Poetry: Part I
16th century Renaissance17th century Neo-Classism18th-19th Romanticism
-British & American 19th
century Realism
Renaissance
Mid 14th century in Italy until the mid 17th century in
England
The intellectual and artistic transformations of the 15th
and 16th centuries, including the emergence of
humanism , Protestant individualism, Copernican
astronomy, and the discovery of America.
Marked by a new self-confidence in vernacular
literatures, a flourishing of lyric poetry, and a revival of
such classical forms as epic and pastoral literature.
Sonnet
A lyric poem comprising fourteen rhyming lines of equal length:
iambic pentameters in English, alexandrines in French,
hendecasyllables in Italian. The rhyme schemes of the sonnet
follow two basic patterns.
Originating in Italy, the sonnet was established by Petrarch in the
14th century as a major form of love poetry, and came to be
adopted in Spain, France, and England in the 16th century, and in
Germany in the 17th.
The standard subject matter of early sonnets was the torments of
sexual love (usually within a courtly love convention), but in the
17th century John Donne extended the sonnet's scope to religion,
while Milton extended it to politics. Although largely neglected in
the 18th century, the sonnet was revived in the 19th by
Wordsworth , Keats , and Baudelaire , and is still widely used.
Some poets have written connected series of sonnets, known as
sonnet sequences or sonnet cycles:
Sonnet
1. The Italian sonnet (also called the Petrarchan sonnet after the
most influential of the Italian sonneteers) comprises an 8-line
‘octave’ of two quatrains , rhymed abbaabba, followed by a 6-line
‘sestet’ usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. The transition from octave
to sestet usually coincides with a ‘turn’ (Italian, volta) in the
argument or mood of the poem.
2. The English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet after
its foremost practitioner) comprises three quatrains and a final
couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. An important variant of this is the
Spenserian sonnet (introduced by the Elizabethan poet Edmund
Spenser ), which links the three quatrains by rhyme, in the sequence
ababbabccdcdee.
In either form, the ‘turn’ comes with the final couplet.
William Shakespeare
Born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon
(NW London)
-father was a tanner and glover
but traded wool and held several
civil jobs
Educated and likely studied:
reading, writing, Latin, classical
literature
Raised in a middle-class family
1582 married Anne Hathaway,
had 3 children but left
By 1592 was working in London
37 plays and 154 sonnets
Died 1616
William Shakespeare
Printed in 1609 and probably dating from the 1590s.
Most of them trace the course of the writer's affection for a young man of
rank and beauty: the first seventeen urge him to marry to reproduce his
beauty, numbers 18 to 126 form a sequence of 108 sonnets.
The complete sequence of 154 sonnets was published in 1609,
Dedicated ‘To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr W.H.’ Mr
W.H. has been identified as (among others) William, Lord Herbert (1580–
1630), afterwards third earl of Pembroke, or Henry Wriothesley, earl of
Southampton (1573–1624), and further as the young man addressed in
the sonnets. Other views are that Mr W.H. was an unknown friend of
Thorpe who may have procured the manuscript for him, or that W.H. is a
printer's error for W.S., Shakespeare's initials.
Other characters alluded to in the sequence include a mistress stolen by
a friend (40–2), a rival poet (78–80 and 80–6), and a dark lady loved by
the author (127–52). The dark lady has been variously identified as Mary
Fitton (bap. 1578, d. 1641) or the poet Emilia Lanier, and the rival poet
as Christopher Marlowe or George Chapman. But all such
identifications are purely speculative.
John Donne
1572-1631
Catholic family of some prominence
could not complete degree because of
religion
Studied at Oxford and maybe
Cambridge
Sailed with Sir Walter Ralegh to hunt
Spanish ships
Civil service work but married secretly
his bosses daughter and was fired and
imprisoned for it- 12 children.
The patronage of others provided a
place to live a meager living.
