The Romantics John Constable Sketch for Hadleigh Castle c

The Romantics John Constable Sketch for Hadleigh Castle c.1828-9

Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism
Alexander Pope was first and foremost a social poet whose language and subject matter were directed to the reading public. The subject of his poetry is human nature in everyday living. He has much to say about politics, education, economics, public taste, and the arts. Through skillful use of satire, he presents a moral code for civilized society. A spokesman for the "Age of Reason" and Neoclassical poetry, Pope dominated the literary scene in the first half of the eighteenth century. His work reflects the chief beliefs of the neoclassical school of thought: 1. importance of flawless expression and clear and concise presentation of ideas; preference for the perfect balance of heroic couplets 2. intellectual experience as the subject of poetry 3. irrelevance of emotion 4. imagination as a source of power, not a course of creativity As a man and as a poet, Pope commanded hatred and admiration. Of himself, he once said, "I must be proud to see/Men not afraid of God, afraid of me."

"The Relief of the Light Brigade" by Richard Caton Woodville (1897)
“Age of revolutions"--including, of course, the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions--an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age which witnessed the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution. A revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the very way we perceive the world. "The Relief of the Light Brigade" by Richard Caton Woodville (1897) ROMANTICISM appeared in conflict with the Enlightenment. You could go as far as to say that Romanticism reflected a crisis in Enlightenment thought itself, a crisis which shook the comfortable 18th century philosophy out of his intellectual single-mindedness. The Romantics were conscious of their unique destiny. In fact, it was self-consciousness which appears as one of the keys elements of Romanticism itself.

Age of Crisis Jacques Louis David, Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, 1800
The Romantic era can be considered as indicative of an age of crisis. Even before 1789, it was believed that the ancient regime seemed ready to collapse. Once the French Revolution entered its radical phase in August 1792, the fear of political disaster also spread. King killing, the Reign of Terror, and the Napoleonic armies all signaled chaos -- a chaos which would dominate European political and cultural life for the next quarter of a century.

The imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind. Discover yourself -- express yourself, cried the Romantic artist. Play your own music, write your own drama, paint your own personal vision, live, love and suffer in your own way. William Blake, Creating Adam 1805 This contrasted distinctly with the traditional arguments for the supremacy of reason. The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate "shaping" or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions. Imagination is the primary faculty for creating all art.

The reconciliation of opposites is a central ideal for the Romantics
The reconciliation of opposites is a central ideal for the Romantics. Finally, imagination is inextricably bound up with the other two major concepts (nature and symbolism and myth), for it is presumed to be the faculty which enables us to "read" nature as a system of symbols. The concept of the beautiful soul in an ugly body, as characterized in Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics
"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics. As suggested above, it was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language. Romantic nature poetry is essentially a poetry of meditation. While particular perspectives with regard to nature varied considerably--nature as a healing power, nature as a source of subject and image, nature as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language--the prevailing views accorded nature the status of an organically unified whole. It was viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of "mechanical" laws, for Romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine (e.g., the deistic image of a clock) with the analogue of an "organic" image, a living tree or mankind itself.

Symbolism and Myth J.W. Waterhouse 1888
Symbolism and myth were given great prominence in the Romantic conception of art. In the Romantic view, symbols were the human aesthetic correlatives of nature's emblematic language. They were valued too because they could simultaneously suggest many things, and were thus thought superior to the one-to-one communications of allegory. Partly, it may have been the desire to express the "inexpressible"--the infinite--through the available resources of language that led to symbol at one level and myth (as symbolic narrative) at another.

Emotion, Lyric Poetry, and the Self
Joseph Turner – Steamer in Snowstorm (1842) Wordsworth's definition of all good poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" marks a turning point in literary history. By locating the ultimate source of poetry in the individual artist, the tradition, stretching back to the ancients, of valuing art primarily for its ability to imitate human life (that is, for its mimetic qualities) was reversed.

Wordsworth's definition of all good poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" marks a turning point in literary history. William Turner. Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - The Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis In Romantic theory, art was valuable not so much as a mirror of the external world, but as a source of illumination of the world within.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1817
The "poetic speaker" became less a persona and more the direct person of the poet Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, In Romantic theory, art was valuable not so much as a mirror of the external world, but as a source of illumination of the world within. Among other things, this led to a prominence for first-person lyric poetry never accorded it in any previous period. The interior journey and the development of the self recurred everywhere as subject material for the Romantic artist. The artist-as-hero is a specifically Romantic type. Contrasts With Neoclassicism

Individualism: The Romantic Hero
Lord Byron “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” The hero-artist has already been mentioned; there were also heaven-storming types from Prometheus to Captain Ahab, outcasts from Cain to the Ancient Mariner and even Hester Prynne. "The Satanic and Byronic Hero," another topic for this period, considers a cast of characters whose titanic ambition and outcast state made them important to the Romantic Age's thinking about individualism, revolution, the relationship of the author—the author of genius especially—to society, and the relationship of poetical power to political power. The fallen archangel Satan, as depicted in Milton's Paradise Lost; Napoleon Bonaparte, self-anointed Emperor of the French, Europe's "greatest man" or perhaps, as Coleridge insisted, "the greatest proficient in human destruction that has ever lived"; Lord Byron, or at least Lord Byron in the disguised form in which he presented himself in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Manfred, and his Orientalist romances; these figures were consistently grouped together in the public imagination of the Romantic Age. Romantics generally rejected absolute systems, whether of philosophy or religion, in favor of the idea that each person (and humankind collectively) must create the system by which to live. Prompted by radical changes in their systems of political authority and by their experience of a long, drawn-out war in which many of the victories felt like pyrrhic ones, British people during this period felt compelled to rethink the nature of heroism. One way that they pursued this project was to ponder the powers of fascination exerted by these figures whose self-assertion and love of power could appear both demonic and heroic, and who managed both to incite beholders' hatred and horror and to prompt their intense identifications. In the representations surveyed by this topic the ground is laid, as well, for the satanic strain of nineteenth-century literature and so for some of literary history's most compelling protagonists, from Mary Shelley's creature in Frankenstein to Emily Brontë's Heathcliff, to Herman Melville's Captain Ahab.

The Everyday… John Constable The Hay-Wain, 1821
The attitude of many of the Romantics to the everyday, social world around them was complex. Earlier, the 18th-century cult of the noble savage had promoted similar ideals, but now artists often turned for their symbols to domestic rather than exotic sources--to folk legends and older, "unsophisticated" art forms, such as the ballad, to contemporary country folk who used "the language of common men," not an artificial "poetic diction," and to children (for the first time presented as individuals, and often idealized as sources of greater wisdom than adults).

…and the Exotic Chassériau, Othello and Desdemona in Venice 1850
Often, both the everyday and the exotic appeared together in paradoxical combinations. The concept of the beautiful soul in an ugly body, as characterized in Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is another variant of the paradoxical combination.

Spread of the Romantic Spirit
Casper David Friedrich Finally, it should be noted that the revolutionary energy underlying the Romantic Movement affected not just literature, but all of the arts. Its reach was also geographically significant, spreading as it did eastward to Russia, and westward to America.

