Chapter 7, 9

1
Chapter 7, 9 10 English poets, 1660-1789
19th-Century Poets

• From An Outline of English Literature by Thornley
  and Roberts

2
The Age of Reason

• Order was important in mens thoughts (p.73)
• Heroic couplet is well suited to verse based on
  reasoning
• Alexander Pope
• The Rape of the Lock ( The Stealing of the Hair,
  1712-4)
• Taking a light subject and treats it as important
  (p.72)
• Lord Petre had cut off some hair from Miss
  Arabella Fermors head and the two families had
  quarreled violently. Pope tried to end the
  quarrel by writing this heroic poem, describing
  the event in detail but only made the quarrel
  worse.

Belinda discovers her lock of hair has been cut.
3
William Blake

• A return to thoughts about nature and more
  lyrical subjects began in the early eighteenth
  century.
• A poet and an artist (p.77)
• His poetry revealed that he did not believe in
  the reality of matter, or in the power of earthly
  rulers, or in punishment after death
• Songs of Innocence (1787)
• Songs of Experience (1794)
• The Tiger (p. 79)

4
Robert Burns

• A Scottish farmer
• A deep understanding of animals and love for them
• My Loves like a red, red rose (p.79)
• O MY Luve 's like a red, red rose    That 's
  newly sprung in JuneO my Luve 's like the
  melodie    That's sweetly play'd in tune! As
  fair art thou, my bonnie lass,    So deep in
  luve am IAnd I will luve thee still, my
  dear,    Till a' the seas gang dry

5
A Red, Red Rose

• Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,    And the
  rocks melt wi' the sunI will luve thee still,
  my dear,    While the sands o' life shall run.
• And fare thee weel, my only Luve,    And fare
  thee weel a while!And I will come again, my
  Luve,    Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

6
Early 19th-Century Poets

• A return to thoughts about nature and more
  lyrical subjects (p.91)
• A simpler, more natural expression which we shall
  see in Wordsworth and Coleridge the Lake Poets
• Neither of them used the old language of poetry
  much
• The publication of the Lyrical Ballads (1798)
  signaled the beginning of the Romantic Age

7
William Wordsworth

• A poet of nature
• Had the ability to throw a charm over ordinary
  things
• In later editions of the Lyrical Ballads
  (1800-2), he said that the language of poetry
  ought to be the same as the language of a simple
  farm worker
• His imagination led him far beyond the life and
  thoughts of a countryman

8
Wordsworth

• Lines Written above Tintern Abbey the poet
  returns to a scene of his boyhood (p.93)
• Westminster Bridge, an emotional view of London
  asleep
• London, a cry for help in the troubles of the
  world
• The Daffodils, The Solitary Reaper,
• Lucy poems
• The Ode on Intimations of Immortality (1807)
• found faith in memories of childhood, the
  business world has shut off the view of heaven
  (p.93-94)
• expressed his belief that we come from another
  life and go to a life without end

9
Wordsworth

• The Prelude a record in 14 books of verse of
  the poets progress in poetry and thought
• Written during 1799-1805
• Schooldays, time at Cambridge, visits to London
  and France, life in France during the Revolution

10
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Makes mysterious events acceptable to a readers
  mind
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, appeared in
  the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads an old
  sailor describes some strange misfortunes that
  happened to his ship. At last, the mariner,
  seeing Gods creatures in the moonlight, blesses
  them. This breaks the curse and he is able to
  return home. (p.91, 92)
• Christable (1816), Kubla Khan (1816) p.93

11

• So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls
  and towers were girdled roundAnd here were
  gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where
  blossomed many an incense-bearing treeAnd here
  were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding
  sunny spots of greenery.-Samuel Taylor
  Coleridge (1772-1834),Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan
12
George Gordon, Lord Byron

• Influenced by the classical form of Pope (p.94)
• Satirized many sides of English life, but his
  satires lack Popes polished perfection and
  command of words
• Lacked Wordsworths poetic imagination nor
  Coleridges mystery, words mean what they say and
  have no further magic

