Romantic poetry :
romantic period : between 1780 and 1830, it refers to writing produced in a specific period of time
‘romanticism’ refers to a new set of thinking and feeling about the world who spread in Europe, influencing music and painting as well as literature
the era in which the Romantics wrote was a very stormy period : age of war, upheaval, and particular age of war ( 1775 to 1850 ). the fist generation lived through the events of the French revolution and its effects can be seen in their works.
« Lyrical Ballads » collection of poems by WB, and STC kind of ‘revolutionary manifesto’ for literature, in which he outlines some of the ideas that lie behind what we know call romantic poetry
- nature
- feelings
- imagination
- power of the people
- individual experience
- real language
Romantic writers :
First generation :
William Blake (1757 - 1827 )
« the Book of Urizen »
« Infant Joy »
« Infant Sorrow »
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( 1772 - 1834 )
William Wordsworth ( 1770 - 1850 )
Second generation :
Lord Byron ( 1788 - 1824 )
John Keats (1795 - 1821 )
« to my Borther »
« th Eve od St Agnes » about life and deaths his thoughts
Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 1792 - 1822 )
William Wordsworth
« The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way »
« My heart leaps up » lyrical poem
- natural word was important to Wordsworth, who grew up close to the English Lake District
- studied at Cambridge
- he was supported by his friendship with S.T.C and the devoted companionship with his sister Dorothy into his devotion to poetry
- attention to his own ‘self’ rather than looking only to the world outside himself for topics
- autobiographical poem The Prelude
Lyrical or narrative ?
- lyrical poems tend to be reflective, particular moment of the poet’s experience, and then find a deeper meaning or significance to it
- narrative poems tell a story [pic 1][pic 2]
Songs of innocence 1789