7 Romantic Characteristics
Beauty of the untamed, natural world Attractiveness of the pastoral life Freedom Imagination Emotion Lack of authority Rights of the individual Beauty of the untamed, natural world Attractiveness of the pastoral life Freedom – it’s a king-killing time, toppling regimes, so Freedom is huge Imagination - logic is no longer important, it’s the Promethean spark Emotion - Rules! Lack of authority - Rights of the individual You’ll see these themes in paintings, poetry, all art forms

The Bard by John Martin (1817) 1
The Bard by John Martin (1817) 1. beauty of the untamed, natural world attractiveness of the pastoral life freedom imagination emotion lack of authority rights of the individual - Find an example and justification for each in the painting.

The Bard by John Martin (1817) 1
The Bard by John Martin (1817) 1. beauty of the untamed, natural world - beauty in the rocks and the clouds 2. attractiveness of the pastoral life - bard lives off of the land 3. freedom - the bard is free to go wherever he wants, he is not confined by a path like the soldiers 4. imagination - the bard has a harp and is a poet, standing for vision and imagination 5. emotion - consider the stance of the bard 6. lack of authority - the bard answers to no one, the horses near the water are rearing up against their rider’s authority 7. rights of the individual - the bard is an individual The Bard by John Martin (1817) 1. beauty of the untamed, natural world - beauty in the rocks and the clouds 2. attractiveness of the pastoral life - bard lives off of the land 3. freedom - the bard is free to go wherever he wants, he is not confined by a path like the soldiers; Bard closer to God 4. imagination - the bard has a harp and is a poet, standing for vision and imagination 5. emotion - consider the stance of the bard 6. lack of authority - the bard answers to no one, the horses near the water are rearing up against their rider’s authority 7. rights of the individual - the bard is an individual

Abbey Under the Oak Tree by Caspar David Friedrich (1808 – 1810) the beauty of the untamed, natural world; the attractiveness of the pastoral life; freedom; imagination; emotion; lack of authority; rights of the individual Friedrich said, "The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Otherwise, his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead."[52] Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing witness to the presence of God are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes. Though death finds symbolic expression in boats that move away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, it is referenced more directly in paintings like The Abbey in the Oakwood (1808–10), in which monks carry a coffin past an open grave, toward a cross, and through the portal of a church in ruins. Ideas that start showing in Romaticsim: Gothic, Nature has followed man/man has killed nature,

Robert Burns Pioneer of Romantic movement; he’s at the very beginning. Scottish writer, Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), was an accomplished and very well known Scottish poet whose works went well beyond the borders of Scotland. As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sung at New Year’s Eve. The poem denotes the narrator of the poem is ploughing his field when he cuts through a mouse nest. The poet shows regret and apologises to the mouse before he goes on a tangent which reveals the deeper meaning of the poem. The connotation is that even when you mean no harm and have pure intentions, you can destroy somebody else's well laid plans. Life is unpredictable, and while preparing for the unpredictable future we are not enjoying the present moment - which the mouse seems to be able to do. The narrator reminisces on "prospects drear," i.e. bad events that have happened in the past which in some ways prevent him from moving on. Furthermore, some say that he is very fearful of the future and that these two reasons do not allow him to enjoy the present. He is also hinting that we "humans" aren't very empathic or sympathetic towards animals like this mouse, but both species prepare for the future, hoping for nothing to affect their smooth lives. He asks, so what if the mouse steals our corn? It still wants to survive; this is the same for humans, so why are we so apart? Another theory of the meaning of this poem is that the farmer turning over the nest of the mouse symbolizes the English (the farmer) oppressing the Scottish (the mouse). Beauty of the untamed, natural world – talking to a mouse Attractiveness of the pastoral life – he has a plow. Freedom – Imagination - he imagines plenty for this mousie Emotion - he’s sorrowful Lack of authority – Rights of the individual – not much here, but it was written

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's mother died when he was eight--this experience shapes much of his later work.. While he was at grammar school, Wordsworth's father died leaving him and his four siblings orphans. Wordsworth studied at St. John's College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities. While touring Europe, Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution. This experience as well as a subsequent period living in France, brought about Wordsworth's interest and sympathy for the life, troubles and speech of the "common man". While living in France, Wordsworth conceived a daughter, Caroline, out of wedlock; he left France, however, before she was born. Later that year, he married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend, and they had five children together. Equally important in the poetic life of Wordsworth was his 1795 meeting with the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads in While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet's views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for "common speech" within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric. Wordsworth's most famous work, The Prelude (1850), is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English romanticism. The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry. Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life, the poem was published posthumously. 1. FOOTNOTES It is a Beauteous Evening 1 addressed to the poet’s daughter, Caroline; 2 Abraham, the bible’s first patriarch, is strongly associated with fatherhood; the expression Abraham's bosom has long been been used to denote heaven; 3 the inner-most chamber in the Jewish temple In the sestet, the speaker turns to the young girl walking with him, and observes that unlike him, she is not touched by “solemn thought” (details also appearing in the Immortality Ode). But he declares that this fact does not make her “less divine”—childhood is inherently at one with nature, worshipping in the unconscious, inner temple of pure unity with the present moment and surroundings. 2. FOOTNOTES The World is too Much With Us Brought up in an outdated religion. (2) Meadow. (3) Greek sea god capable of taking many shapes. (4) Another sea god, often depicted as trumpeting on a shell. He saw in Nature an emblem of god. Here he contrasts Nature with the world of materialism and "making it." Because we are insensitive to the richness of Nature, we may be forfeiting our souls. To us there is nothing wonderful or mysterious about the natural world, but ancients who were pagans created a colorful mythology out of their awe of Nature. 3. FOOTNOTES Composed Upon Westminister Bridge

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
1. Briefly give an interpretation of the sonnet. 2. Give two examples of hyperbole. Explain how these are effective in the context of the poem. 3. "A sight so touching in its majesty" is an example of paradox or oxymoron. Explain why this example might be interpreted as the poem's most important image. 4. What effect on the reader does the personification of London have in line 14? 5. What is the attitude of the speaker at the close of the poem? 6. The sonnet form was not much practiced in England between Milton in the mid-seventeenth century and Wordsworth in the early nineteenth century. Which form of the sonnet has he chosen, and how does he employ the octave and sestet to convey his theme? 7. How do the first three lines keep the reader in suspense as to the subject of the poem? 8. Explain how the line beginning "This City" conveys at once a description of what is observed, and the observer's mood. 9. How is the contrast between the momentary hushed stillness of the city and its usual bustling activity implied, even though not actually stated? 10. For general discussion: how does line 8 create a sense of shimmering beauty? 1. Briefly give an interpretation of the sonnet. 2. Give two examples of hyperbole. Explain how these are effective in the context of the poem. 3. "A sight so touching in its majesty" is an example of paradox or oxymoron. Explain why this example might be interpreted as the poem's most important image. 4. What effect on the reader does the personification of London have in line 14? 5. What is the attitude of the speaker at the close of the poem? 6. The sonnet form was not much practiced in England between Milton in the mid-seventeenth century and Wordsworth in the early nineteenth century. Which form of the sonnet has he chosen, and how does he employ the octave and sestet to convey his theme? 7. How do the first three lines keep the reader in suspense as to the subject of the poem? 8. Explain how the line beginning "This City" conveys at once a description of what is observed, and the observer's mood. 9. How is the contrast between the momentary hushed stillness of the city and its usual bustling activity implied, even though not actually stated? 10. For general discussion: how does line 8 create a sense of shimmering beauty?

