Romantic Poets

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Romantic Poets
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• First poem in the collection Lyrical Ballads
  (1798)
• Imitates earlier ballads in style
• But uses supernatural and gothic imagery to
  introduce the element of romance
• Tale of crime and punishment

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• Opening lines an old sailor stops 3 men who are
  on the way to a wedding. He chooses one of the
  men to whom he tells his story.
• The man is the bridegrooms closest relative but
  he is not able to break away from the mariner

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Poetic elements Repetition

• Important element in ballad
• Used by Coleridge to reinforce power of the
  sailors gaze
• Line 37 repeats line 31
• Lines 38-40 repeat lines 18-20

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Themes

• Sin, punishment and redemption
• Killing the albatross is a violation of the
  sacred natural order
• He sees human beings as the measure of all things
  not just a part of the natural order of things
• He cannot be redeemed until he recognizes that
  man is not master of the world but a part of it

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Shelleys A Defense of Poetry
• In this Shelley explains the role of poetry in a
  society
• Poets explain the inspiration of nature
• Poetry is the mirror of the society
• Poets present the true emotion of the people and
  influence the way society develops.
• The poet is the voice of new ideas that can
  change the world

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• His poetry reflects his attitude towards English
  society against what he saw as hypocrisy and
  injustice.
• Ozymandias describes the ruins of an ancient
  statue
• Theme all is vanity
• Irony the inconsistency of what is said with
  the reality (appearance vs. reality)

8

• 3 kinds of irony dramatic, verbal, situational
• Find examples in the poem of each.
• Ode to the West wind
• an ode is a long lyric poem. Characteristics are
• Serious subject
• Formal style
• Elaborate stanza structure

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• How does this poem fit the definition of Ode?
• The subjects are life, death, and spiritual
  rebirth. The style is formal with use of
  apostrophe, and complicated grammatical
  structure, and formal rather than conversational
  vocabulary.

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• Time of year?
• A kind of invocation or prayer
• Each part of the poem ends with a request Oh
  hear
• An apostrophe that addresses the wind as a
  natural deity or spirit

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• Paradox presented in lines 13-14
• Part 2 the west wind is driving storm clouds
  across the sky sound of wind is like a funeral
  song winter darkness covers earth like the vault
  of a tomb
• Part 3 the changes that winter brings to the
  ocean
• Part 4 What is he saying about death,
  specifically his death?
• Part 5 Shellys poem is a private rather than
  public odegiving his personal feelings.

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John Keats

• The ideal poetic attitude is to be able to forget
  oneself in concentrating on the subject of the
  poem
• Keats is a poet of ideas
• He focuses attention on the subject of his poetry
  not on himself as poet.

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• La Belle Dame Sans Merci
• A ballad
• Setting a cold hillside as winter approaches
• The first 3 stanzas provide background for the
  story
• In the last 9 stanzas, the Knight answers the
  question asked at the beginning

14

• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Celebrates the urn as a perfect work of art
• The timeless beauty achieved by the artist
• Art remains as a symbol of truth and beauty even
  when the artist himself is gone
• A moment of time trapped in the vase

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Victorians

• And a little later

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Alfred Lord Tennyson

• Ulysses
• A dramatic monologue
• Theme tells of the need to go forward in life
  even though it is a struggle
• Tells the story of Ulysses after he has returned
  home from the Trojan War
• The story of an aging hero who wants one last
  adventure.

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Robert Browning

• Porphyrias Lover
• The two characters of the poem
• The woman (Porphyria) who is in love but perhaps
  considers her lover beneath her socially
• The man who decides to make it so she can never
  leave him
• The setting a meeting place for the lovers

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A. E. Houseman

• To an Athlete Dying Young
• Is it preferable to die at the height of ones
  glory rather than settle into mediocrity?
• When I Was One and Twenty
• The young live without thinking of the future and
  the consequences of the choices that we make.