Lesson 1: Romantic Period Flashcards
is called the songwriter of Scotland because many of his poems have been set to music. In fact, musicality is the leading quality of this Scottish poet. He was the son of a farmer, he lived his sad, toil some life in the open air under the sun and rain.
Robert Burns
In his poems, he addresses himself not to the sophisticated but to the common people who are lovers of the ideal and whose hearts are unspoiled. Simple human emotions furnish the subject matter of his poetry, this is probably the reason why his poems have found their way into the hearts of people all over the world.
Robert Burns
was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He spent his boyhood filling his mind with Scottish songs, ballads, and legends. His contribution to English literature was many-sided. His poetic narratives based on Scottish legends as well as his magnificent series of novels depicting Scottish life and manners have given him an assured place in English literature.
Sir Walter Scott
was England’s greatest poet of nature There are three things we notice in his poems: (1) he loved to be alone and was never lonely when with nature, (2) he felt the presence of some living spirit in nature, real though unseen, companionable though silent, (3) the impressions he recorded in his poems are similar to our own and are delightfully familiar
William Wordsworth
He expressed a definite philosophy of life. (1) He believed that in childhood, one is extremely sensitive to all-natural influences and represents the beauty and gladness of the world. This closeness to nature and God glorifies childhood. (2) The natural instincts and pleasures of childhood are the true standards of a man’s happiness in life (3) The truth of humanity is found in the common people of the country, not in the sophisticated life of the city. (4) In every natural object is a reflection of the living God.
William Wordsworth
like Wordsworth, was a great nature lover, but while Wordsworth found hope and faith in his kinship with nature and God, ___ dwelt on nature’s beauty. __, who drowned at age thirty while boating in the sea off Italy, was like a wanderer following a vague vision, forever sad and forever disappointed.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Like Shelley’s, there are two sides to the poetry of ___ : one cynical and pessimistic-the thoughts of a bitterly dis-illusioned man, honest in his unhappy outlook-the other with a poetic feeling about nature expressed in stirring rhythmic lines. Like Shelley, ___ was widely misunderstood by his contemporaries. Both died young in self-imposed exile from England.
George Gordon, Lord Byron
was born of poor parents who, at his birth, lived in a stable. Toward the end of his school days, he was set dreaming by his read- ing of poetry, and he decided on a poetic career. He was helped by Shelley and Leigh Hunt who both gave him encouragement and hospitality. His first poems were bitterly attacked by the literary reviewers, but this did not prevent Keats from continuing to write. Keats’s literary career was very brief; all his important poems were written in the span of four years. He died of tuberculosis at age twenty-five. His last sonnet, “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be,” written when he was dying, laments the fact that he had so much more to give the world, but there was no time left for him to do so.
John Keats