1615 became a chaplain and then
received a Doctor of Divinity from
Cambridge
John Donne
Famous preacher
Satires and Elegies 1590s
The Progress of the Soul 1601 (unfinished
satirical epic)
Holy Sonnets 1610-1
Songs and Sonnets- unknown date love poems
2 prose works which attacks Catholics 1610-1,
Essays in Divinity 1651, Devotions 1624,
sermons
Ben Johnson 1572-1637
Playwright, poet, courtier
Father-clergyman, stepfatherbricklayer
Did not attend university
Playwright-comedies
Flourished under James 1 and
Queen Anne-masques
Playwright-more ironic and
caustic
1616 The Works of Benjamin
Johnson published
Ben Johnson
Domesticated the classical tradition
Complex interactions in a dense social world
Very personal
Epigrams, odes, and epistles on everyday life
Friendship and acquaintance-to individuals,
marriages, birthdays, illnesses, deaths, journeys,
manners, books, satires,
On a good life and the struggle to live it: good
people vs. fools
Set up a new aesthetic for successors
Robert Herrick 1591-1674
Father died but family had wealth but only grammar
school education
Apprenticed to goldsmith left to attend St. John’s
College, Cambridge
Trinity College BA 1617, MA 1620, ordained 1623
Army chaplain 1627
Dean Prior 1630
Lived in Westminster with Tomasin Parsons (27 yrs
younger) may have illegitimate daughter
1648 London published poems
1660 reinstated at Dean Prior
Lyric poet: Sex, transience, death subjects but refined
17th century
1625-1649 Caroline Age Charles I
1649-1660 Commonwealth Interregnum (Cromwell)
1660-1798 NeoClassical Period
NeoClassical: derived from ancient Greek and Roman—
Age of Reason: rationality, clarity, restraint, order, and
decorum. The rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics in 16th
century. Style must suit the subject matter; art must
instruct; ancients had it right so imitate them. Epic,
tragedy, comedy, elegy, ode, epistle, fable, and satire
1660-1700 Restoration (of monarchy) Age Charles II
Restoration a great period for drama of comedy of
manners in a witty or cynical tone, with complex plots,
about marriage—criticized for immoral subject matter
and blasphemy—praised for social criticism
17th century
Elevated subject matter: historical/political,
battles, mythology or allegory, religion. Nature is
for background and can be bettered by man.
1700-1750 Augustan Age (Queen Anne)
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift—imitated
the Romans, use of epistle and satire, urban
literary-on public affairs
1750-1798 Age of Johnson
1765-1830 Revolutionary and Early National
Period (U.S.A.)
17th century
Metaphysical Poets
Any poetry about metaphysics: philosophy of
knowledge and existence
17th century English poets
Employed fanciful imagery, paradox about
intellectual and theological concepts
John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley
T.S.Eliot revived them
1535 Miles Coverdale published the first
complete English Bible
John Milton 1608-1674
Grandfather a Roman Catholic—disinherited his father a
Protestant
Studied Christ’s College at Cambridge but became a
poet not a minister
Essayist against church hierarchy pro- divorce, con
censorship—political rights
Secretary of foreign tongues (official translator) during
Cromwell—Latin
1652 going blind
Restoration imprisoned in Tower of London while his
books were burned
intellectual freedom and social reform
John Milton
Epic poet: Paradise Lost, Paradise
Regained
Biblically inspired works yet believed
religion was a personal journey
Man must search for truth, virtue, ethics
We must be apart of the world even
though the world is corrupt
Poetry is a gift from God and so has
responsibilities to teach and inspire
Andrew Marvell 1621-1678
Son of a reverend
Attended Trinity College, Cambridge
Life of leisure, travelled abroad during civil war—
tides of government affect
Begins lyric poetry
Father died-needed to work-tutored, even for a
ward of Oliver Cromwell
Wrote poetry of the republic and Cromwell
Met Milton and became involved in government
Marvell
Member of parliament, diplomatic work
Political satire poetry
Advocated (pamphlets) religious tolerance
Wrote and spoke out against the monarchy
Uncertain if he ever married and who was heir to
his estate
Lyrics in various forms: pastoral dialogues and
monologues, religious lyrics, garden poems,
erotic love poems
Puns, even rhythm, rhyme
Combines regular couplet rhymes, highly
formed, with regular stanzas, with liberal
deviation from regular stress patterns
Aphra Behn 1640-1689
Briefly married, travelled Surinam, spied Holland
Made her living from writing: playwright
(comedy), novelist Oroonoko, poet, translator
Political (Tori), social reformer, sexual freedom
Plays about politics, sexual escapades, gender
swapping
Poetry pastoral, odes—sexual and political
power, female voice
Oroonoko the slave as hero
Anne Bradstreet
Born in Northampton, England, in 1612 or 1613.
Father Thomas Dudley steward of the earl of Lincoln & Puritan
Educated through literacy; avidly read the Bible.
The Bible contains passages critical of kings, a fact that religious dissenters
tended to emphasize.
Well-Read: works of Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney (to whom she wrote
an elegy in 1638), Walter Raleigh's History of the World (1614), William
Camden's Annals of Queen Elizabeth (1615), and the writings of the French
Calvinist Guillaume du Bartas (to whom she wrote a tribute in 1641).
1630 both the Dudleys and the Bradstreets sailed for America; the journey
took them 5 months.
