1. ROMANTIC ERA POETRY

2. CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM  Sensibility- an awareness and responsiveness toward something  Primitivism- a belief in the superiority of a simple way of life and a nonindustrial society.  Love of nature- idealization of nature; a source of inspiration  Individualism-emphasis on the individual  Mysticism- the exploration of the occult or unknown powers

3. Romantic writers:  Stressed emotions and imagination  Wrote about subjective experiences of the individual, such as desires, hopes, and dreams  Praised nature in all its creative and destructive forces  Believed in spontaneity of thought and action

4.  Believed in experimentation  Reflected on the experiences of childhood, primitive societies, and the common man  Celebrated intense passion and vision  Sought a more natural poetic form and diction

5. ROMANTIC LITERATURE (“GOLDEN AGE”)  Though best known for poetry, the romantic period was also known to produce many memorable works of prose. Examples include: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and Waverly by Sir Walter Scott.

6.  1798 William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge publish “Tintern Abbey” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in the book Lyrical Ballads (Marking the start of the romantic literary movement)

7. POETS OF ROMANTICISM  William Wordsworth (“first generation” poet)  William Blake  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“first generation” poet)  Lord Byron (George Gordon)- “second gen” (dies of fever in 1824 at age 36, after fighting for Greece in their liberation war from Turks)  Percy Bysshe Shelley (drowns off Italian coast in 1822 at age 29)  John Keats (dies in 1821 at age 25 of tuberculosis)

8.  Byron, both in his poetry and his personal life, helped popularize the brooding, self-absorbed romantic figure, now sometimes known as the Byronic hero.  All three poets died young. The early death of Byron was nearly the end of English romanticism. In 7 years, four of the period’s youngest and most promising stars died (Austen, Keats, Shelley, and Byron)

9.  In addition to those early deaths, by 1824, the older writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott had either quit writing or were no longer producing significant works.

10. POETIC LITERARY TERMS  Form: the ways in which words and images are organized in a poem, including the length, placement, and grouping of lines  Fixed form: poems that follow use of a conventional stanza pattern or a defined rhyme scheme  Irregular form: poems that do not follow a defined traditional poetic structure

11.  Run-on lines: lines in which the thought continues into the next line or even further  Stanza: a group of lines that convey a particular idea or set of related ideas (Some stanzas are named for the number of lines they contain: couplet, tercet, quatrain, cinquain)  Verse paragraph: grouping of lines of blank verse according to content (like a paragraph) rather than according to a fixed stanza form

12.  Organic form: the shape of the poem is closely tied to the poem’s meaning. (the form and content of a poem develop simultaneously—a favorite form of the romantics)  End-stopped lines: lines in which the end of the line is the end of a thought, clause, or a sentence, and are usually signaled by a.,-, or ;

13.  Ode: an exalted, complex lyric that develops a serious and dignified theme. (romantic poets favored an irregular form of the ode which allowed for greater freedom in construction)  Sound devices: examples include alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition, etc.