Hyperbole Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802

Paradox Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802 The impossible unity of two contradictory things: the industrial city and the organic beauty of nature. This paradox is introduced through the image of dress, which the rhymes of the octave highlight: the city is fair (beautiful) because it wears ‘like a garment’ the natural beauty of the morning; but wearing the beauty of the morning in fact means that the city is bare (naked): what it wears is just ‘the smokeless air’. The paradox is carried over and developed further in the sestet. The connection with the dress metaphor is established through the image of the city being steeped in the light of the sun and then the paradox is extended to the strange union of being dead (or asleep) and being alive. The city is now more beautiful and more alive than nature itself, but this is only so because it is steeped in the light of the sun and is thus deep asleep. The rhyming words steep – deep – asleep highlight these connections. As opposed to the city, which is ‘lying still’, the natural parts of the landscape, the sunlight, the ‘valley, rock, or hill’ as well as the river are now active, they dominate over the sleeping city, as is emphasized by the rhyming words hill – at their will – lying still. The city, represented in the last line by the metaphor of the heart, is thus alive because it is dead, because it is inactive and is dominated by its natural environment.

Personification Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802 Wordsworth personifies the city along with the earth and the sun

Attitude of speaker at close?
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802 The passionate picture that the poem paints is a memory that calms and placates.

Sonnet Form Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. (VOLTA) Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802 This poem is written in Petrarchan sonnet form. This scheme divides the poem into two- the first eight lines (octave) and the next six (sestet). Between these two is a break called a volta which emphasises the traditional change in mood or subject between the octave and sestet. In the first eight, he describes early morning London in detail, and then goes on in the final six to compare the city in that moment to natural wonders. The rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA CDCDCD, as is fairly common for a Petrarchan sonnet.("Majesty" in the third line of this poem is changed to sound like "by" in the second line, by the poet himself in order to fulfill the ABBAABBA, rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet.)

Suspense Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. (VOLTA) Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802

Description and Mood Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. (VOLTA) Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802

How is contrast between stillness and activity implied?
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. (VOLTA) Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802

Shimmering beauty? Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. (VOLTA) Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! - William Wordsworth, 1802

William Blake As a child, Blake viewed the world in the light of what Wordsworth, in his Ode: Intimations of Immortality, would later call a “visionary gleam.” When he was about nine, he told his parents he had seen “a tree filled with angels” on one of his walks; he later reported a similar vision of “angelic figures walking” in a field among workers as they gathered in the hay (Gilchrist 1: 7). Unlike the child in Wordsworth’s poem, however, Blake never outgrew these visions. He was past fifty when he described seeing the rising sun as “an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty” (Erdman 566). Blake’s artistic ability also became evident while he was still a child. Blake was among the literati of London’s intellectual circle though he was often labeled an eccentric or worse, insane or demented. His works did not gain much acclaim or commercial success until long after his death. Although he had several patrons over the course of his life and produced voluminous works, he often lived in abject poverty. Though it is hard to classify Blake’s body of work in one genre, he heavily influenced the Romantic poets with recurring themes of good and evil, heaven and hell, knowledge and innocence, and external reality versus inner. Going against common conventions of the time, Blake believed in sexual and racial equality and justice for all, rejected the Old Testament’s teachings in favour of the New, and abhorred oppression in all its forms. He focused his creative efforts beyond the five senses, for, If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite As an artist Blake admired and studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo, who would become important influences to the fantastic and at times apocalyptic illustrations he created for his own writings and others’. He developed mythic creatures inspired by Greek and Roman mythology. While Blake lived the majority of his life in London, he exerted a profound impact on future poets, artists, writers, and musicians the world over. ANALYSIS OF TYGER AND LAMB: The poem is a child’s song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and analogy. The child’s question is both naive and profound. The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy one—child’s play—this also contributes to an underlying sense of ironic knowingness or artifice in the poem. The child’s answer, however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings. The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the Bible’s depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This poem, like many of the Songs of Innocence, accepts what Blake saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christian belief. But it does not provide a completely adequate doctrine, because it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil in the world. The pendant (or companion) poem to this one, found in the Songs of Experience, is “The Tyger”; taken together, the two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the terrible and inscrutable. These poems complement each other to produce a fuller account than either offers independently. They offer a good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere outside the perspectives of innocence and experience he projects. The contrast with "The Lamb" is obvious. ("Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?" The answer is God, who became incarnate as Jesus the Lamb.) "The Tyger" asks, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" And the answer is, "Yes, God made the Tyger too.” One of the central themes in his major works is that of the Creator as a blacksmith. This is both God the Creator and Blake himself. Blake identified God's creative process with the work of an artist. And it is art that brings creation to its fulfillment -- by showing the world as it is, by sharpening perception, by giving form to ideas. "Why is there bloodshed and pain and horror?" If you're like me, you've heard various answers that are obviously not true. "The Tyger", which actually finishes without an answer, is (on this level) about your own experience of not getting a completely satisfactory answer to this essential question of faith. "The Tyger" is about having your reason overwhelmed at once by the beauty and the horror of the natural world. "When the stars threw down their spears / And watered heaven with their tears" is the most difficult section of "The Tyger". For Blake, the stars represent cold reason and objective science. (They are weaker than the Sun of inspiration or the moon of love. Their mechanical procession has reminded others, including the author of "Lucifer in Starlight", of "the army of unalterable law"; in this case the law of science.) But there is something about seeing a Tyger that you can't learn from a zoology class. The sense of awe and fear defy reason. And Blake's contemporary "rationalists" who had hoped for a tame, gentle world guided by kindness and understanding must face the reality of the Tyger. Other people will tell you the Tyger represents evil. When I hear the word, I think of (among other things) a blathering alcoholic adult bully ridiculing and beating a small child. This should not happen, and makes no sense, but it happens all the time, and when it does, "the stars throw down their spears / and water heaven with their tears." Given that different people use the word "evil" in different ways, you'll need to decide for yourself whether the Tyger encompasses more. It seems to me that it is not "evil" for a real tiger to eat a lamb, but is part-and-parcel of our world. Yet it still inspires a certain horror and a sense of awe, that we are in the presence of a transcendent mystery at the very heart of creation -- and a certain terrible beauty. If Blake's lyric has brought this to our attention, it has been successful.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834
Youngest of the ten children of John Coleridge, a minister, and Ann Bowden Coleridge. He probably took laudanum for the illness, thus beginning his lifelong opium addiction. He went to Cambridge in 1791, poor in spite of some scholarships, and rapidly worked himself into debt with opium, alcohol, and women. To escape debt he joined the army. His family was irate when they finally found out. With his marriage, Col tried very hard to become responsible. He scraped together a fairly respectable income of £120 per year, through tutoring and gifts from his admirers. His Poems, published in 1797, was well-received and it looked like he was on the fast track to fame. He already had one son, David Hartley Coleridge, born September 1796, followed by Berkeley Coleridge in May In 1798, the famous Lyrical Ballads was published, the collaboration between Coleridge and William Wordsworth which pretty much created the Romantic movement. Col's paranoia and mood swings, brought on by the continual opium use, were getting worse, and he was hardly capable of sustained work. His friendship with William was all but nonexistent. He was still haunted by his failure to break free from opium, however, and to this end he moved into the house of an apothecary named James Gillman, asking Gillman to help cut back his opium dose. Like all addicts, though, Col quickly had an alternate supply arranged. Though he's really only known today for his poetry, Col's contributions to the field of criticism and our language were many. For instance, he not only coined the word 'selfless,' he introduced the word 'aesthetic' to the English language. Cole summed himself up this way, in the epitaph he wrote for himself: Beneath this sod A Poet lies; or that which once was he. O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C. That he, who many a year with toil of breath, Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death. Along with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan” is one of Coleridge’s most famous and enduring poems. As the poet explains in the short preface to this poem, he had fallen asleep after taking “an anodyne” prescribed “in consequence of a slight disposition” (this is a euphemism for opium, to which Coleridge was known to be addicted). Before falling asleep, he had been reading a story in which Kubla Khan commanded the building of a new palace; Coleridge claims that while he slept, he had a fantastic vision and composed simultaneously—while sleeping—some two or three hundred lines of poetry. Waking after about three hours, the poet seized a pen and began writing furiously; however, after copying down the first three stanzas of his dreamt poem he was interrupted. After this interruption, he was unable to recall the rest of the vision or the poetry he had composed in his opium dream. It is thought that the final stanza of the poem, thematizing the idea of the lost vision through the figure of the “damsel with a dulcimer” and the milk of Paradise, was written post-interruption. The first three stanzas are products of pure imagination. The fourth stanza states the theme of the poem as a whole (though “Kubla Khan” is almost impossible to consider as a unified whole, as its parts are so sharply divided). The speaker says that he once had a vision of the damsel singing of Mount Abora; this vision becomes a metaphor for Coleridge’s vision of the 300-hundred-line masterpiece he never completed. The speaker insists that if he could only “revive” within him “her symphony and song,” he would recreate the pleasure-dome out of music and words, and take on the persona of the magician or visionary. His hearers would recognize the dangerous power of the vision, which would manifest itself in his “flashing eyes” and “floating hair.” But, awestruck, they would nonetheless dutifully take part in the ritual, recognizing that “he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

