Early Romantic (1790-1820) Flashcards
Early Romantic Period
Second 30 years of George III
Sturm & Drang in Germany
1790 - 1820
Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Byron, Shelleys, Keats, Austen, Thomas Morton
Charles Lamb
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Bio: *Worked for East India Company
- Friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge (went to school w/ Col)
- Reviewed above poets’ Lyrical Ballads
- Went by Elia and published in a London magazine
- In letter to Wordsworth, wrote that he loved London rather than country
- Said two kinds of men: men who borrow and who lend (borrowers better)
- Loved the city, as opposed to the countryside, which Wordsworth loved.
- -“Christ’s Hospital”—sketch of Coleridge in character of Elia
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Wants to form Pantisocracy as a youth. Goes to Europe and studies Kant. Collaborates with Wordsworth on Lyrical Ballads. Col wants to represent supernatural as nature, Wordsworth wants to show natural as supernatural. Noted for borrowing books and returning them annotated. Known as a “Lake Poet.”
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Coleridge Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
narrator stops man on way to wedding, tells man a story of killing an albatross.
Autobiographia Literaria
Coleridge Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Long prose mixture of autobiography, criticism, philosophy, lectures, etc.
“a poem’s purpose is pleasure, not truth.” Talks about “imagination.”
“Frost at Midnight”
Coleridge Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
Christabel
Coleridge Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
At the poem’s opening, it is midnight in Landdale Castle. Everyone is asleep except Christabel, the lovely daughter of Sir Leoline, the lord of the castle. Christabel is roaming in the woods, thinking about her lover, a knight to whom she is betrothed but who is now far away. Hearing a moaning coming from the other side of an oak tree, Christabel discovers a beautiful pale lady, barefoot and with jewels in her hair, who begs for help. Her name is Geraldine. She tells Christabel that she was abducted from her home by five warriors, who tied her to a white horse and brought her to this oak tree and left her, vowing to return. Geraldine begs Christabel for help. They walk back to the castle of Sir Leoline, at the entrance to which Geraldine falls down and must be lifted over the doorstep. This is the first of several hints that Geraldine is an evil spirit, because such beings cannot pass on their own through a doorway that has been blessed. Likewise, when Christabel utters a prayer of thanks to “the Virgin” that they are safe inside, Geraldine cannot join in the prayer. The old watchdog does not bark at this stranger; he only mutters in his sleep, and the ashes in the fireplace suddenly flame up as Geraldine passes by.
In Christabel’s chamber the two ladies undress for sleep. They lie down together, Christabel wrapped in the arms of Geraldine. As Christabel sleeps, the guardian spirit of her dead mother is driven away by Geraldine. Thus, by the end of the first part, the poet has led the reader to the conclusion that Geraldine is entrapping Christabel or trying to seduce her, to capture her soul. But he reminds us that “saints will aid if men will call.”
PART 2. It is morning. Geraldine and Christabel rise and dress, but Christabel retains an uneasy sense of the sinister influence of Geraldine. They visit Sir Leoline, to whom Geraldine introduces herself as the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, a man who had once been Sir Leoline’s closest friend but had since become a bitter enemy. Captivated by the beauty of Geraldine, who embraces and kisses him, Sir Leoline tells his bard Bracey to travel to the castle of Lord Roland and invite him to come back to Langdale Castle.
Meanwhile, Sir Leoline challenges the five scoundrels who abducted Geraldine to appear at a tournament one week later to defend, if they can, their honor. But, seeing Geraldine’s influence over her father, Christabel asks that the guest be sent home at once. Sir Leoline, captivated by Geraldine and in a fury at this breech of hospitality, responds angrily to his daughter. Christabel cannot explain her fears because her tongue has been bewitched by Geraldine. The second part ends with the poet’s meditation about the irrational anger of a parent toward an innocent child.
“Dejection: An Ode”
Coleridge Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Failure of Health
“Kubla Khan”
Coleridge Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“stately pleasure dome”
William Wordsworth
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Lived with sister Dorothy. Known, with Coleridge, as a “Lake Poet.” Known for writing the “Lucy Poems.”
Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Collaborates w Coleridge on various eds
Preface: champions voice of the common shepherd swain. Says poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility.” “He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”
- “Simon Lee”
- “We are Seven”
- “Tintern Abbey”
- “Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known” Lucy poem
- “The Tables Turned”—
- “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” Lucy poem. All twelve lines famous.
- “Michael” Shepherd and son, Luke. Luke gets sent to the city.
- “Nutting”
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Resolution and Independence”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“The World is Too Much With Us”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Intimations of Immorality”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Prelude
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Autobiographical poem
“London, 1802”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Note differences between this and Shelley’s London poem
“Westminster Bridge”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“On Mutability”
Wordsworth Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
William Blake
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Classified as Romantic, but lived a bit earlier and didn’t associate with any of them. Two sections of life: Songs time and mythology time. Reconciliation of opposites is cornerstone of Blake’s poetry.
Songs of Innocence & Experience
Blake Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Blake Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
deals with slavery and transatlantic crossing.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Blake Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
a book of paradoxical aphorisms and his principal prose work. “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” (from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) The work expressed Blake’s revolt against the established values of his time: “Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.”
Some of William Blake’s cosmology
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
- Tharmas—emotion
- Urizen—reason
- Urthona—spirit
- Luva—body
- Los—archetype of creative artist
- Albion—universal man, England
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Didn’t like Southey. Known, with Shelley, as part of the “Satanic School.”
