Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

ROMANTIC POETRY - Coggle Diagram

- - - - features
        
        emphasis on mortality, death
        
        descrpiton of death's physical manifestations
        
        fear and horror as a response to death
        
        darkness, tombstones, death's odours and ghosts
        
        grief, tearfulness, nostalgia, contemplation of mortality emotional responses to death
    - - Elegy written in a Country Churchyard
        
        3 parts
        
        1 - description of the countryside
        
        2 - description of the village, the graveyard and the forefathers
        
        3 - more personal, Gray describes his death and funeral
      - TRANSITIONAL FIGURE in the 18th century poetry
        
        Neoclassical elements
        
        they relate mainly to form: structure, poetic diction, linguistic style, vocabulary and metaphors specific to poetry, solemn tone
        
        Pre-Romantic elements
        
        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
      - ISPIRA FOSCOLO I Sepolcri
  - - - Poems presented as translation of ancient Gaelic poet named OSSIAN
        
        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
      - presence of maidens and warriors
      - appeal to a hero of sensibility
- - - - interest in ordinary Scotsmen
      - complete move away from poetic diction of Augustan Age towards a natural correspondence between language and content*
      - sensitivity to nature
      - deep humanity and simplicity of feeling
      - human experience of love
    - - O' My Luve is like a red, red rose
        
        To a Mouse he writes directly to the little animal commenting on his guilt and sorrow for the destruction he had caused to his nest
        
        Auld Lang Syne traditional old folk song, today sung during New Year's Eve at midnight
- - - - 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
    - - The Book of Urizen
        
        The Book of Ahania
        
        THe Book of Los
        
        Vala or the Four Zoas
        
        Milton
        
        Jerusalem
      - prophetic books revolt against authority and tyranny
        
        masterpieces
        
        SONGS OF INNOCENCE
        
        SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
        
        20-25 poems different in form and content though united by a common inspiration and specific design. IN CONTRAST
        
        1st set of poems state of innocence, represents externally man in the Garden of Eden before the fall and internally child untouched by the evils of society
        
        INNOCENCE
        
        1 more item...
        
        2nd set of poems: state of experience, externally applies to the condition of man after the fall from Heaven and internally and psychologically adulthood with its selfishness, lack of spontaneity and social injustice
        
        EXPERIENCE
        
        1 more item...
        
        THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL
        
        prophetic book, a mixture of aphorisms, anecdotes, proverbs and visions, written in prose excpet for the opening and The Song of Liberty
        
        describes the poet's visit to Hell, Satan which represent liberty and energy, while Heaven is the place of Mosaic Law and regulated perceptions
        
        repressive nature of conventional morality and institutionalized religion
        
        1 more item...
        
        The French Revolution, a Prophesy
        
        America, a Prophesy
        
        The visions of the Daughters of Albion
        
        Europe
        
        The song of Los
  - - - THEORY OF POETRY
        
        poetry must be accessible to all men
        
        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
      - nature that can be
        
        the countryside, rural landscape
        
        a source of feelings and sensations: man and nature inseparable and part of the natural world
        
        an active life-force
        
        natural world has a spirit and a life of its own present in both animate and inanimate objects (pantheism)
    - - miscellaneous in the form of sonnets and odes grouped into conversational, narrative, pastoral, lyrical or elegiac
        
        The SolitaryReaper;
        
        I wandered Lonely as a cloud;
        
        Composed upon Westminster Bridge;
        
        Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey;
        
        My Heart Leaps up
      - Lucy's poems
        
        in the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads, the poet's unrequited love for the deceased Lucy, idealised figure
      - Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood
        
        a poem in 11 sections in which he expresses his ideas about man and nature
      - Longer Poems
        
        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
  - - - role of imagination and its superiority to fancy
        
        Primary imagination = common to all men, power by which we perceive the world through senses
        
        Secondary imagination divine power which dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to create
        
        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
      - nature
        
        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
    - - Conversation Poems
        
        The Eolian Harp;
        
        Frost at Midnight;
        
        The Nightingale;
        
        Dejection: an Ode dedicated to Sarah Hutchinson
        
        Kubla Khan 1797
        
        drug-inspired, exotic and incomplete poem. ,
        
        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
        
        Christabel 1797-1800
        
        incomplete Gothic ballad about a pure young girl who falls under the spell of Geraldine, a sorceress
      - THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 1789
        
        plot
        
        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
        
        themes
        
        juxtapostion of real and unreal events
        
        SUPERNATURAL AND MAGIC ELEMENTS
        
        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
        
        REAL EVENTS
        
        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.
        
        form
        
        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
        
        interpretation
        
        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
      - PROSE WORKS
        
        Biographia Literaria;
        Lectures on Shakespeare
- - - - ROMANTIC
        
        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.
        