Portrait of Byron in Albanian dress by Thomas Phillips, 1835
Born with a clubfoot, he was taken by his mother, Catherine Gordon, to Aberdeen, Scotland, where they lived in lodgings on a meager income. He attended the grammar school there. He was extremely sensitive of his lameness; its effect upon his character was obvious enough . It was rumored that his nurse, May Gray, made physical advances to him when he was only nine. At the age of 10, George inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron. His mother proudly took him to England. John Hanson, Mrs. Byron’s attorney, rescued him from the pernicious influence of May Gray and the increasingly uneven temper of his mother. At the beginning of 1808, he entered into "an abyss of sensuality" in London that threatened to undermine his health. On reaching his majority in January 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords, published an anonymous satire and embarked on a grand tour. Byron fell in love with a married woman and almost fought a duel on her account. Byron visited the site of Troy and swam the channel in imitation of Leander. Byron’s sojourn in Greece made a lasting impression on his mind and character - he delighted in the sunshine and moral tolerance of the people. After leaving, he often spoke longingly of his visit - and his desire to return. On 27 February 1812, he made his first speech in the House of Lords, and at the beginning of March and took the town by storm. Byron was lionized in Whig society and the handsome poet with the clubfoot was swept into affairs with the passionate Lady Caroline Lamb, the "autumnal" Lady Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, and - possibly - his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. The agitation of these affairs and the sense of mingled guilt and exultation they aroused in his mind are reflected in the Oriental tales he wrote during the period. Byron married and had a daughter but his wife left him. Reasons were not given and rumors began to fly, most of them centering on Byron’s relations with Augusta Leigh. When the rumors grew, Byron signed the legal separation papers and went abroad, never returning to England. He was now the most famous exile in Europe. After visiting the battlefield of Waterloo, Byron journeyed to Switzerland. At the Villa Diodati, near Geneva, he was on friendly terms with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his entourage, which included William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter, Mary, who was Shelley’s wife, and Godwin’s stepdaughter by a second marriage, Claire Clairmont who bore his second daughter. Years later Shelley and other visitors had found Byron grown fat, with hair long and turning gray, looking older than his years, and sunk in promiscuity. But a chance meeting with the Countess Teresa Guicciolo in April 1819 Lord Byron changed the course of his life. In a few days he fell completely in love with Teresa, 19 years old and married to man nearly three times her age. Byron followed her to Ravenna, and, later in the summer, she accompanied him back to Venice and stayed until her husband called for her. Byron returned to Ravenna in January 1820, as Teresa’s accepted gentleman-in-waiting. He won the friendship of her father and brother who initiated him into the secret revolutionary society of the Carbonari. In Ravenna he was brought into closer touch with the life of the Italian people than he had ever been. When Teresa’s father and brother were exiled for the part in an abortive uprising and she, now separated from her husband, was forced to follow them, He also longed for the opportunity for some noble action that would vindicate him in the eyes of his countrymen. Accordingly, when the London Greek Committee contacted him in April 1823 to act as its agent in aiding the Greek war for independence from the Turks, Byron immediately accepted the offer. All of his legendary enthusiasm, energy, and imagination were now at the service of the Greek army. With tremendous passion he entered into the plans to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto. On 15 February 1824 he fell ill. Deeply mourned by the Greeks, he became a hero throughout their land. His body was embalmed; the heart was removed and buried in Missolonghi. His remains were then sent to England and, refused burial in Westminster Abbey, placed in the vault of his ancestors near Newstead. Ironically, 145 years after his death, in 1969, a memorial to Byron was finally placed on the floor of the Abbey. As the title says, SHE walks in beauty, the main theme of the poem is the description of a lady, the enumeration of certain qualities that the author considers give her beauty. The introduction of the verb to “walk” in the title is important because it gives connotations of advancing, not only in space but also in time. It makes reference to the movement of walking, introducing the reader this way into a bidimensional reading which is going to be constant through out all of the poem. The center of the poem is the lady, and the author expresses that central importance by capitalizing the whole pronoun SHE . As I said before, the observation, and the following description of Byron leads the reader to a dual dimension that enriches the poem. Evidences of this dualism are some interesting contrasts reflected in the poem: line 3 “ and all that’s best of dark and bright” that gives us the idea that such a lady includes amongst her qualities light and darkness, good and evil, she is a mixture of both. This is not an archetypical description that gives only a positive and idealized point of view. But, being a Romantic description it is also a profound and realistic one. The vision of the poet describes a beauty of “shade” and “ray”, giving us again the impression that she is not only positive. Another interesting contrast that reinforces the dualism is that of introducing the word “mellow’d” in line 5, giving her qualities of mature and experienced beauty, and it is in contrast with the last word of the poem “innocent”, this way Byron expresses the contradictions that the beauty of that lady can posses. It is also important the contrast that Byron makes in the last two verses with the words “mind” and “heart” by separating them and making a clear distinction between the experience and the peace of her mind, and the innocence of her heart, of her feelings. This makes reference to the eternal separation of feelings and thoughts, the fight of the two realities inside of a person, in this case, the lady. Dualism is present in the poem to the end. It is important the introduction of the theme of the passing time and the aquisition of experience. Evidence of this is verse 16 where the author atributes the lady the property of experience of “days in goodness spent”. The vocabulary that Byron uses is clear, simple and accessible to all kind of readers. The Semantic field is based on two branches: on the one hand the introduction of terms referring to the phisical description of the lady: “face, cheek, brow, aspect, smiles, eyes”. On the other hand they are in contrast with terms linked to a more internal description: “thought, grace, tender, peace, love, calm” stressing again this bidimensional property of the lady. The tone used by the author is serious, and this can be observed in the strict use of the Structure : All the verses have 8 syllables, the rhymes are regular and perfect: ababab cdcdcd efefef. The conclussion of this analysis is that the vision of the lady that Byron gives us is a mixture of several elements, always dual, full of contradictions that takes the reader to a more realistic anc complete vision of the conception of a lady that the author has. It is not a simple vision where everything is lovely, positive and innocent, it is not a naive expression of feelings that can blind the lover taking only into account the positive qualities of the lady. It is more a contrast between two realities, mind and heart, experience and innocence, the physical and the psychological worlds.