Wrote personal, meditative verses; the major theme was the relationship of
the natural world to a distant and domineering creator-god whose ways
were ultimately incomprehensible to mortals.
Created literary microcosms based on local topics when momentous
historical events were transpiring around them.
Wrote in an isolated, provincial, male-dominated world
Alexander Pope 1688-1744
Made his living from his writing—published his own
poetry, and translations of Homer and Shakespeare
Catholic not allowed education
deformed by skeletal tuberculosis
An Essay on Criticism, An Essay on Man
The Rape of the Lock
Didactic poetry--Learning how to live despite loss, etc
Themes of isolation, importance of friendship
Satire, wit, argument and images, motive and morals,
Use of verse epistles, couplet form, parallelism,
chiasmus (inverted word order), zeugma, paradox
William Blake 1757-1827
Engraver by trade
A Swedenborg—mysticism
Married but no children
Printshop
“I must create a system or be enslaved by
another Man’s”
Poetic Sketches, Songs of Innocence, The Book
of Thel, Songs of Heaven and Hell, Songs of
Experience, America: A Prophecy,
Wrote and engraved/illustrated own works
Blake
Aimed to be prophet and visionary—meant work
to be taken literally
Creates own mythic world but mixes real historic
figures
Vivid description, mood imagination
Making everyday events mythic inspires people
and raises awareness of social and political
issues.
Imagery and symbolism
Crazy?
Robert Burns 1759-1796
Father tenant farmer
Oral tradition or songs which were not fixed but
invented and remade or recreated
Wrote in primarily in Scots but also wrote in
neoclassical English—mixed Scots with
standard English-yet dealt w/effects of nature on
the imagination
Idealized the rural poor for the wealthy patrons
but provides information, records rural life
Government role and civil liberties
Anti-aristocrat, pro-American Revolution
Burns
Critical of organized Church and
government: admired Milton’s Satan
Essays and epistolary works
Simple meter and Excellent with rhymes
Standard Habbie-6 line stanza w/ 2 sets of
rhymes and line length
Honest and direct and juxtaposition
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 3
editions
Romantic Period 1798-1870
Rejects the imitation of classical work from Neoclassical,
rejects rationality
Freedom of individual self-expression: spontaneity,
originality, sincerity, emotional, personal experience
Emotional intensity: rapture, nostalgia, horror,
melancholy, sentimentality, exotic, dreams
Values of revolution, democracy, and nationalism
Nature primary inspiration and subject
Crosses all disciplines involves philosophy, political
revolutions, and lifestyle
Poetry: Romantic lyric: 3 stanzas with 8 lines each
Repetition, Sensory imagery
William Wordsworth 1770-1850
Parents died by 13
St. John’s College, Cambridge
Walking tour of France, Alps, Italy
Inspired by French revolution
Began publishing poetry
Settled down with his sister Dorothy
Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude,
1802 married, 5 children
Deaths of brother and 2 children & Coleridge’s illness
1813 Stamp distributor,
1843 Poet Laureate
Wordsworth
“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling
as recollected in moments of tranquility”
Imagination fuses with memory and real life situations—
requires quiet reflection
Nature more real, pure, simple, noble, more essentially
human
Stresses importance of the feelings of the poet over the
subject matter
Preface to Lyrical Ballads—language of the common
man, rejects fancy language of preNature is the muse –shepherd, peasant, beggar
Return to true nature not picturesque
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 17721834
Jesus College, Cambridge
French revolutionary politics, drinking
Southey—Pantisocracy
1797 met Wordsworths lived and worked together-- blank verse
conversation poems
Left for Germany to study
1800 Lake District—unhappy marriage and love affair with
Wordsworth’s sister-in-law
Crippling opium addiction-notebooks dreams meditations
Travelled, separated from wife, Wordsworths, lectures—”organic
form”
Addiction and ending of friendships lead to suicide—rebirth/recovery
After poetry collections and a series of essays on criticism:
imagination, reason, symbolism, organic form…
2nd Generation Romantics
Thought Wordsworth was simple and dull
and egotistical sublime
Importance of nature, feelings, imagination
and self-consciousness but twisted
Take Wordsworth and then branch out
Lord George Gordon Byron 17881824
Aristocrats w/ money issues, father died young
10 years old title and estates of 5th Baron Byron
Trinity College, Cambridge—debt & affair w/
young man
Travelled & published
Seat in House of Lords—Grand Tour-publishing
Weight issues/clubfoot
1816 Run out of English due to affairs, legal
separation from his wife and alleged incest
w/sister other sexual exploits--Italy
1824 Died defending the Greeks from Ottoman
empire
Byron
—”Byronic hero” Villainous heroes, satiric barbs,
melancholy, reclusive, seductive, rakish behavor
Favored classical forms-Spenserian stanzas,
ottava rima (8 lines stanzas), satire
Radical politics, orientalism, critical of earlier
Romanantics
Celebrity poet
Fugitive Pieces Hours of Idleness English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers, Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage, Beppo, The Vision of Judgment, Don
Juan
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822
A real Romantic-life and death: born rich, died
young, sexual exploration, died in storm in the
Don Juan with Keat’s poetry in his pocket
Aristocrat, expelled from Oxford
Married 16 yr old ag. father’s wishes, 3 yrs left
wife and child for 16 yr old Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin
Grand Tour w/ her sister—later met the Byrons
stayed in Lake Geneva
Deaths 4 of his children & 1 of Byron’s
Italy: desired a literary community (Byron, Keats)
Shelley
Fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, French
Translated Goethe, Caldeon, Plato, Spinoza
Educated in science and politics: for Irish indpdnc
Challenged Neoclassical ideas and conventions
Humanitarian values, conversion, nature, philosophy,
challenges existing mores, values, individual morality
“A Poet therefore would do ill to embody his own
conceptions of right wrong which are usually those of his
place and time in his poetical creations, which participate
in neither.”
