Romantic Poetry Presentation
AP Literature
The Romantic Movement… brief overview
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rakesh_Ramubhai_Patel
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The Romantic Movement was a revolt against the Enlightenment
and its focus on rational and scientific thought.
The characteristics of Romantic literature involved an emphasis
on passion, emotion, spontaneity, subjectivity, mortality, and
nature.
Throughout the 19th century, romantic poetry, in particular,
became the most significant work of the period.
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake,
Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats are the notable
British Romantic poets.
Nature, religious fervor, emotional response to beauty, and
Ancient Greek aesthetics, are some of the common themes in their
work.
Note that each Romantic poet had his own style and emphasized
different aspects. That’s where you come in with your research.
Your Presentation:
Your task:
 To collaborate with your peers to present an extensively
researched, creative, intelligent, and perceptive lesson to the class,
based upon your English Romantic poet.
 Your objective is to reveal a clear, deep understanding of
eighteenth century English Romanticism and its ideals, precepts,
style, and themes in poetry as it pertains specifically to your poet.
 You should engage the class in an interesting lesson that will
enhance their understanding of the poems written by your
romantic poet, and you should test their knowledge with a quiz at
the end of the lesson.
 Divide the work up equally and fairly, and be a responsible and
positive group contributor.
Components of the lesson:
Introducing your poet
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Provide an interesting, comprehensive, creative,
entertaining background insight into the poet, his major
works, and his “philosophy” of art (poetry)
Select a format to impart the information (skit,
interview, talk show, video, lecture notes, visuals,
power-point, etc.)
Teaching a poem to the class
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Select one of your Romantic poet’s poems to teach to the class.
This means analyzing the poem thoroughly, paying special
attention to the language, poetic devices, structure, and overall
style of the poem, and its overall meaning.
Be sure to connect the poem’s concepts to those of Romanticism.
Turn in a written copy of your analysis of the poem, along with a
thoroughly annotated copy of the poem to Mrs. Lax on the day of
presentation.
Make sure that you give a copy of the poem to every student in
the class. (There are 46 students in the class.)
Be sure to include the class and invite them to participate in your
lesson with some kind of activity, etc.
Original poem written in the style of your poet
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Compose, and then read to the class an original poem
that models the style, format, structure, concepts, etc. of
your romantic poet.
Turn in a copy of this poem to Mrs. Lax on the day of
presentation, along with a one-page, typed
rationale/explanation of the techniques that you
employed in order to replicate your poet’s style.
Class QUIZ
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Compile a quiz for the class, based upon the poems that you
taught them in your lesson.
Your quiz should address the literary devices, style, and meanings
of the poems, as well as the information that you provided on the
poet.
Turn in a copy of the quiz and key to Mrs. Lax on the day of
presentation.
If there’s time, you will give your quiz at the end of your lesson,
or the class will take the quiz at the beginning of the next class
period.
You will be responsible for grading the quizzes and turning them
all in with scores attached, to Mrs. Lax the following class
period.
Your quiz should contain ten multiple-choice questions and five
matching questions for a total of fifteen points.
Have Fun!
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Please note! You must turn in a thorough
bibliography and list of sources/references.
No bibliography? No grade.
BRIEF notes about each Romantic
Poet…. To help you make a selection!
William Blake
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-blake
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In his Life of William Blake (1863)
Alexander Gilchrist warned his
readers that Blake "neither wrote nor
drew for the many, hardly for
work'y-day men at all, rather for
children and angels; himself 'a divine
child,' whose playthings were sun,
moon, and stars, the heavens and the
earth."
Yet Blake himself believed that his
writings were of national importance
and that they could be understood by
a majority of men.
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Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and
worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of
great social and political change that profoundly
influenced his writing.
Poet, painter, and engraver, Blake worked to bring about
a change both in the social order and in the minds of men.