John Keats 1795 – 1821 John Keats's mother, brother, and good friend Richard Woodhouse all died of tuberculosis, which was then termed "consumption." He long suspected that he had the disease himself, and when on February 3, 1820, he had a severe hemorrhage of the lungs, he knew that he could not survive another English winter. Despite moving to Rome, he succumbed to "consumption" in the winter of The realization that he was likely to die an early death gives poignancy to lyrics like "When I have fears that I may cease to be/ Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain" and "O for ten years, to overwhelm myself in poesy!" It also perhaps explains Keats's astounding productivity, for he did not start writing poetry until just a few years before he died. The son of a liveryman, he was thoroughly working class, not the sort expected to have poetic aspirations. His mother, Frances (Jennings), remarried two months after his father's death in 1804 but left her husband soon after and died in After their grandmother's death four years later, the brothers were left alone. At the Clarke school, John was noted for his pugnacity, especially for his size — he was barely over five feet tall. He was apprenticed in 1811 to an apothecary-surgeon, and passed his examination in As one biographer puts it, he then went on vacation and returned a practicing poet. His fatal illness lasted more than a year before his death early in 1821, so his entire career was to last barely three and a half years was in many ways the most eventful year of his life: his brother George married and moved to America; in the summer he went on a walking tour of the Lake district and Scotland with his friend Charles Brown; he met Fanny Brawne, the great love of his life, in the fall, while at the same time nursing his brother Tom, who died in December. During the first few months of 1819, he wrote his masterworks, including the great odes. Jack Stillinger thinks that it is this combined experience of suffering, death, and love all at once, against a background of serious conversation, reading, and thinking, that accounts for Keats's sudden rise to excellence in his poetry. I wonder if anything "accounts" for genius like his. WHEN I HAVE FEARS: Written in 1818, this poem expresses concerns that run through his poetry and his letters--fame, love, and time. Keats was conscious of needing time to write his poetry; when twenty-one, he wrote, Oh, for ten years that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy. By age twenty-four--only three years later, he had essentially stopped writing because of ill health. There were times he felt confident that his poetry would survive him, "I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death." Nevertheless, the inscription he wrote for his headstone was, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Definitions and Allusions Line 2. glean: in this poem, Keats is using the meaning of collecting patiently or picking out laboriously. teeming: plentiful, overflowing, or produced in large quantities. Line 3. charactery: printing or handwriting. Line 4. garners: granaries or storehouses for grain. Line 6. high romance: high = of an elevated or exalted character or quality; romance = medieval narrative of chivalry, also an idealistic fiction which tends not to be realistic. Analysis This poem falls into two major thought groups: * Keats expresses his fear of dying young in the first thought unit, lines He fears that he will not fulfill himself as a writer (lines 1-8) and that he will lose his beloved (lines 9-12). * Keats resolves his fears by asserting the unimportance of love and fame in the concluding two and a half lines of this sonnet. The first quatrain (four lines) emphasizes both how fertile his imagination is and how much he has to express; hence the imagery of the harvest, e.g., "glean'd," "garners," "full ripen'd grain." Subtly reinforcing this idea is the alliteration of the key words "glean'd," garners," and "grain," as well as the repetition of r sounds in "charactery," "rich," "garners,"ripen'd," and "grain.". A harvest is, obviously, fulfillment in time, the culmination which yields a valued product, as reflected in the grain being "full ripen'd." Abundance is also apparent in the adjectives "high-piled" and "rich." The harvest metaphor contains a paradox (paradox is a characteristic of Keats's poetry and thought): Keats is both the field of grain (his imagination is like the grain to be harvested) and he is the harvester (writer of poetry). In the next quatrain (lines 5-8), he sees the world as full of material he could transform into poetry (his is "the magic hand"); the material is the beauty of nature ("night's starr'd face") and the larger meanings he perceives beneath the appearance of nature or physical phenomena ("Huge cloudy symbols") . In the third quatrain (lines 9-12), he turns to love. As the "fair creature of an hour," his beloved is short-lived just as, by implication, love is. The quatrain itself parallels the idea of little time, in being only three and a half lines, rather than the usual four lines of a Shakespearean sonnet; the effect of this compression or shortening is of a slight speeding-up of time. Is love as important as, less important than, or more important than poetry for Keats in this poem? Does the fact that he devotes fewer lines to love than to poetry suggest anything about their relative importance to him? The poet's concern with time (not enough time to fulfill his poetic gift and love) is supported by the repetition of "when" at the beginning of each quatrain and by the shortening of the third quatrain. Keats attributes two qualities to love: (1) it has the ability to transform the world for the lovers ("faery power"), but of course fairies are not real, and their enchantments are an illusion and (2) love involves us with emotion rather than thought ("I feel" and "unreflecting love"). Reflecting upon his feelings, which the act of writing this sonnet has involved, Keats achieves some distancing from his own feelings and ordinary life; this distancing enables him to reach a resolution. He thinks about the human solitariness ("I stand alone") and human insignificance (the implicit contrast betwen his lone self and "the wide world"). The shore is a point of contact, the threshold between two worlds or conditions, land and sea; so Keats is crossing a threshold, from his desire for fame and love to accepting their unimportance and ceasing to fear and yearn. ODE ON A GRECIAN URN: "The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreables evaporate from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth." John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Ode" is based on a series of paradoxes and opposites: * the discrepancy between the urn with its frozen images and the dynamic life portrayed on the urn, * the human and changeable versus the immortal and permanent, * participation versus observation, * life versus art. As in "Ode to a Nightingale," the poet wants to create a world of pure joy, but in this poem the idealized or fantasy world is the life of the people on the urn. Keats sees them, simultaneously, as carved figures on the marble vase and live people in ancient Greece. Existing in a frozen or suspended time, they cannot move or change, nor can their feelings change, yet the unknown sculptor has succeeded in creating a sense of living passion and turbulent action. As in "Ode to a Nightingale," the real world of pain contrasts with the fantasy world of joy. Initially, this poem does not connect joy and pain. Understanding some lines in this poem is a challenge to any reader, particularly the last two lines: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--That is all Ye know of earth, and all ye need to know. Aside from textual considerations, the final couplet is ambiguous and has resulted in an extensive critical controversy over its meaning. Jack