Romanticism
1798 - 1832
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An artistic, literary and intellectual movement
During this period there was a broad shift of emphasis in the arts, away from the
structured, intellectual, reasoned approach of the 18th century ( the Age of Reason or
the Enlightenment) towards ways of looking at the world which recognised the
importance of the emotions and the imagination.
A violent reaction against
– classical forms
– conservative morality
– authoritarian government
Sources of inspiration
Literary
- Sturm und Drang movement in Germany (storm and stress, storm and urge) –
individual subjectivity and extremes of emotions
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of the Young Werter)
- J. C. F. von Schiller
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- Immanuel Kant – knowledge as the outcome of both senses and understanding
Political
- The French Revolution 1789
- The American Revolution 1776
- Other wars of independence (Poland, Greece, Spain)
1st generation of Romantic Poets – The Lake Poets: William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
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An emphasis on the emotions
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Exploring the bonds between nature and humans
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A stress on the importance of personal experience and imagination
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Country life as an alternative to industrial cities – poetry composed of emotions
recalled in tranquility
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An interest in mythological, fantastical, gothic and supernatural themes
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Spiritual awareness, which could be stimulated by a grand and awesome landscape
William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
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had a sister Dorothy (poet, diarist)
their mother died in 1778
their father died in 1783
In 1790, he visited Revolutionary France and supported the Republican movement.
The following year, he graduated from Cambridge without distinction.
In November 1791, Wordsworth returned to France and took a walking tour of
Europe.
He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their
child, Caroline.
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the next year because of lack of money and Britain's tensions with France, he
returned alone to England.
1793 saw Wordsworth's first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk
and Descriptive Sketches.
That year, he also met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly
developed a close friendship.
Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads
(1798).
in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, visited Annette and Caroline in France.
In 1802, after returning from his trip to France with Dorothy to visit Annette and
Caroline.
Wordsworth received the inheritance owed by Lord Lonsdale since John
Wordsworth's death in 1783.
Later that year, he married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson.
The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, John.
For a time (starting in 1810), Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the
latter's opium addiction.
Two of his children, Thomas and Catherine, died in 1812.
In 1814 he published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part The Recluse.
When his daughter, Dora, died in 1847, his production of poetry came to a standstill.
William Wordsworth died in Rydal Mount in 1850 and was buried at St. Oswald's
church in Grasmere.
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Wordsworth argues that poetry:
- should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in the lofty
and elaborate dictions
- should offer access to the emotions contained in memory
- the first principle of poetry should be pleasure
- the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful
expression of feeling
Wordsworth and Coleridge were for bringing poetry back to its primitive simplicity and
state of nature
Wordsworth's poetry 'is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, and is carried along
with, the revolutionary movement of our age: the political changes of the day were the model
on which he formed and conducted his poetical experiments‘.
Ballad
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„escape from reality into the realm of magical lushness, pastoralism and
romance”
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seemingly mundane subjects are revealed anew
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Ballad stanza – a quatrain of alternating lines of tetrameter or trimeter, rhyming
abab
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narrative action and use of dramatic dialogue
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set formulas, refrains
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themes: basic relationships , esp. between parents and children (The Mad
Mother), or encounters between a poet and another person (We are Seven)
Nature
„Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey”
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a poem of re-visitation (He is revisiting a place where once he had no knowledge of
the sublime, and no 'feeling' towards nature)
The poem takes place in poet’s mind
A poet is overcome with the sublime
sublime = divine creativity
Nature is a form of protection against the evil of the world
Poetry should be composed of „emotions recalled in tranquillity”
This poem paves way for Romantic odes of Coleridge, Keats and Shelley
Ode
'Tintern Abbey' is a pioneering example of the Romantic ode.
Ode – a long lyric poem that is serious in subject, elevated in style, and elaborate in its
stanzaic structure.
Romantic ode - personal ode of description and passionate meditation, which is stimulated
by an aspect of the outer scene and turns on the attempt to solve either a personal emotional
problem or a generally human one.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
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Son of a vicar, Graduated from Cambridge
Co-author of Lyrical Ballads
Between 1797 – 98 he lived in Nether Stowey, Somerset (5 miles from Wordsworth)
1798 – Germany
1799 – stayed at Thomas Hutchinson’s farm, fell in love with two sisters: Coleridge
with Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth with Mary
1800 – moved near Grasmere – marital problems, opium addiction, tensions with
Wordsworth
1808 – separation from his wife
1810 – quarrel with Wordsworth
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• This poem is written in lines, but there is a gloss (written in proze). The gloss is an
additional information, discription what is in poem.
• Coleridge used archaich, lofty language in ballad. So he broke the rule that lyrical
ballad should be written with easy vocabulary.
