History and
Anthology of English
Literature
Mickey Xu
The Romantic Period
Historical background: Industrial
Revolution & French Revolution
Thomas Paine’s “The Right of Man”
was banned and he fled to France to
escape the trail by the British
government.
►
Romanticism It refers to a European intellectual
and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries that sought greater
freedom of personal expression than that allowed by
the strict rules of literary form and logic of the
eighteenth-century neoclassicists. The Romantics
preferred emotional and imaginative expression to
rational analysis. They considered the individual to be
at the center of all experience and so placed him or
her at the center of their art. The Romantics believed
that the creative imagination reveals nobler truths —
unique feelings and attitudes — than those that
could be discovered by logic or by scientific
examination. Both the natural world and the state of
childhood were important sources for revelations of
"eternal truths."
► The
First Generation of Romanticist
Poets
I. Lake Poets: The first generation of
Romantics include Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey. They were also called “Lake Poets”
because they had lived for a time in close
association in the mountainous Lake District
in the northwest of England. They are
regarded as one group also because of their
community of literary and social outlook.
They traversed the same path in politics and
in poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as
conservatives.
►
II. William Wordsworth
life:
William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, in
Cockermouth, Cumberland(a shire). The next year he
met Coleridge, and the three of them grew very close,
the two men meeting daily in 1797-98 to talk about
poetry and to plan Lyrical Ballads, which came out in
1798. The three friends travelled to Germany that fall,
a trip that produced intellectual stimulation for
Coleridge and homesickness for Wordsworth. After
their return, William and Dorothy settled in his
beloved Lake district, near Grasmere.
Durham University granted him an honorary Doctor of
Civil Law degree in 1838, and Oxford conferred the
same honor the next year. When Robert Southey died
in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He
died in 1850, and his wife published the much-revised
Prelude that summer.
► works:
﹡Lyrical Ballads:
In 1789, Wordsworth and
Coleridge jointly published the
“Lyrical Ballads”.
The Preface of the Lyrical
Ballads: The manifesto of the
English Romantic Movement in
poetry.
“His short lyrics: “I Wandered Lonely
as a Cloud”
“Intimations of Immortality”
“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above
Tintern Abbey”
“The Solitary Reaper”
The Prelude: autobiographical, in 14
books, the spiritual record of the
poet’s mind.
►
Style:
﹡Simplicity, vivid imagery, directness of
language, and unadorned beauty.
﹡Wonderful descriptions of nature,
“Nature Poet”.
Byron(1788--1824)
Byron(1788--1824)
►
Life:
born on 22 January 1788 in London.
At the age of 11 he inherited the title Lord Byron
from his uncle and he went back to England. He was
handsome but born with a misformed foot, which
probably affected his disposition.
He was compared to a roaring lion.
In 1809, he started a tour around the Europe and the
East. He went through Portugal, Spain, the
Mediterranean, Turkey, Albania, Asia Minor. The result
was his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a great success.
In 1815, he got married. During his tour in Europe,
he befriended Shelly who infulenced Byron’s later
works.
After the death of Shelly, he went to Greece to help
the Greeks win their liberty.
Works:
Long narrative and dramatic poems:
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: a long poem
of four cantos, written in Spenserian stanza.
This poem tells of Childe’s travel in Europe.
Don Juan: It was written in Italy
Lyrics: When We Two Parted
She Walks in Beauty
Summary
► Byron
wrote this poem the morning after he
had met his beautiful young cousin by
marriage, Mrs. Robert John Wilmot.
► The poet admires the woman’s beauty.
Don Juan: Byron’s masterpiece
► It
was written in Italy during the years
1818---1823. It is 16,000 lines long,
in 16 cantos, and was in ottava rima,
each stanza containing 8 iambic
pentameter lines rhymed abababcc.
► The story takes place in the latter part
of the 18th century. Don Juan, its hero,
is a Spanish youth of noble birth. The
poem tells about the vicissitudes of his
life and his adventures.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
► Life:
► *He
was born in 1792. His father was a
conservative and narrow-minded country
gentleman.
► *Before he was 18, he had written two
romances and published a collection of
poems。
► *At 19, he married with a 16 year-old girl.
The marriage was hasty and unsuitable,
because she could not share his ideas. In
1814, they divorced.
► * He went to Ireland in 1812 and published in
works
►
►
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*Queen Mab
*The Revolt of Islam: a long poem in 1818.
*Prometheus Unbound: his masterpiece, a
lyrical drama in 4 acts.
*The Masque of Anarchy: a political lyric.
*Lyrics on Nature and Love:
Ode to the West Wind.