Stillinger comments, "As to critical interpretation of who says what to whom, no single explanation can satisfy the demands of text, grammar, consistency and common sense." Some readers write off this couplet; T.S. Eliot calls these lines a "serious blemish on a beautiful poem; and the reason must be either that I fail to understand it, or that it is a statement which is untrue." So if you have trouble understanding these last two lines, you are in good company. Stanza I. Stanza I begins slowly, asks questions arising from thought and raises abstract concepts such as time and art. The comparison of the urn to an "unravish'd bride" functions at a number of levels. It prepares for the impossisbility of fulfillment of stanza II and for the violence of lines 8-10 of this stanza. "Still" embodies two concepts--time and motion--which appear in a number of ways in the rest of the poem. They appear immediately in line 2 with the urn as a "foster" child. The urn exists in the real world, which is mutable or subject to time and change, yet it and the life it presents are unchanging; hence, the bride is "unravish'd" and as a "foster" child, the urn is touched by "slow time," not the time of the real world. The figures carved on the urn are not subject to time, though the urn may be changed or affected over slow time. The urn as "sylvan historian" speaks to the viewer, even if it doesn't answer the poet's questions (stanzas I and IV). Whether the urn communicates a message depends on how you interpet the final stanza. The urn is "sylvan"--first, because a border of leaves encircles the vase and second because the scene carved on the urn is set in woods. The "flowery tale" told "sweetly" and "sylvan historian" do not prepare for the terror and wild sexuality unleashed in lines 8-10 (another opposition); the effect and the subject of the urn or art conflict. Is it paradoxical that the urn, which is silent, tells tales "more sweetly than our rime"? Twice (lines 6 and 8) the poet is unable to distinguish between mortal and immortal, men and gods, another opposition; is there a suggestion of coexistence and inseparableness in this blurring of differences between them? With lines 8-10, the poet is caught up in the excited, rapid activities depicted on the urn and moves from observer to participant in the life on the urn, in the sense that he is emotionally involved. Paradoxically, turbulant dynamic passion is convincingly portrayed on cold, motionless stone. Paradox and opposites run through the rest of the poem. As you read and reread the poem, you should become aware of them. Click here for vocabulary and allusions in stanza I. Stanza II. The first four lines contrast the ideal (in art, love, and nature) and the real; which does Keats prefer at this point? What is the paradox of unheard pipes? Is this an oxymoron? The last six lines contrast the drawback of frozen time; note the negative phrasing: "canst not leave," "nor ever can," "never, never canst" in lines 5-8. Keats says not to grieve; whom he is addressing--the carved figures or the reader? or both? Then he lists the advantages of frozen time; however, Keats continues to use negative phrasing even in these lines: "do not grieve," "cannot fade," and ""hast not thy bliss." Keats may have made a mistake, or there may be a reason for this negative undertone, a reason which will become clear as the poem continues. Click here for vocabulary and allusions in stanza II. Stanza III. This stanza recapitulates ideas from the preceding two stanzas and re-introduces some figures: the trees which can't shed leaves, the musician, and the lover. Keats portrays the ideal life on the urn as one without disappointment and suffering. The urn-depicted passion may be human, but it is also "all breathing passion far above" because it is unchanging. Is there irony in the fact that the superior passion depicted on the urn is also unfulfillable, that satisfaction is impossible? How does he portray real life, actual passion in the last three lines? Which is preferable, the urn life or real life? Note the repetition of the word "happy." Is there irony in this situation? Stanza IV. Stanza IV shows the ability of art to stir the imagination, so that the viewer sees more than is portrayed. The poet imagines the village from which the people on the urn came. In this stanza, the poet begins to withdraw from his emotional participation in and identification with life on the urn. This stanza focuses on communal life (the previous stanzas described individuals). What paradox is implicit in the contrast between the event being a sacrifice and the altar being "green"? between leading the heifer to the sacrifice and her "silken flanks with garlands drest"? In imagining an empty town, why does he give three possible locations for the town, rather than fix on one location? Why does he use the word "folk," rather than "people"? Think about the different connotations of these words. The image of the silent, desolate town embodies both pain and joy. How is it ironic that not a soul can tell us why the town is empty and that the vase communicates so much to the poet and so to the reader? Is this also paradoxical? In terms of the theme of pain-joy, what is Keats saying in lines 1-4, which describe the procession? in the rest of the stanza which describes the desolate town? Is he describing a temporary or a permanent condition? Is the viewer, who is the poet as well as the reader, pulled into the world of the urn? Stanza V. The poet observes the urn as a whole and remembers his vision. Is he emotionally involved in the life of the urn at this point, or is he again the observer? What aspect of the urn is stressed in the phrases "marble men and maidens," "silent form," and "Cold Pastoral"? Is there a paradox in the phrase "Cold Pastoral"? Yet the poet did experience the life experienced on the urn and comments, ambiguously perhaps, that the urn "dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity." Is this another reference to the "dull brain" which "perplexes and retards" ("Ode to a Nightingale")? Why does Keats use the word "tease"? By teasing him "out of thought," did the urn draw him from the real world into an ideal world, where, if there was neither imperfection nor change, there was also no real life or fulfillment? Or, possibly, was the poet so involved in the life of the urn that he couldn't think? Was the urn an escape, however temporary, from the pains and problems of life? One thing that all these suggestions mean is that this is a puzzling line. In the final couplet, is Keats saying that pain is beautiful? You must decide whether it is the poet (a persona), Keats (the actual poet), or the urn speaking. Are both lines spoken by the same person, or does some of the quotation express the view of one speaker and the rest of the couplet express the comment upon that view by another speaker? Who is being addressed--the poet, the urn, or the reader? Are the concluding lines a philosphical statement about life or do they make sense only in the context of the poem? Click here to read the three versions of the last two lines. Some critics feel that Keats is saying that Art is superior to Nature. Is Keats thinking or feeling or talking about the urn only as a work of art? Your reading on this issue will be affected by your decision about who is speaking. No matter how you read the last two lines, do they really mean anything? do they merely sound as if they mean something? or do they speak to some deep part of us that apprehends or feels the meaning but it is an experience/meaning that can't be put into words? Do they make a final statement on the relation of the ideal to the actual? Is the urn rejected at the end? Is art--can art ever be--a substitute for real life? What, if anything, has the poet learned from his imaginative vision of or daydream participation in the life of the urn? Does Keats, in this ode, follow the pattern of the romantic ode?