13
Lord Byron

• Childe Harold (1809-17)
• Tells the story of a man (Lord Byran) who goes
  off to travel far because he is disgusted with
  lifes foolish pleasures
• Describes different places he visits and what
  once happened
• Excerpts p.95
• Don Juan (1818-24)
• Astonishing adventure
• A satire which attacks some of Byrons enemies
• Contains the poets ideas on various subjects

14
Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Struggled against the causes of human misery and
  accepted religions (p.97)
• Saw goodness in nature
• Alastar, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)
• Written in blank verse and shows Wordsworths
  influence
• Expresses joy in the universe and sorrow for the
  violent feelings of men

15
Percy Shelleys Famous Poems

• Prometheus Unbound (1820) deals with the
  human struggle against the power of false gods
• Adonais (1821), an elegy on the death of Keats
• Ozymandias, expresses the uselessness and the
  shortness of all earthly power
• The Cloud
• To a Skylark
• Ode to the West Wind (p.97)

16
Ozymandias

• I met a traveler from an antique land who said
• Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in
  the desert... near them, on the sand, half
  sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
  things, the hand that mocked them, and the
  heart that fed.
• And on the pedestal these words appear
• "My name is Ozymandias, kimg of kings Look
  on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
• Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of
  that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the
  lone and level sands stretch far away

17
John Keats and His Great Odes

• Influenced by Spensers Fairie Queene (p.97)
• Studied the nature and could write lines in
  Wordsworths manner, but with more music
• Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) p. 99
• To a Nightingale
• To Autumn
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci -- a knight dreams of
  his lady, but wakes alone on a cold hillside. La
  Belle Dame is supposed to be tuberculosis, a
  disease which killed Keats at the early age of
  26.

18
John Keats and His Great Odes
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• Rhythm and thought were needed in great work
  (p.101)
• The Idylls of the King (1859)-- Put Malorys
  Morte DArthur into blank verse
• In Memoriam (1833-50), an elegy for his friend
  Hallam, expressed the sorrow for the loss of a
  friend and changes into an expression of a wider
  love of God and man (p.103)
• Shorter Poems, Ulysses (1842), The Princess
  (1847 and 1853)
• Immense influence in his own time, reflected the
  changing ideas of his age

20
Robert and Elizabeth Browning

• Robert Browning (p.104)
• Intellect is more important than the music
• Brownings difficult style is the result of his
  unusual knowledge of words and his bold ways of
  building sentences (p.106)
• Lived in Italy at Florence, a place which
  influenced the poet
• Pauline (1833), Sordello (1840), My Last
  Duchess (1842)
• Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances
  (1845), Dramatic Personae (1864)
• Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) by Elizabeth
  Browning

21
Matthew Arnold

• Much of his work is sad because of the problems
  of his time(p.107)
• Greatly admired Wordsworths calmness
• Dover Beach (1867)
• Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the
  world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land
  of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath
  really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
• Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for painAnd
  we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with
  confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where
  ignorant armies clash by night.

22
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

• A painter and a poet, Fleshly School of poetry
• Poetry ought to be based on the senses (p.109)
• Sonnets, the most musical in English
• Lines clear written by a man with a painters eye
• Fond of alliteration

23
Georgina Rossetti

• Dante Gabriel Rossettis sister
• Wrote sad and religious poems and unhappy love,
  poems for the young
• The collections Goblin Market (1862) and The
  Prince's Progress (1866) contain most of her
  finest work.
• Her best poetry is strong, personal, and
  unforced her success arises from her ability to
  unite the devotional and the passionate sides of
  her nature.
• Her Sing-Song (1872 enlarged 1893), a collection
  of nursery rhymes, is among the most outstanding
  children's books of the 19th century.
• After the onset of a thyroid disorder in 1871,
  she wrote mainly devotional verse.