To a Skylark
Love’s Philosophy.
*A Defence of Poetry: Poetry, so far from being
deteriorated and made powerless by the advance
of civilization, is actually the indispensable agent
of civilization.
John Keats
Life:
---He was born in 1795 in London. His father was a
stable keeper.
---Before he was 15, both of his parents died and he
started to be an apprentice to a surgeon.
---He made friends with Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt and
Shelley in London and published some poems. His
first collection of poems was published under the
help of Shelley.
---In 1818 he started on a walking tour through
England and Scotland, during which he witnessed the
poverty and privations of the people.
---Keats also lived in poverty. When looking after his
brother who was badly ill, Keats was stricken with the
same illness.
---Keats fell in love with a young lass Fanny Browne
but could not marry her on account of his poverty
and illness.
---Shelley invited Keats to come to Italy for medical
treatment. But shortly after his arrival in Rome he
died in 1821.
►Works
*long poems:
EndymionIsabella
The Eve of St. Agnes
LamiaHyperrion: unfinished
*Short poems
Ode to Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Ode in a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale( the best)
His Principle: Beauty in truth, truth
in beauty
Some Women Writers (Jane Austen, the
Bronte sisters, Mrs. Gaskell and Gorge Eliot)
Among the distinguished English novelists of
the 19th century are several women. Women
novelists began to appear in England
during the second half of the 18th
century. But some gifted women of the 19th
century made such contributions to the
development of the English novel that they
have justifiably won their places in the front
ranks of the brilliant realists headed by
Dickens and Thackeray. These remarkable
women novelists are Jane Austen, the Bronte
sisters, Mrs. Gaskell and Gorge Eliot.
► Jane
Austen (1775--1817)
--lived and worked at the turn of the century.
--daughter of a country clergyman, passed
all her life in doing small domestic duties in
the countryside.
--refused to acknowledge that she was the
author of her novels, which were published
anonymously owing to the prejudice
prevailing at the time concerning the writing
of novels by a lady.
--living a quiet life in the countryside, she
kept her eyes steadily upon the people and
incidents about her, and wrote about the
small world she lived in.
Pride and Prejudice
► Work
--six novels:
Northanger Abbey
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice (the most widely
read
among them)
Mansfield Park
Emma
Persuasion
►Themes
Theme is the fundamental and
often universal idea explored in a
literary work. The term is used
interchangeably with thesis.
► ---Love
---Reputation
Analysis of Major Characters
Elizabeth Bennet
she is lovely, clever. Nevertheless, her
sharp tongue and tendency to make
hasty judgments often lead her astray.
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Intelligent and forthright, he too has a
tendency to judge too hastily and
harshly, and his high birth and wealth
make him overly proud and overly
conscious of his social status.
► Charles
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►
►
►
Lamb(1775--1834)
Life: ﹡a lifelong friend of Coleridge, and an admirer
and defender of the poetic creed of Wordsworth.
﹡But while the romantic poets were interested in
nature and country life, Charles Lamb felt more at
home in the city than in the wild nature. He
passed all his days in London.
He showed us a romantic imagination which
can find its stimulus not only in nature and in country
life but also in society and people.
﹡He is considered as the finest familiar
essayist in England. (The familiar essay is
characterized by its relaxed style, its conventional
tone, and its wide range of subject matter. )
Works:
Tales from Shakespeare
(1818)
Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets Contemporary
with Shakespeare(1808)
Essays of Elia (1820)
Last Essays of Elia
► Features:
 He is a humorist and a master of puns
and jokes, which abounds in his essays.
 He is fond of old writers. His writings are
full of archaisms.
 His essays are intensely personal.
 His romanticism is different from
Wordsworth’s. He was a romanticist of
city, and his imagination was inspired by
the busy life of London.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832),
Scottish writer and poet and one of the
greatest historical novelists.
Works:
► He
is regarded as the founder and great
master of the historical novel.
1).the group of novels on the history of
Scotland: Waverley (1814), Guy Mannering
(1815), Old Morality (1816), Rob Roy (1817)
2). The group of novels on English
History: Ivanhoe (1819), famous for
the realistic description of the life of
feudal England.
3). The group of novels on the history of
European countries:
Quentin Durward (1823)
St. Ronan’s Wells (1823): the only novel of
Scott’s which deals with his contemporary life.
► His
influence:
Scott’s historical novels combine a
romantic atmosphere with a
realistic description of historical
background, thus paving the way for
some of the best works of Dickens and
Thackery. In fact, his literary career
marks the transition from
romanticism to realism in English
literature of the 19th century.