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792–1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley was born August 4, 1792, the first of seven children born to Timothy Shelley, a country squire who became a baronet in 1815 upon the death of his father, Sir Bysshe Shelley. Percy attended Sion House Academy from and then Eton, where the young intellectual and idealist encountered the public school system of "fagging," in which upperclass boys tyrannized their juniors, who ran errands and acted as servants. Afterwards Shelley equated school with prison. Attended University College, Oxford. Within a few months he was expelled along with his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg for refusing to acknowledge or deny authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. His father visited him in London after his expulsion. The resulting estrangement from his father was completed when Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the 16-year-old daughter of a coffee-house keeper. The following year he met his hero William Godwin, the author of Political Justice, and fell in love with his daughter Mary, a radical and an idealist like himself. The daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary later wrote Frankenstein and The Last Man, two novels that remain popular and influential today. Mary and Percy eloped to Switzerland in July 1814. In 1818 the Shelleys left England for Italy, where their infant daughter Clara and then their son William died and where Percy Florence was born. Shelley gathered a circle of friends, including Byron, around him. Despite his radical views and despite his habit of falling in love with young women in this circle (like Emilia Viviani and Jane Williams, common-law wife of Edward Williams), Shelley was the peacemaker among them — Byron said that everyone else he knew was a beast compared with Shelley. Returning by sailing yacht from a peacemaking mission on behalf of Byron to Claire Clairmont, Shelley drowned at sea during a fierce storm. Mary Shelley edited his poems and advanced his fame after his death. OZYMANDIAS: Wednesday, October 1, 2008 Wizard of "Ozymandias" Last week, I had my A. P. kids read Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias." You know it, right? The poem about the prideful king who thought he was all that and a goblet of mead, but hundreds of years later all that's left of his legacy is a broken statue? Not ringing any bells? Well, here it is, anyway: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away." You have to love the poem's core paradox. Ozymanidas, the self-proclaimed "King of Kings," commissions a statue of himself-- not only as a testament to his great and sustaining power but also to guarantee his immortality. Of course, hundreds of years later, all that's left of this statute-- and, by extension, of Ozymandias himself-- are shattered fragments: the head, the legs, and the pedestal. Literally and figuratively, the King of Kings has been swallowed up by the sands of time. Basically: not so much with the immortality thing for King Ozzy. Ah, but here's the paradoxical rub: by writing this poem, Shelley is immortalizing him, but as symbol of mortality. The statue didn't remain, but the poem does. Now, I'm not saying I came up with that; it's a pretty obvious paradox, after all. But I have a few other cool, semi-unobvious observations, too, about the poem. And so I present... Dursin's Five Cool, Semi-Unobvious Observations about "Ozymandias," for Teachers, Students, and Folks Who Want to Look Smart at Cocktail Parties. (1) You notice how much distance Shelley is trying to put between the reader and Ozymandias? Instead of just talking directly about this fallen king, he starts the poem with a narrator, who is relating a story he heard from a traveler, who tells the story about a sculptor who made a statue of a king. When I brought Shelley's funky set-up up to my students, one young man said that, by putting this much distance between the reader and the subject of the poem, Shelley is reflecting the content of the poem in its form; Shelley basically reinforces how lost and forgotten Ozymandias by burying him underneath all these layers (the reader, the narrator, the traveler, the sculptor, the king). Good stuff. But another student disagreed, suggesting that organizing the poem in this way showed how this king was not completely forgotten, because at least one person, the traveler, knows the story. So, in a way, the structure contradicts the fundamental message. Also good stuff. They're both right, of course. That's one of the great ancillary benefits about teaching English-- learning to coexist with irreconcilable contraries. (2) Just today, another student came up to me after class with an "Ozymandias" story. (We all have them.) Apparently, she was visiting Hamilton College, and she sat in on a class where the students were reading Robert Frost's poem "Directive." (Too long for me to re-print here; kindly follow the link.) And one of the students remarked something like, "You know, this poem reminds me of 'Ozymandias.'" Color me definitely intrigued-- there's probably a grad school thesis somewhere in that connection-- but also tragically inequipped to comment on it. I've read "Directive" before and always found it impenetrable. I can see a few surface connections between the two (e.g. Frost's description of "a house that is no more a house/ Upon a farm that is no more a farm/ And in a town that is no more a town"), but I don't know enough about "Directive" to go deeper. Any help out there? (3) Maybe it's just me (and I know it's not, because after I thought of this, I found this same comparison elsewhere on the Web), but Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" seems to explore exactly-- I mean, exactly-- the same tensions that Shelley does in "Ozymandias." Think about it: both the song and the poem describe the fall of a prideful king. ("I used to rule the world," the song's narrator says in the first verse, but now "I sleep alone/ Sweep the streets that I used to own.") Yes, the king of the song falls during his lifetime, and there's no evidence in Shelley's poem that his king is ever aware of his ironic fall from grace. Still, both texts deal with the elusiveness of earthly power. (Compare Shelley's crumbled statue to the song's castles that were built on "pillars of salt, pillars of sand.") To all English teachers out there, I say play "Viva la Vida" for your students when you teach "Ozymandias." You can show the students how cool you are. Oh, yeah, and the juxtaposition of the two will reinforce the twin themes of the transcient nature of power and the impossibility of material possessions to withstand the onslaught of the passage of time. That too. I used to rule the world Seas would rise when I gave the word Now in the morning I sweep alone Sweep the streets I used to own I used to roll the dice Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes Listen as the crowd would sing: "Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!" One minute I held the key Next the walls were closed on me And I discovered that my castles stand Upon pillars of salt, pillars of sand I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing Roman Cavalry choirs are singing Be my mirror my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason I can't explain Once you know there was never, never an honest word That was when I ruled the world (Ohhh) It was the wicked and wild wind Blew down the doors to let me in. Shattered windows and the sound of drums People couldn't believe what I'd become Revolutionaries Wait For my head on a silver plate Just a puppet on a lonely string Oh who would ever want to be king? I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing Roman Cavalry choirs are singing Be my mirror my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason I can not explain I know Saint Peter will call my name Never an honest word But that was when I ruled the world (Ohhhhh Ohhh Ohhh) Hear Jerusalem bells are ringings Roman Cavalry choirs are singing Be my mirror my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason I can not explain I know Saint Peter will call my name Never an honest word But that was when I ruled the world (Oooooh Oooooh Oooooh) (4) If you're not familiar with the movie The Emperor's Club (and you're probably not, because, for some reason, that's one of those Great Movies That No One Has Seen. Why that is, I have no idea. Everyone has seen Dead Poets Society, and The Emperor's Club is far superior. I might even have to devote a whole post to this grave oversight someday. Where was I? Oh, yeah...), one of the initial scenes of the movie contains an indirect echo of "Ozymandias." Mr. Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a brilliant, slightly-stodgy, and (of course) inspirational high school teacher of Greek and Roman history at an all-boys private school. On the first day of the year, he traditionally has a student read a plaque that says the following: "I am Shutruk-Nahunte, king of Anshand and Susa, sovereign of the land of Elam. By the command of Inshushinak, I destroyed Sippar and took the stele of Niran-Sin and brought it back to Elam, where I erected it as an offering to my god. Shuktruk Nahunte, 1158 B.C." Mr. Hundert then asks the class who Shutruk Nahunte is, saying that they can even use their textbooks. "But you won't find it there," he says, for indeed, "his accomplsihments won't be found in any history book." Shutruk Nahunte, according to Mr. Hundert, is utterly forgotten by history because he didn't make a lasting difference in the world. Says Mr. Hundert: "Great ambition and conquest, without contribution, is without significance." Sound like anyone else we might know? (Hint: it rhymes with "Fozzymandias"...) I was so proud of myself for coming up with this connection. But here's the icing on the connection-cake: I didn't come up with this connection! The writer of the story on which the movie was based did. The film was inspired by Ethan Canin's short story, "The Palace Thief." The first chapter of the story introduces Mr. Hundert and his Shutruk Nahunte bit (spelled "Nahhunte" in the story). Then Mr. Hundert (the narrator) reveals something else he does as part of his first-day ritual: "... I had one of them recite, from the wall where it hangs above my desk, Shelley's 'Ozymandias.' It is critical for any man of import to understand his own insignificance before the sands of time, and this is what my classroom has always showed my boys." (Italics mine.) Part of my was exhilirated that my connection had textual precedence, part of me bummed out I didn't think of it first. (Foiled again!) (5) This last one might be my favorite thing I learned about "Ozymandias" over the past week. Apparently, Shelley had a contest with his friend Horace Smith over who could write the better poem about this king. So they both wrote sonnets, and they both submitted them to the same magazine, The Examiner. Now considering Shelley's poem is a widely-known staple of English literature, and pretty much no one has ever read or even heard of Horace Smith, I guess you can figure out who won the bet. Still, I think Horace got the fuzzy end of the legacy-lollipop. To be honest, I didn't find Horace's poem that bad. Check it out for yourself: In Egypts sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desert knows. "I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone, "The King of kings: this mighty city shows The wonders of my hand." The city's gone! Naught but the leg remaining to disclose The sight of that forgotten Babylon. We wonder, and some hunter may express Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase, He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess What wonderful, but unrecorded, race Once dwelt in that annihilated place. How did it all fall apart for Horace Smith? Two factors, I think: (a) Shelley beat him to it. Shelley's poem was published in The Examiner on January 11, 1818; Smith's was published on February 1, (Remember when Armageddon came out a few months before Deep Impact? Just like that!) (b) Writer Guy Davenport summed up the difference between Percy and Horace by (allegedly) saying, "Genius may also be knowing how to title a poem." And indeed, Shelley's knack for titles have helped him in the long run. What do I mean by that? Well, while Shelley called his poem "Ozymandias," ol' Horace called his "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below." Not bad, as far as titles go... but lacking a little panache, you know?