Mont Blanc, To a Sky-lark (lyric), A Defense of Poetry,
Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Adonais, Hymn to
Intellectual Beauty,
Sex, freedom, gothic, ethics and morality
John Keats 1795-1821
Apothecary apprentice
1816 began publishing poetry
Met Shelley 1817 and Wordsworth
Lakes, Scotland and Northern Ireland
1818 the great year
1819 tuberculosis
1820 Italy…died in Rome
The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to Psyche, Ode to a
Nightingale, Hyperion
Keats
Explores the physical, sensual world
Sonnet
Negative capability “that is when a man is
capable of being in uncertainties
mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason”
The sympathetic imagination—becoming
something else or loosing oneself in..
19th century move to realism
British publishing after 1825 becomes more centralized
Social mobility becomes possible especially through two
English universities
Regionalism: representations of geographically and
culturally marginalized places, the poetry Wordsworth
and Coleridge wrote in the Lakes offers a paradigm for
British poetry following
Robert Browning 1812-1889
Outside London homeschooled
Lived w/parent
1846 Married Elizabeth Barrett
“invented” the dramatic monologue
Italy until 1861 (Elizabeth’s death)
London
1880s Italy
revive history
The power and role of the poet
Rise of novel changes realism and voice
Browning
Modern bridge
– Impersonality—not Rs. Subjectivity
– Use of common speech
Lord Alfred Tennyson 1809-1892
Attended Trinity College, Cambridge
1829 Chancellor's Gold Medal for poetry
Timbuctoo Miltonic blank verse
after 1827 every volume Tennyson
published appeared in London—British
poet
1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical was originally
conceived by Tennyson and Hallam
1850 In Memoriam A.H.H.
1854 The Charge of the Light Brigade
Tennyson
descriptions of landscape central to his poetry—
connects to Romantics
“the power of creating scenery, in keeping with
some state of human feeling; so fitted to it as to
be the embodied symbol of it.”
a poet of sensation, above all of vision
set his poems in rural landscapes vivid descript
Tennyson did not write his poetry to be heard.
Arthurian legends
poet laureate in 1850
Emily Bronte 1818-48
Home schooled travelled little
1842 Brussels study French, German and
music
Returned home, never left
1847 Wuthering Heights
Original for her time
Lyrics
Combines realism and Romanticism
Victorian Age 1837-1901
Novel dominant literary form
Middle class values
Individual in society-problems adjustments
Well-rounded characters
Hero=rational man & virtuous
Human nature is good
Realism
Emotions
Morality
Christina Rossetti 1830-94
Parents Italian, raised in London
Reading, writing, religion, volunteer
Very devout-Tractarian (C of E)
Writing poetry at 11 yrs.—published at 18
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—rebel ag.
Academy
Elizabeth Browning
Fantasy, ballads, love lyrics, sonnets, and
religious poetry
U.S. Civil War
Realism
– Reflect real life
– Multifaceted people/experience
– Grows pessimistic
Local color
– Realistic portrayal of regional U.S. dialects,
– Harsh realities
– Romanticism’ pre-industrial ideals
Naturalism
– Environment shapes behaviors and lives
– Lower classes moved by animal passions
– Individual has little control
Thomas Hardy 1840-1928
Poet & novelist
Working class parents-determined to
educate self and move on
Landscape
19th c. science, astronomy-powerful
observation, geology-time/earth, evolution
Religious skeptic
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)