        Romantic works
        
        Manfred 1817 and Cain 1821 (drama);
        
        The Giaour ;
        
        The bride of Abydos;
        
        The Corsair;
        
        Lara;
        
        The Siege of Corinth
        
        CHILD HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 1812
        
        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
        
        BYRONIC HERO
        
        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
      - SATIRICAL
        
        rationalism;
        
        social satire + cynism and skepticism;
        
        mock-heroic attitude;
        
        self-dramatization;
        
        witticism;
        
        skillful use of heroic couplets and ottava rima
        
        satirical works
        
        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;
        
        DON JUAN 1819-24
        
        anti-Romantic masterpiece. 16 cantos. Relationships of the libertine Juan of the legend. Through his adventures as castaway, lover, slave, soldier and ornament in English society. Byron discusses social, political,poetic and metaphysical topics. Attack on false respectability and social codes and huorous commentary on love, sexuality, war, religion, injustices against the weakest people and restraints on personal identity
        
        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
  - - - 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
    - - Defense of Poetry 1821
        poetry is:
        
        something divine
        
        record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds
        
        makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful
        
        turns all things to loveliness exalts the beauty
        
        effect political change
        
        poet is:
        
        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
    - - 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
    - - Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 1816;
        
        Ozymandias 1818;
        
        Ode to the West Wind 1819;
        
        To a Skylark 1820;
        
        The Cloud 1820;
        
        Ode to Liberty 1820*;
        
        To the Moon 1824;
        
        ODE TO THE WEST WIND 1819
        
        conceived during a stormy and windy day in a wood near Florence. 5 stanzas or cantos and each stanza is a combination of terza rima and sonnet form. First 3 stanzas contain a description and manifestation of the wind upon the earth, air and ocean:
        
        1 - wind = destroyer and preserver, powerful force dirves the leaves to a distant place and carries the seeds
        
        2 - the wind shakes away the clouds which become rain and hail clouds. Wildeness of the sky
        
        3 - wind blows over sleepy Mediterranean sea and over the Atlantic Ocean, vegetation below the surface trmbles in fear of the wind
        
        1 more item...
        
        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.
    - - The Cenci 1819;
        
        Prometheus Unbound 1819;
        
        Hellas 1821;
  - - - 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
    - - physical beauty = temporary and decaying;
        
        spiritual beauty = eternal and immortal
    - - Endymion 1818 long poem in which he narrates the Greek myth of Endymion, the shepherd loved by the moon goddess Selene (Sailor Moon) who ventures in the underworld in search of his immortal love and eventually finds her.
        
        Hyperion 1818 and The Fall of Hyperion fall of the old Greek gods and the rise of new gods, the Olympians led by Apollo. Transformation of Apollo into the god of poetry. Poem unfinished.
        
        The Eve of St Agnes narrative poem set in the Middle Ages in which Keats took up and reworked the superstition that on St Agnes's Eve a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites.
        
        Lamia 1819 narrative poem in which he tells the story of a witch transformed by Hermes from a snake into a beautiful woman and then into a snake again. Lilith.
        
        GREAT ODES Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, Ode to Indolence, To Autumn they express contrast between the variety of human experience and the transience of human life
        
        ODE TO A GRECIAN URN
        
        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
        
        1 - poet addresses to the urn as if it were a living creature. It is outside of time and beautiful that communicates better than words. THe poet starts to describe one side in which a group of men pursue a group of women and wonders what their story could be;
        
        2 - the poet imagines what music is being played in the scene. Describes a young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. He tells the youth that, although he can never kiss his lover because she is frozen in time, he should not grieve because her beauty will never fade and his love will last forever
        
        3 - poet focuses on positive consequences of immutability
        
        4 - poet describes a procession with a priest leading a cow to some ritual sacrifice. He wonders where the people in the procession are going and where they come from. He imagines their deserted town and its streets which will remain forever silent, as those who have left the town, frozen on the urn will never return
        
        1 more item...
        
        LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
        
        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