Romantic idea of poetry and
its role
Second generation of romantic
poets
The second generation of poets
(since 1812):
• George Gordon Noel Byron 1788-1824
BIOGRAPHY
• Lord Byron was born as George Gordon on January 22,
1788 in London, England. As the son of Captain John
"Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, Lady Catherine
Gordon.
• Lord Byron received his education at the Grammar
School in Aberdeen until 1801, when he was sent to
Harrow and remained there until 1805. After, he
proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge and became
fascinated with history, fiction and extravagant life.
• On February 27, 1812 Lord Byron took his seat at the
House of Lords and made his first speech there.
Scandalist? Love Affairs?
Byron then became the most popular person
in Regency London, writing poetry and
carrying on illicit affairs, most notably with
Lady Caroline, wife of future Prime
Minister, William Lamb.
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount
Melbourne
Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–
1841).
Incestuous relationship…
There are also rumors of Byron's
involvement with a choir boy and an
incestuous relationship with his half-sister,
Augusta Leigh, however many scholars
dispute this.
Travelling…
• Lord Byron began spending much of his
money on the Greek rebellion. He later
met a Greek boy, Loukas Khalandritsanos,
and employed him as a page and possibly
had a sexual relationship with.
Good husband?
• To help avoid scandal, Byron chose to marry
Anne Isabella Milbanke (Annabella), cousin of
Lady Caroline who refused him a year earlier.
The two married at Seaham Hall, County
Durham on January 2, 1815. As a stipulation in
her mother's will, Annabella's beneficiaries must
take her family name. Lord Byron then became
known as George Gordon Noel Byron in 1822.
Anne Isabella Milbanke (Annabella)
Her portrait
Bad father…
• The marriage was an unhappy one, mainly
due to the birth of a daughter, Augusta
Ada, instead of a son. On January 16,
1816 Lady Byron left George and took Ada
with her. On April 21, the two were legally
separated. George then left England, due
to pressure by his creditors leading him to
sell his library, forever.
Unwanted daughter, but later…
famous
Her portrait
In literature sphere
• the great English romantic poet, epic,
dramatist, radicalist, affairs, scandalist.
liberal
- influence for Polish Romanticism
- poet with ‘foreign’ face and called
Napoleon of poets
- lyrical poetry and satire
- ‘lyric mask’ technique in literature
WORKS:
• ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’
Childe Harold, a young English nobleman, became
despondent, because the only young woman he loved
would not return that love. He had long been engaged in
drinking and general idleness, and was generally seen as
a very unpleasant character by almost everyone,
including his parents. Desperate, he decided to embark
on a journey in an attempt to find happiness, or at least
to give some meaning to his life.
He left England by ship, with no clear destination. As he
left, he sang a mournful song, bidding farewell to his
homeland, to his parents, and especially to his...
‘The Giaour’
• The tale which these disjointed fragments present is founded upon
circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either
because the ladies are more circumspect than in the "olden time,"
or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise.
• The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female
slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for
infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time
the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and
soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which
they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian
invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes, on being refused the
plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and
to the desolation of the Morea; during which the cruelty exercised
on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful.
‘The Corsair’
• was a semi-autobiographical tale in verse by Lord Byron
in 1814, which was extremely popular and influential in
its day, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of
sale. Its poetry, divided in cantos (as Dante's ‘Divine
Comedy’), narrates the story of the corsair Conrad, how
he was in his youth rejected by society because of his
actions and his later fight against humanity (excepting
women). The opera ‘Il corsaro’ by Giuseppe Verdi, the
overture ‘Le Corsaire’ by Hector Berlioz and the ballet ‘Le
Corsaire’ by Marius Petipa were based on this work.
‘The Corsair’
The cover of book
‘Don Juan’
• Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which
•
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Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced
by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"
(Don Juan, c. xiv, st. 99). Modern critics generally consider it Byron's masterpiece,
with a total of over sixteen thousand individual lines of verse. Byron completed 16
cantos, leaving an unfinished 17th criticized for its 'immoral content', though it was
also immensely popular.
canto before his death in 1824. Byron claimed he had no ideas in his mind as to what
would happen in subsequent cantos as he wrote his work.
When the first two cantos were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was
criticized for its 'immoral content', though it was also immensely popular.
‘Song For The Luddites’
The term "Luddites" dates from 1811, and was applied first
to frame-breakers, and then to the disaffected in
general. It was derived from a half-witted lad named
Ned Lud, who entered a house in a fit of passion, and
destroyed a couple of stocking-frames. The song was an
impromptu, enclosed in a letter to Moore of December
24, 1816. "I have written it principally," he says, "to
shock your neighbour who is all clergy and loyalty- mirth
and innocence- milk and water."
