Romantic Poetry Flashcards
Individual Context: Holy Thursday (Innocence)
William Blake, published 1789
Ascension Day - When JC goes to heaven, St Paul’s cathedral in London hold a service for the poor children of the London Charity schools
Engraving - children walking 2 by 2
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Individual Context: Holy Thursday (experience)
Same context for its pair Innocence except this was published 5 years later in 1794
Engraving: Barren trees and mountains. Person looks down on a lifeless child and in another she seems to be grieving
Individual context: The Tyger
Experience poem
Engraving: tiger at the bottom and a tree along the side with no leaves.
Individual Context: London (experience)
1794 - published in Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Engraving: child guiding an old man, child trying to warm hands
Poem was inspired by a walk through London
1794 London - big class gap, child workers, poverty, Church of England
Individual Context: The Sick Rose (experience)
Engraving: thorny roses, woman slouched on branch hiding from worm, woman climbing out of the rose
May have been inspired by the Roseire of Salency - festivals of Rose in France which was banned the year his poem was written
Could be inspired by the Tudor Rose/ war of the roses (associations with the monarchy so link to interpreting it as a critique of monarchy etc)
Individual Context: Lines Written In Early Spring
Comes from 1798 Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth wrote this whilst genuinely sat ‘in a grove’ as the poem outlines (basically a lush garden)
Individual context: Tintern Abbey
In 1798 Lyrical Ballads
Pleasure trip (during a tour) revisiting the Wye valley. ‘Above’ shows it as an elevated and distant perspective.
In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, he notes that he didn’t regard it as an Ode but that it contains some of the elements and feelings of one.
Individual context: Ode: On intimations
Published 1807 - more mature than when writing Lyrical Ballads.
Used to be last poem in a collection showing how he wants it to be elevated and separated.
Like Tintern Abbey, it is about maturing which comes with loss but a new outlook can form (this is reflected in the Pindaric Ode form)
Individual Context: Ode To A Nightingale
One of the 1819 Great Odes (so when he began to decline in health)
Horation Ode - structure of these poems are determined by the poet (reinforcing that it is his more personal ode)
Written when he was in Hampstead, London. His friend, Charles Brown said a Nightingale had nested near his home. Keats sat and listened to it for hours, Brown saying Keats ‘felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song’.
Individual Context: Ode On a Grecian Urn
One of the 1819 Great Odes
In inspiration of his trip to the British Museum in May, write another poem about the Elgin marbles which were controversially taken from Greece during its war.
The poem is a collection of the things he saw. Grecian Urns were typical works of art in Ancient Greece which depict everyday life.
Individual Context: Ode On Melancholy
One of the 1819 Great Odes
Read ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ by Robert Burton from 1621 about causes, symptoms and cures of melancholy, saying to avoid it. The poem is frames as a response and how we should actually deal with it.
Themes of death could link to his brother’s death it December 1818 from TB
Writes a letter to his other brother in America saying he is writing ‘in the midst of a great darkness’
Individual Context: Sonnet on the Sea
Written in 1817 so before his brothers death, he’s a little healthier etc
On a retreat to write poetry in the Isle of Wight, feeling a lack of inspiration - which ultimately he harnesses the power of the sea for.
Poem is a sonnet, thus linking it to Shakespeare but he also the play of King Lear is very relevant. In a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, he claims the line “Do you not hear the sea?” haunts him (when the blind Gloucester is told he is at the Dover cliff. The message is that his other senses were closed off) The cliff where he’s staying reminds him of Dover
