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Question 1

Which Romantic poem is written as a Spenserian stanza?

Answer 1

Shelley’s elegy to Keats ‘Adonais’ (1821)

Question 2

Which critic praised Keats early works in his book ‘Keats and Embarrassment’

Answer 2

Christopher Ricks

Question 3

What did John Locke say about a language of the 18th century?

Answer 3

Words are arbitrary: there is no inherent connection between the word and the thing.

Question 4

What did the Romantics say about language. Example of what Romantic poet?

Answer 4

Romantics suggests that language arises spontaneously from emotion. Shelley describes how language can be
revitalised by poets ‘Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relation of things.’

Question 5

Wordsworth and the Romantics challenged the statement that poetry should be elevated above the ordinary, by the educated Dryden and Pope.

Answer 5

Wordsworth defines a poet as: ‘He is a man speaking to a man. It is the metre that distinguishes poetry from prose.

Question 6

Letter in May 1819 to his brother George and his wife, about the Shakespearean sonnet:

Answer 6

‘the couplet at the end of it seldom has a pleasing effect.’