‘ Hours of Idleness’
• first collection of poems by Lord Byron,
published in 1807 when he was 19 years old.
The poems are generally regarded as
commonplace at best. The date of each poem’s
composition was noted in the book. A sneering
review published in ‘The Edinburgh Review’ in
1808 dismissed his efforts as the self-indulgent
work of a titled youth. In response Byron
published, anonymously, his satiric poem
‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ (1809).
Byron’s hero
• The Byronic hero is an idealized but flawed
character exemplified in the life and writings of
English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was
characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a
lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and
dangerous to know". The Byronic hero first
appears in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic
narrative poem ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’
(1812–1818).
His motto:
‘Laugh when I laugh,
I seek no other fame’
/from
‘English Bards and ScotchReviewers’,
1809/
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Poetry:
- abstract ideas
- ‘poet of idea’
- with ‘tone of revolutional etiude’
- hellenism
- neoplatton esthetic
- methaporic poetry
- revolutional and indenpendence ideas
- admiration to space
As a person and artist…
• radicalist
• poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist
• sad private life
• his poetry connected old generation with
younger
• poet for poets, poet of the moon and stars
‘Ode to the West Wind’ 1820
- Five sonnets
IV
If I were a dead leaf you mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
/Gdybym był martwym liściem, który mógłbyś unieść;
Gdybym był chmurą i mógł z tobą iść w zawody;
Falą, której odbierasz dech, a która sunie/
V
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
/Rozrzuć po świecie moje słowa pośród ludzi
Jak z niewygaszonego pieca iskry chyże!
Przez me usta bądź ziemi, którą trzeba zbudzić,/
‘Ode to the West Wind’ 1820 part
2
• This poem is a highly controlled text about the role of
the poet as the agent of political and moral change. This
was a subject Shelley wrote a great deal about,
especially around 1819, with this strongest version of it
articulated the last famous lines of his "Defence of
Poetry": "Poets are the hierophants of an
unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic
shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the
words which express what they understand not; the
trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they
inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
‘The sensitive Plant’ 1820
…That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
‘Tis we, ‘tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
‘Queen Mab’ 1813
• dedicated to his young wife, Harriet Westbook, in 9 parts
• Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem; With Notes, published in
1813 in nine cantos with seventeen notes, was the first large poetic
work written by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), the English
Romantic poet. After substantial reworking, a revised edition of a
portion of the text was published in 1816 under the title The
Daemon of the World.
• This poem was written early in Shelley's career and serves as a
foundation to his theory of revolution. It was his first major poem.
In this work, he depicts a two-pronged revolt involving necessary
changes, brought on by both nature and the virtuousness of
humans.
Mary Shelley (Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin)
• the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley
• an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist,
•
essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best
known for her Gothic novel ‘Frankenstein’ or
‘The Modern Prometheus’ (1818).
Her father was the political philosopher William
Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher
and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
‘Prometheus Unbound’ 1820
• is a four-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1820,
concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure
Prometheus and his suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by
Aeschylus ‘Prometheus Bound’ and concerns Prometheus release
from captivity. Unlike Aeschylus version, however, there is no
reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus. Instead, Zeus is
overthrown, which allows Prometheus to be released.
• Shelley's play is closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be
produced on the stage. In the tradition of Romantic poetry, Shelley
wrote for the imagination, intending his play's stage to reside in the
imaginations of his readers. However, the play is filled with
suspense, mystery and other dramatic effects that make it, in
theory, performable.
‘The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’
• The speaker says that the shadow of an invisible Power floats among
human beings, occasionally visiting human hearts—manifested in summer
winds, or moonbeams, or the memory of music, or anything that is precious
for its mysterious grace. Addressing this Spirit of Beauty, the speaker asks
where it has gone, and why it leaves the world so desolate when it goes—
why human hearts can feel such hope and love when it is present, and such
despair and hatred when it is gone. He asserts that religious and
superstitious notions—”Demon, Ghost, and Heaven”—are nothing more
than the attempts of mortal poets and wise men to explain and express
their responses to the Spirit of Beauty, which alone, the speaker says, can
give “grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.” Love, Hope, and Self-Esteem
come and go at the whim of the Spirit, and if it would only stay in the
human heart forever, instead of coming and going unpredictably, man
would be “immortal and omnipotent.” The Spirit inspires lovers and
nourishes thought; and the speaker implores the spirit to remain even after
his life has ended, fearing that without it death will be “a dark reality.”
