities;
• extremely sensitive but arrogant;
• mysterious and charismatic;
• haunted by a guilty memory of some sexual crime;
• a victim of a will beyond control

• rationalism;
• social satire + cynism and skepticism;
• mock-heroic attitude;
• self-dramatization;
• witticism;
• skillful use of heroic couplets and ottava rima

• English Bards and Scotch Reviewers juvenile satire to condemn contemporary authors and critics after his works were criticised;
  
  
  

• Beppo, a Venetion Sotry 1818 a mock-heroic poem about a Venetian lady who after her husband's presumed death takes on a cicisbeo (amante sposato) known as the Count. When her husband Beppo eventually reappears, she returns to him and he and the Count become "friends". Ottava rima a stanza of 8 lines rhyming abababcc, used for longer poems and heroic themes;
  
  
  

• The Vision of Judgement a satire reply to Southney who had attacked him previously;

he borrowed from Italian poets Virgil and Homer, picaresque novels of Smollett, Fielding and Sterne and from the satire of Swift, Pope and Dryden. But unlinke Pope it is not based on a vision of positive moral values. Mock-heroic style. Extensive use of colloquial language

Expelled from Oxford because atheist. He entered the circle of William Goodwin and fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Goodwin. They eloped to Europe because scandal: he was already married. 1816 Villa Diodati Geneva. They left for Italy and never came back to England. He drowned and was cremated in Viareggio at the presence of Byron. Protestant cemetery Rome

• idealism and platonism separation of the world of the senses and the super-sensory world. Only reality is the spirit
• political radicalism refused social conventions and political oppression
• belief in nature permeated by eternal spiritual force
• belief in freedom and love
  
  

• Queen Mab 1813 a long visionary poem in which he attacks institutional religions and codified morality and condemns war, capitalism and blind obedience;
  
  
  

• Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude 1818 autobiographical allegory in blank verse describing the wanderings of an unnamed hero, his serch for ideal love and his lonely death due to his neglect of social existence;
  
  
  

• The Revolt of Islam 1818 a romance-epic in 12 cantos story and love of Laon and CYnthia, brother and sister, who carry a pieceful revolution against the sultan of TUrkey in COnstantinople. Revolutionary regime overthrown by military action from other states in Europe;
  
  
  

-The Masque of Anarchy 1819 allegorical poem inspired by the Peterloo massacre. Misgovernment in England under George III

• Epipsychidion 1821 a soul upon a soul, inspired by Emilia Viviani, neoplatonic conception of love;
  
  
  

• Adonais 1821 elegiac pastoral poem written after Keat's death and dedicated to him. He believed that the poet had died due to savage criticism and negative reviews of his poetry. Sheley meditates on death and its consequences, forgetfulness, spiritual rebirth, dream and reality;
  
  
  

• The Triumph of life 1822 a poem in terza rima left incomplete and published posthumously

• prophet or Titan who challenges the Universe
• a social reformer to help mankind to build a world of love, freedom and beauty
• unacknowledged legislator of the world

The necessity of Atheism 1811

• The Cenci 1819;
• Prometheus Unbound 1819;
• Hellas 1821;

4 - the poet says that if he were a dead leaf, a swift cloud or a wave, he could experience the West Wind'd power and his strength. As a child he had the power and strength to go faster than the wind but now he feels that he has been weakened by the problems and burdens of life. The poet begs the wind to lift him as a leaf, wave, cloud

5 - the poet offers himself to the west wind to be used as a "lyre". He asks the wind to breathe new life into his poetic art. He hopes that the wind will carry his words over the entire universe and be the trumpet of his prophecy. Although there is despair now, hope and optimism are close.

POEM ABOUT THE POWERS OF NATURE. DEALS WITH THE CYCLE OF BIRTH, DEATH AND REBIRTH. POEM ABOUT THE FUNCTION OF THE POET IN A TIME OF SOCIAL REPRESSION. THE POET DENOUNCES THE SUFFERING OF THE MASSES AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE TO INSPIRE AN IDEAL REGENERATION.

father died, mother died of tuberculosis. Apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary. Never politically active. 1818 he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne, love reciprocated but his financial situaton and failing health made marriage impossible. Endymion savagely attacked by conservative critics. His health worsened in 1820, 1st hemorrhage of the lungs. Travel to a warmer climate. Italy, Naples, Rome in Piazza di Spagna where he died in 1821 buried like SHelley in Protestant Cemetery Rome. Tommbstone no name engraved but "Here lies one whose name was writ in water"

physical beauty = temporary and decaying;

spiritual beauty = eternal and immortal

• poetry as a refuge consolation of the soul from the decay of life;
  
  
  

• beauty;
  
  
  

• imagination which function is to find beauty in things
  
  
  

• nature source of poetry, beauty and joy;
  
  
  

• admiration of classical antiquity;
  
  
  

• admiration of Middle Ages;
  
  
  

• sensuous language and ornate style great musicality;
  
  
  

• negative capability state of open-mindedness which allows poets to experience uncertainties and mysteries, accepting them as they are, because it is not possible to understand or resolve everything

inspired by a vase that he saw in the Brtish Museum in London and by the aesthetic theories of Benjamin Haydon. 5 stanzas consisting of 10 lines of 10 syllables

5 - the poet returns from his journey of imagination to real life. The figures on the urn are now seen as marble decorations and the urn is inanimate, impassive and indifferent. It still drives the poet to think about eternity. He believes that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain , telling the future generations its enigmatc lesson "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty"

story of a knight who meets a beautiful lady by chance. Enthralled by her sensuality, he spends the day bewitched by her enchanting company. He falls asleep and dreams of the lady's other victims. When he awakes, he is alone on a cold hillside where no bird sings. Various interpretations:

• theme of the femme fatale whose love is destructive

  
  

• his frustrated love for Fanny Brawne that he could not fully enjoy

  
  

• relationship between the ideal world represented by the lady and the real world represented by the knight. The risks and destruction that derive from abandoning the real world