Ms. Crandell
AP Eng Lit
Guided Notes: English Romantic Poetry
Name__________________
Period ______
1. Romanticism was a revolt against___________________________, which prized:
2. Romanticism bridges which two periods?
3. Major features of Romantic poetry include:
4. The “sublime” is:
5. Timeframe:
6. First generation of British Romantic poets:
7. William Wordsworth:
8. Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
9. The canon of British Romantic poets:
Whenever you encounter one of these names, you will find that their poetry tends to:
• Show exuberance and optimism about the prospects for changing the individual and society
• Explore divisions within the human psyche (between self and others and self and nature)
• Strive after the infinite, not after limited perfection
• Treat poetry as an organic, living entity or whole
• Emphasize individual expression, not imitation and obedience to formal rules
• Emphasize the concrete, the sensuous, and the particular in poetry
• Valorize engagement with nature as the regenerator of imagination and guide for all that is best
in humankind
• See the poet as “the rock of defense for human nature” (Wordsworth); the poet has the power to
reunite a fragmented self and society
• Stress creative imagination as the source of art; the mind at least partially creates what we call
“the world”
• Revere and explore the subjective nature of memory
• Are concerned with “originality” and “authority”: they must “create a system,” or be “enslav'd by
another man’s” (Blake)
• Defy the moral codes of ordinary society
• Believe that poetry does not so much delight and teach (Neoclassical requirements) as help the
reader undergo a poetic/spiritual experience
10. Second generation of British Romantic poets:
11. Final word on William Wordsworth:
Ms. Crandell
AP Eng Lit
Guided Notes: Modernist Poetry
Name____________________
Period ______
1. Literary timeframe: when was the Modern Period?
2. How did Modernism arise?
Modern writers:
• break with the past
• reject literary traditions that seemed outmoded
•reject aesthetic values of their predecessors
• reject diction that seemed too genteel to suit an era of technological breakthroughs and global
violence
• break with Romantic pieties and clichés (such as the notion of the sublime) and become selfconsciously skeptical of language and its claims on coherence
3. What are some characteristics of Modern poetry?
a.
b.
c.
d.
4. Who were some of the Modern poets?