‘The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’
part 2
Form
• Each of the seven long stanzas of the “Hymn to
Intellectual Beauty” follows the same, highly
regular scheme. Each line has an iambic rhythm;
the first four lines of each stanza are written in
pentameter, the fifth line in hexameter, the sixth,
seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh lines
in tetrameter, and the twelfth line in pentameter.
(The syllable pattern for each stanza, then, is
555564444445.) Each stanza is rhymed
ABBAACCBDDEE.
‘The Cloud’
• I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
‘Liberty’
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I.
The fiery mountains answer each other;
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.
II.
From a single cloud the lightening flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground.
III.
But keener thy gaze than the lightening’s glare,
And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lamp
To thine is a fen-fire damp.
IV.
From billow and mountain and exhalation
The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,-And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night
In the van of the morning light.
‘Love’s Philosophy’ 1819
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The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
‘Epipsychidion’ 1821
• Source: love to Emily Viviani, ‘the spirit od
poet’s spirit’
• Topics: beauty of world, free love, full of
life
• Scenary: middeterranian ‘great Arkady’,
mythic ‘Golden century’
• Hedonism of spirit and body
John Keats (1795-1821)
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No-aristicratic roots
Son of the owner of horse stable
junior surgeon (occupation)
Without upper education
The same political camp like Byron and Shelley
Esthetic, lyric, epic
Excellent odes
Untypical romantic
Died on tuberculosis in 25th year of life
Very maturity poetry
‘Play of 5 senses’
Poet of the sun
Poet for optimistics
Two important sentences of Keats:
• „The poetry of earth is never dead”
• „ A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”
Topics of poetry:
• nature
• beauty around the world
• works of art
• ancient world
• hot summer scenery
• full contact with nature
Isabella Jones
• ‘Hush, Hush! ‘ ["o sweet Isabel"]
• in 1821, Jones was one of the first people
in England to be notified of Keats's death
the first version of „Bright Star”
• Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May 1817, while on holiday in the
village of Bo Peep, near Hastings. She is described as beautiful,
talented and widely read, not of the top flight of society yet
financially secure, an enigmatic figure who would become a part of
Keats's circle. Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitates to
own his sexual attraction to her, although they seem to enjoy
circling each other rather than offering commitment. He writes that
he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of 1818–19, and in his
letters to George says that he "warmed with her" and "kissed her".
It is unclear how close they were but Bate and Gittings suggest the
trysts may represent a sexual initiation for Keats. Jones' greatest
significance may be as an inspiration and steward of Keats's writing
Fanny Brawne
• „Bright Star"
• Their love remained unconsummated;
jealousy for his 'star' began to gnaw at
him
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’
• Written in 1819, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' was the
third of the five 'great odes' of 1819, which are
generally believed to have been written in the
following order - Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian
Urn, Melancholy, and Autumn. Of the five,
Grecian Urn and Melancholy are merely dated
'1819'. Critics have used vague references in
Keats's letters as well as thematic progression to
assign order. ('Ode on Indolence', though
written in March 1819, perhaps before Grecian
Urn, is not considered one of the 'great odes'.)
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ part 2
• This ode contains the most discussed two lines in all of Keats's
poetry - '"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all/Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.' The exact meaning of those lines is
disputed by everyone; no less a critic than TS Eliot considered them
a blight upon an otherwise beautiful poem. Scholars have been
unable to agree to whom the last thirteen lines of the poem are
addressed. Arguments can be made for any of the four most
obvious possibilities, -poet to reader, urn to reader, poet to urn, poet
to figures on the urn. The issue is further confused by the change
in quotation marks between the original manuscript copy of the ode
and the 1820 published edition. (This issue is further discussed at
the bottom of this page.)
‘To Autumn’
• "To Autumn" describes, in its three stanzas,
three different aspects of the season: its
fruitfulness, its labour and its ultimate decline.
Through the stanzas there is a progression from
early autumn to mid autumn and then to the
heralding of winter. Parallel to this, the poem
depicts the day turning from morning to
afternoon and into dusk. These progressions are
joined with a shift from the tactile sense to that
of sight and then of sound, creating a three-part
symmetry which is missing in Keats's other odes.
‘To Autumn’ part 2
• "To Autumn" is a poem of three stanzas, each of
eleven lines. Like others of Keats's odes written
in 1819, the structure is that of an odal hymn,
having three clearly defined sections
corresponding to the Classical divisions of
strophe, antistrophe, and epode.The stanzas
differ from those of the other odes through use
of eleven lines rather than ten, and have a
couplet placed before the concluding line of each
stanza