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Allegorical tale of death, nightmare and hallucination
Account of sin and restoration
may have been inspired by James Cook’s voyage to the South Seas
loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but, occasionally,
as many as nine lines long
intentionally archaic language
strange scholarly notes printed in small type in the margins
The summary ( I wrote the summary using the gloss)
• An ancient Mariner stopped one of three wedding guests
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The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and
constrained to hear his tale.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till
it reached the south pole
The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.
They sailed through The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was
to be seen.
Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was
received with great joy and hospitality:
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came ;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck
But when the fog cleared off, they justify the gilt, and thus make themselves
accomplices in the crime
The fair breeze continues ; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward,
even till it reaches the Line.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free ;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.
And the Albatross begins to be avenged.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea !
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
• A Spirit had followed them ; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither
departed souls nor angels ; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the
Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus,
• The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient
Mariner : in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck.
 Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
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The ancient Mariner noticed A certain shape
At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship
A flash of joy
And horror follows. can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide ?
Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and she (the latter) winneth
the ancient Mariner.
At the rising of the MoonOne after another, His shipmates drop down dead
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the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his
horrible penance
• the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men
• In his loneliness he noticec the beauty of God’creatures and The spell begins to
break
• By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.
• The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on
• But not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a
blessed troop of angelic spirits
• The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in
obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance.
• Sailer fell down then 2 voices talk each other andfor the angelic power causeth the
vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure. the Mariner awakes,
and his penance begins anew. The curse is finally broken.and he reached his
country.
• The ship sank. The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, And appear in their own
forms of light
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Only ancient mariner survived - The Hermit of the Wood saved him.
• He travelled from land to land andt taught, by his own example, love and reverence to
all things that God made and loved
 Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest !
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
 He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is about the experiences of a sailor who has returned
from a long sea voyage.
1. Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is stopped by
an old sailor.
2. The Mariner's tale began with his ship departing on its journey. the ship was driven
south course.
3. An albatross appeared and led them out of the Antarctic ,the Mariner shot the bird.
4. They sailed to Pacyfic ocean and sea began to be calm. If there wasn’t wind they
couldn’t move, so they were thirsty and angry, they stuck in the middle ocean.
5. In anger, the crew forced the Mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck.
6. Eventually the ghostly ship encountered, where on board were Death and the Life-inDeath" (a deathly-pale woman), who were playing dice for the souls of the crew. With
a roll of the dice, Death won the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life
of the Mariner
. One by one, the crew members died, but the sailer lived on,
8. he noticed true beauty of sea creatures swimming in the water and blessed them.
Then the albatross fell from his neck and his guilt was partially expiated.
9. The bodies of the crew, were possessed by good spirits, which steered the ship
back home, where it sank in a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. A hermit
saved the old, As penance for shooting the albatross, the Mariner, driven by guilt, is
forced to wander the earth, tell his story, and teach a lesson to those he meets: All
things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
10. After the story, the Mariner left, and the Wedding Guest returned home, and woke
upthe next morning as "a sadder and a wiser man".
The main features in The rime of an ancient mariner
• The importance of supernatural
The Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton ship.
And those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate ?
And is that Woman all her crew ?
Is that a DEATH ? and are there two ?
Is DEATH that woman's mate ?
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The beauty of supernatural – angels, ghost, death, the spirit of the south pole
The importance of individual – the subject of poem is ordinary person – the old sailer
The beauty of nature – a beautiful discrpition of storm:
Supernatural → a technique of psychological revelation → the hidden forces of the mind
Symbolic meaning:
- violation of divine natural order
- breaking the bond with nature
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spiritual death (isolation from his fellows and God)
Pantheistic belief in the unity between nature and divine spirit
Kubla-Khan (1797)
- A dream poem
- Inspired by Orient
- Interaction of the conscious and unconscious act of creation
- Trance-like form
Biographia Literaria (1817)
- philosophical autobiography + literary criticism
- theory of imagination: he differentiates between Imagination and Fancy
- Poetry is not imitation, but creation based on the sensations and impressions
received from the external world
- the organic wholeness of a poem (its form is determined by its content)
Figures of Speech
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Personification:
Another kind of comparison is called personification. Here, animals, elements of
nature, and abstract ideas are given human qualities.
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Pun:
A play on words which uses words that sound alike but have different meanings.
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Onomatopoeia:
Using a word (or a group of words) whose sound reinforces its meaning.
Allusions:
A reference, usually brief, to a person, place, thing, or event with which the reader is
presumably familiar. The allusion lets the reader condense great meaning into only a
few words. Allusions often refer to mythology, history, religious and literary texts, etc.
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