Middle Romantic (1820-1837) Flashcards
Mid Romantic Period
Reign of George IV (1820-30) and William IV (1830 - 37)
Tennyson, Carlyle
(Americans: Cooper, Poe, Irving, Holmes)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Victorian Poet Laureate, after Wordsworth. Grieved death of friend A.H.H.( Arthur Hallam).
“The Lady of Shalott”
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
lady can’t look out of tower—she just weaves—Sees Lancelot, looks out, is cursed. Floats down river and Lancelot compliments her face.
“The Lotus Eaters”
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Spenserian stanzas. Allusion to Odyssey and island of lotus eaters. Odysseus’s men eat lotus’s and don’t want to go back home.
“Ulysses” (not novel)
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Written in memory of Hallam. Allusion to Odysseus (aka Ulysses). Get famous quotes.
In Memorium A.H.H
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Written in memory of Arthur Hallam. Four lined stanzas of iambic tetrameter (abba)—called Memorium Stanzas. Important segments: Prologue—Christ, faith, doubt 27—good to love and lose 56—nature red in tooth and claw 95—spiritual contact with Hallam 124—subverting and containing God
“To Virgil”
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
T loved Virgil
“Marianna”
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Allusion to Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Marianna waits for lover who doesn’t come. Refrain: “The day is dreary, he cometh not. I would I were dead.”
“Charge of the Light Brigade”
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
On Crimean War. A mistaken order. Theirs not to question why, theirs just to do or die.
“Break, Break, Break”
Tennyson Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Thomas Carlyle
Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Weird writer with a sense of the ridiculous, his prose can be berserk as his opinions. A student of German philosophy, including Kant and an early proponent of Goethe.
Sartor Resartus
Carlyle Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
means “Tailor Reclothed.” Work addresses relationship of inward essences and outward appearances. Narrator: Teufelsdrockh. Look for other tell-tale words: Weissnichtwo (narrator’s hometown), Everlasting Yea, Everlasting No, Wanderer (refers to Teulfelsdrockh).
Heroes and Hero-Worship
Carlyle Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
Heros ought to use power in service of others. Although Carlyle recognized the achievements of Cromwell and Napoleon, he saw that in his own time the the hero needed was a thinker and writer.
The French Revolution
Carlyle Mid Romantic (Regency & William IV)
James Fennimore Cooper
Early 1800’s American
(British Vict/Mid-Rom)
A pretty didactic author. His character Natty Bumppo, who appears in nearly all of his fiction, is regarded by some as an archetypal American literary character—like Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.
Leatherstocking Tales
The Leatherstocking Tales
James Fennimore Cooper
Early 1800’s Am (English Vict/Mid Rom)
- Last of the Mohicans *The Pioneers * The Pathfinder * The Deerslayer * The Prairie
Edgar Alan Poe
American early 1800’s
(British early Vict.)
Known for morbid, creep stories and poems. Quest for metrical perfection in poems. Said the most beautiful thing in the world was the death of a beautiful woman.
“The Gold Bug”
Edgar Alan Poe
Am. early 1800’s
Short story
The “Poetic Principle”
Edgar Alan Poe
Am. early 1800’s
an essay that ETS likes. Emphasizes a “devastating excitement of the soul” rather than any aspirations to truth as the principle of poetry.
Washington Irving
Am. Early 1800’s (British Vict./Mid-Rom)
Popularized shortstory in America. Worked for several newspapers. His alter-ego was “Geoffrey Crayon.”
Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving
Am. Early 1800’s
Short story
Ichabod Crane meets the Headless Horseman
Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving
Am. Early 1800’s
Rip goes up to a mountain to hunt, falls asleep, and walks back into town twenty years later. Everything’s changed.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Am. early 1800’s (British Vict./Mid-Rom)
A lawyer and poet
“The Chambered Nautilus”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Am. early 1800’s
“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
30 As the swift seasons roll!
31 Leave thy low-vaulted past!
32 Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
33 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
34 Till thou at length art free,
35 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”
“Old Ironsides”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Am. early 1800’s
“Oh, better that her shattered hulk 18 Should sink beneath the wave; 19 Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 20 And there should be her grave; 21 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 22 Set every threadbare sail, 23 And give her to the god of storms, 24 The lightning and the gale!”