“So We’ll Go No More a Roving”
Byron Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos”
Byron Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Allusion to Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander. Leander only died, but Byron got the ague (a fever).
“Vision of Judgment”
Byron Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Parodies Southey’s “Visions of Judgement.”
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Byron Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Written in Spenserian stanzas, Byron’s first big work. In love with England, Childe travels through Portugal, France, Spain, Greece, Germany, and dies unfulfilled.
Don Juan
Byron Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Mock epic written in octava rima. Characters: Dona Inez, Don Alfarzo, Julia, and Juan.
Manfred
Byron Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Manfred is a wizard who tries to kill himself. The Abott comes and tries to convert Manfred, who dies without his spirit being taken.
Percy Bische Shelley
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Of “Satanic School.” Married at 18 to a girl of 16. Later married William Godwin’s daughter, Mary Godwin (later to be Mary Shelley, writer of Frankenstein). Didn’t like Wordsworth at all as time passed and wrote some pretty mean things about the poet laureate.
“A Defense of Poetry”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
A response to Thomas Love Peacock’s “Four Ages of Poetry.” “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” “Poetry is a record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.” Everyone is, by nature, a poet. Poetry ennobles.
“Mutability” (not Wordsworth’s)
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“To Wordsworth”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Criticizes Wordsworth for losing revolutionary zeal
“Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Ozymandias”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“A Song: Men of England”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“England in 1819”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Criticizes George III. Describes city-scape.
“Ode to the West Wind”
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Prometheus Unbound
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Adonais
Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Mary Shelley
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Husband of Percy Byshhe Shelley and daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Wrote Frankenstien at age 18.
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
about Dr. Frankenstien and his creation, called “creature.”
John Keats
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Young Romantic. Friend of Leigh Hunt and Percy Bysshe Shelley (who wrote Adonis about his death. Died at age 24 of consumption in Rome, Italy. His tombstone reads, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Came up with “negative capability,” which is poet’s ability to lose self in poem. He suggested that “good art is intense because it brings truth and beauty.”
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Sleep and Poetry
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“O, for ten years . . .”
Endymion
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Self-deprecating forward; search for ideal female counterpart; most famous line of poem and Keats in general: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
“When I have fears that I may cease to be”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Knight taken by elfish woman. She feigns love, casts a spell on him that makes him wander the hills. Femme fatale
“Ode to a Nightengale”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Beauty is truth and truth beauty”—that is all you need to know. Images: priest taking bull to slaughter; lovers never kiss
“Ode to Melancholy”
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
“Ay, in the very temple of Delight/ Vieled melancholy has her Sovran shrine/ Though seen of none save hime whose strenuous tongue can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine.”
Lamia
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Long poem. Lamia has two lovers: Lycias and Appollonius.
Fall of Hyperion
Keats Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
About fallen Titans—patterned after Milton.
Jane Austen
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Said she painted her novels on little pieces of ivory.
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Marrianne Dashwood thinks she’ll marry John Willoughby, until Willoughby turns out to be a shmuck. Eventually, Marrianne marries Colonel Brandon.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
The Bennet family has five girls who all need to be married. Then Fitzwilliam Darcy and Charles Bingley move in. Elizabeth Bennet married Darcy and Jane Bennet marries Bingley.
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Fanny Price moves in with her rich relations, the Bertrams, at Mansfield Park. She and Edmund (her cousin) seem like they are going to hit it off, but in comes gallant and dashing Henry to court Fanny. Fanny refuses, but eventually accepts, then refuses again. Good thing, too, because it turns out Henry’s having sex with the ladies. Fanny and Edmund get together and are married.
Emma
Jane Austen Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Emma Woodhouse is a dashing young woman, daughter of a rich man. Mister Knightly and she are wonderful friends, but Emma becomes too superficial for Knightly. He reprimands her for that, she feels bad, the two friends get back together and get married (but this upsets Emma’s friend Harriet Smith).
Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
takes place mostly at Bath, where the nubile Catherine Morland meets Henry and Elenor Tillney. She likes Henry and goes to visit the Tillneys in their “gothic” mansion. The novel is a spoof on the gothic genre a la Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho.
Persuasion
Jane Austen Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Know the following names: Sir Walter, Elizabeth and Anne Elliot, Fredrick Wentworth, and Kellynch Hall (a place).
Anne Radcliffe
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Played on Horace Walpole’s supernatural elements but added the “gothic explique,” which showed how the elements were really naturally explicable. This explanation influenced Edgar Allen Poe in his detective stories like “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders on the Rue Morgue.” She was parodied by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. Hugely popular in her day, incorporating Burke’s notions of the picturesque.
Mysteries of Udolpho
Anne Radcliffe Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
After Emily St. Aubuert is imprisoned by her evil guardian, Count Montoni, in his gloomy medieval fortress in the Appenines, terror becomes the order of the day. With its dream-like plot and hallucinatory rendering of its characters’ psycological states, The Mysteries of Udolpho is a fascinating challenge to contemporary readers.
The Italian
Anne Radcliffe Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
the beautiful Ellena and her lover, Vivaldi, are tormented and chased by a mysterious cowled figure
Thomas Morton
Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
As far as I can tell, he’s only important because he created a character named Mrs. Grundy, who came to symbolize (in a laughing sort of way) all that is proper in England.
Speed the Plough
Thomas Morton Early Romantic (2nd 30 yrs of GIII)
Mrs. Grundy never appears in this play, but one of the characters always alludes to her as his neighbor, asking “What would Mrs. Grundy say?”