The Land of “Oz” Some Observations: Paradox? Secondary paradox?
You have to love the poem's core paradox. Ozymanidas, the self-proclaimed "King of Kings," commissions a statue of himself-- not only as a testament to his great and sustaining power but also to guarantee his immortality. Of course, hundreds of years later, all that's left of this statute-- and, by extension, of Ozymandias himself-- are shattered fragments: the head, the legs, and the pedestal. Literally and figuratively, the King of Kings has been swallowed up by the sands of time. Basically: not so much with the immortality thing for King Ozzy. Ah, but here's the paradoxical rub: by writing this poem, Shelley is immortalizing him, but as symbol of mortality. The statue didn't remain, but the poem does.

Four Observations Distance Reflected in modern music/lyrics
3. The Emperor’s Club 4. The competition… a) You notice how much distance Shelley is trying to put between the reader and Ozymandias? Instead of just talking directly about this fallen king, he starts the poem with a narrator, who is relating a story he heard from a traveler, who tells the story about a sculptor who made a statue of a king. b) But another student disagreed, suggesting that organizing the poem in this way showed how this king was not completely forgotten, because at least one person, the traveler, knows the story. So, in a way, the structure contradicts the fundamental message. Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" seems to explore exactly-- I mean, exactly-- the same tensions that Shelley does in "Ozymandias.” Think about it: both the song and the poem describe the fall of a prideful king. ("I used to rule the world," the song's narrator says in the first verse, but now "I sleep alone/ Sweep the streets that I used to own.") Yes, the king of the song falls during his lifetime, and there's no evidence in Shelley's poem that his king is ever aware of his ironic fall from grace. Still, both texts deal with the elusiveness of earthly power. (Compare Shelley's crumbled statue to the song's castles that were built on "pillars of salt, pillars of sand.") If you're not familiar with the movie The Emperor's Club (and you're probably not, because, for some reason, that's one of those Great Movies That No One Has Seen. Why that is, I have no idea. Everyone has seen Dead Poets Society, and The Emperor's Club is far superior. I might even have to devote a whole post to this grave oversight someday. Where was I? Oh, yeah...), one of the initial scenes of the movie contains an indirect echo of "Ozymandias." Mr. Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a brilliant, slightly-stodgy, and (of course) inspirational high school teacher of Greek and Roman history at an all-boys private school. On the first day of the year, he traditionally has a student read a plaque that says the following: "I am Shutruk-Nahunte, king of Anshand and Susa, sovereign of the land of Elam. By the command of Inshushinak, I destroyed Sippar and took the stele of Niran-Sin and brought it back to Elam, where I erected it as an offering to my god. Shuktruk Nahunte, 1158 B.C." Mr. Hundert then asks the class who Shutruk Nahunte is, saying that they can even use their textbooks. "But you won't find it there," he says, for indeed, "his accomplsihments won't be found in any history book." Shutruk Nahunte, according to Mr. Hundert, is utterly forgotten by history because he didn't make a lasting difference in the world. Says Mr. Hundert: "Great ambition and conquest, without contribution, is without significance." The film was inspired by Ethan Canin's short story, "The Palace Thief." The first chapter of the story introduces Mr. Hundert and his Shutruk Nahunte bit (spelled "Nahhunte" in the story). Then Mr. Hundert (the narrator) reveals something else he does as part of his first-day ritual: "... I had one of them recite, from the wall where it hangs above my desk, Shelley's 'Ozymandias.' It is critical for any man of import to understand his own insignificance before the sands of time, and this is what my classroom has always showed my boys." (Italics mine.) When I brought Shelley's funky set-up up to my students, one young man said that, by putting this much distance between the reader and the subject of the poem, Shelley is reflecting the content of the poem in its form; Shelley basically reinforces how lost and forgotten Ozymandias by burying him underneath all these layers (the reader, the narrator, the traveler, the sculptor, the king). Good stuff.

"On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.” In Egypts sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desert knows. "I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone, "The King of kings: this mighty city shows The wonders of my hand." The city's gone! Naught but the leg remaining to disclose The sight of that forgotten Babylon. We wonder, and some hunter may express Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase, He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess What wonderful, but unrecorded, race Once dwelt in that annihilated place. - Horace Smith 4. This last one might be my favorite thing I learned about "Ozymandias" over the past week. Apparently, Shelley had a contest with his friend Horace Smith over who could write the better poem about this king. So they both wrote sonnets, and they both submitted them to the same magazine, The Examiner. Now considering Shelley's poem is a widely-known staple of English literature, and pretty much no one has ever read or even heard of Horace Smith, I guess you can figure out who won the bet. Still, I think Horace got the fuzzy end of the legacy-lollipop. To be honest, I didn't find Horace's poem that bad. Check it out for yourself: In Egypts sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desert knows. "I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone, "The King of kings: this mighty city shows The wonders of my hand." The city's gone! Naught but the leg remaining to disclose The sight of that forgotten Babylon. We wonder, and some hunter may express Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase, He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess What wonderful, but unrecorded, race Once dwelt in that annihilated place. How did it all fall apart for Horace Smith? Two factors, I think: (a) Shelley beat him to it. Shelley's poem was published in The Examiner on January 11, 1818; Smith's was published on February 1, (Remember when Armageddon came out a few months before Deep Impact? Just like that!) (b) Writer Guy Davenport summed up the difference between Percy and Horace by (allegedly) saying, "Genius may also be knowing how to title a poem." And indeed, Shelley's knack for titles have helped him in the long run. What do I mean by that? Well, while Shelley called his poem "Ozymandias," ol' Horace called his "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below." Not bad, as far as titles go... but lacking a little panache, you know?

This is perhaps the single most revolutionary aspect of the Romantic Age: an admiration for all the potency and diversity of living nature superseded a concern for the discovery of its universal traits. The 18th century life of mind was incomplete. The Romantics opted for a life of the heart. Their relativism made them appreciative of diversity in man and in nature. There are no universal laws. There are certainly no laws which would explain man. The philosophe congratulated himself for helping to destroy the ancien regime. And today, we can perhaps say, "good job!" But after all the destruction, after the ancient idols fell, and after the dust had cleared, there remained nothing to take its place. In stepped the Romantics who sought to restore the organic quality of the past, especially the medieval past, the past so detested by the pompous, powdered-wig philosophe. Truth and beauty were human attributes. A truth and beauty which emanated from the poet’s soul and the artist’s heart. If the poets are, as Shelley wrote in 1821, the "unacknowledged legislator’s of the world," it was world of fantasy, intuition, instinct and emotion. It was a human world.

The Romantics John Constable Sketch for Hadleigh Castle c

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