1. Unit 4 Literary Focus Essays
Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry

2. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Influences on Romantic Poetry
Spread of democratic ideals through the American and French Revolutions and disillusionment after failure of French Revolution
Reactions against harsh living and working conditions created for urban poor by the Industrial Revolution and laissez-faire economics
Fascination with nature and country life, which seemed a blissful retreat compared to city slums

3. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
A New Focus in Poetry
Invited readers to feel power and passion
Tried to capture personal experience
Romantic Period
Augustan Era
Order had just been restored
Society needed social change
Poets celebrated order, hierarchy, and enlightened rule
Poets wrote about personal feelings, supported individual rights, and used everyday language

4. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
A New Focus in Poetry
Romantic comes from the world romance.
A medieval romance is a tale of high adventure that idealizes knightly virtues and has supernatural elements.
Romantic writers used elements of romance to go beyond neoclassical formality and explore psychological and mysterious depths of human experience.

5. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
A New Focus in Poetry
Romantic poets
Were fascinated with youth and innocence, particularly a child’s fresh view of the world
Saw history as a cycle in which tradition and authority must be constantly questioned to improve living conditions
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Believed people had to accept change to survive

6. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Imagination: The Inspired Guide
Many say the Romantic movement began in 1798 when Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads.
The Romantics are often considered nature poets.
However, they are really “mind poets” who sought to understand the bond between humans and the world of the senses.

7. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Imagination: The Inspired Guide
The Romantics saw imagination as the link between mind and nature.
To them, imaginative experi- ences were especially moving, perhaps superior to human reasoning.
The mysterious forces of Nature inspired them.
All six of the major Romantic poets had their own ideas about imagination, but all believed that it could be stimulated by nature and the mind.

8. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Nature: The Wise Teacher
If imagination is the Romantic poet’s guide to truth, Nature is the wise teacher that can deliver the lesson.
Romantic poets considered themselves especially sensitive.
They wanted to help people see the world in all its beauty, sadness, and tenderness.

9. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Nature: The Wise Teacher
For the Romantic poets, nature was a balm to soothe the relentless hounding of an industrialized world.
The poets had a strong sense of nature’s transformative properties.
Poets tried to translate scenes of natural beauty into words so that readers might know the power of natural forces to shape thought and feeling.

10. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Nature: The Wise Teacher
The Romantics’ interest in natural images and themes was reflected in Gothic literature.
Novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein appealed to the imagination through
Eerie settings
Supernatural events
Questions about humans’ ability to manipulate nature

11. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Experience: The Worthy Subject
Romantic poets favored idealized rural settings.
However, some celebrated the people who lived in crowded cities.
They promoted rights to
Healthful living conditions
Relief from political or economic oppression
Self-expression

12. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Experience: The Worthy Subject
Some Romantics dreamed that poetry could offer an example of model behavior to improve horrific social conditions:
Undemocratic governments
Dangerous factories
Child workers in coal mine
Child labor
Laissez-faire economic policies that left businesses unregulated

13. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry
Ask Yourself
1. Where did Romantic poets look for inspiration? Why?
2. Why do you think Romantic poets wrote about nature during a time of change?
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14. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry
Characteristics of Romantic Poetry
Expresses the emotions and concerns of an individual as well as of society
Varies the structure of traditional forms to suit a poem’s purpose
Focuses on a poet’s personal connection to nature

15. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry
Function over Form
The Romantics took poetry in a new direction.
Romantic Poets
18th Century Poets
Poetry was a strictly defined literary genre.
Poetry was a playground of feelings.
Poets experimented with forms and expressed feelings in natural language.
Poets used formal language and structured traditional forms such as odes and sonnets.
Function was more important than form.
Form was more important than function.

16. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry
Function over Form
“Tintern Abbey” a First
In “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth for the first time used blank verse that sounds like the flowing rhythms of natural speech.
Like other Romantics, he experimented with simpler rhythms and language.
Tintern Abbey
by J. M. W. Turner

17. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry
Romantic Forms
The Romantics favored these poetic forms: 1
ode 2
sonnet 3
Spenserian stanza

18. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry1
The Ode
An ode is a long complex poem (usually a meditation on a serious topic).
“Ode to the West Wind”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ode
Looks both inward and outward—exalting the powerful, but invisible, wind and reflecting on unseen forces in the poet’s own mind
Each stanza is a variation on the sonnet form.

19. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry2
The Sonnet
Wordsworth made the sonnet popular again.
A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter.
Byron used the Spenserian stanza. 3
The Spenserian stanza
Invented by the Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser, this form has nine lines with a complex rhyme and rhythm pattern.

20. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry
Ask Yourself
1. What was more important to Romantic poets, form or function? Why?
2. What topics did Romantic poets pursue? Why?
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21. The End