Blake’s two famous volumes of poems, Songs of
Innocence and Songs of Experience show "the two
Contrary States of the Human Soul." (Blake)
Blake had a unique religious, spiritual viewpoint based
on a visionary idea, freedom, and individualism, and he
had radical political views.
William Wordsworth
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296
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Wordsworth's mother died
when he was eight--this
experience shapes much of his
later work. Not long after, his
father died, leaving him and his
four siblings orphans.
Wordsworth's poetry centers
around the interest and
sympathy for the life, troubles
and speech of the "common
man".
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Wordsworth was influenced by his wanderings and his
preoccupation with nature and man’s obsession with materialism.
He was friendly with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Wordsworth's most famous work is The Prelude. The poem,
revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet
and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry.
Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life,
the poem was published posthumously.
Wordsworth spent his final years settled at Rydal Mount in
England, travelling and continuing his outdoor excursions.
Devastated by the death of his daughter Dora in 1847,
Wordsworth seemingly lost his will to compose poems. William
Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850, leaving his
wife Mary to publish The Prelude three months later.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/179
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As the eldest son, Shelley stood in line to
inherit not only his grandfather's
considerable estate but also a seat in
Parliament.
He attended Eton College and Oxford
University.
Shelley had heretical and atheistic
opinions.
Shelley eloped and married, only to later
elope and marry Mary Shelley (who
wrote Frankenstein).
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Shelley was influenced by Godwin (Mary Shelley’s
father) and his freethinking Socialist philosophy.
Shelley was also a good friend of Byron’s.
He traveled and lived in various Italian cities throughout
his life.
His poetry emphasizes individualism, freedom, nature,
and the importance of the subjective imagination.
John Keats
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/66
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Keats lost both his parents at a
young age.
He was a licensed apothecary,
but never practiced as one;
instead, he dedicated himself to
writing poetry.
Keats’ poetry focuses on
mortality, the beauty of nature,
and includes many myths and
allusions to Greek mythology
and aesthetics.
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Keats contracted tuberculosis and died at only twentyfive years old.
Because he was ill for a time before he died, many of his
poems address his awareness of death, the importance of
beauty and God, and frequently reference mythology and
the ancients.
George Gordon, Lord Byron
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lord-byron
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The most flamboyant and
notorious of the major
Romantics, George Gordon, Lord
Byron, was also the most
fashionable poet of his day.
He created an immensely popular
Romantic hero (known as the
Byronic Hero)—defiant,
melancholy, haunted by secret
guilt—for which, to many, he
seemed the model.
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Byron is also a Romantic paradox: a leader of the era's poetic
revolution, he named Alexander Pope as his master; a worshipper
of the ideal, he never lost touch with reality; a deist and
freethinker, he retained from his youth a Calvinist sense of
original sin; a peer of the realm, he championed liberty in his
works and deeds, giving money, time, energy, and finally his life
to the Greek war of independence.
His faceted personality found expression in satire, verse narrative,
ode, lyric, speculative drama, historical tragedy, confessional
poetry, dramatic monologue, seriocomic epic, and voluminous
correspondence, written in Spenserian stanzas, heroic couplets,
blank verse, terza rima, ottava rima, and vigorous prose.
In his dynamism, sexuality, self-revelation, and demands for
freedom for oppressed people everywhere, Byron captivated the
Western mind and heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/samuel-taylor-coleridge
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/292
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge published
The Lyrical Ballads with William
Wordsworth in 1798, an event
later seen as the beginning of the
Romantic movement in England.
Coleridge held imagination to be the
vital force behind poetry, and
distinguished among different
kinds of imagination in his long
prose work Biographia Literaria.
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Coleridge is probably most noted for the haunting
imagery of his poems “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
and “Kubla Khan”.
He was influenced by Plato's Republic, and coconstructed a vision of pantisocracy (equal government
by all).
Coleridge suffered from financial problems, and later ill
health. He became addicted to opium (evident in much of
his poetry), and lived off of financial donations and
grants until he died.