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Romantic Poetry Blake and Coleridge

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ABOUT deep feelings (about things) AGAINST modernism, mass ... apotheosis. Poetic experience as ultimate culmination. Imagination as ultimate authority ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Romantic Poetry Blake and Coleridge


1
Romantic PoetryBlake and Coleridge
  • World Literature 2
  • Fall 2005
  • Dr. Whipple

2
What do we mean by Romantic?
  • Not mushy
  • Not (always) about love
  • ABOUT nature
  • ABOUT experience
  • ABOUT deep feelings (about things)
  • AGAINST modernism, mass technology, soullessness
  • AGAINST rationalistic takeover
  • NONCONFORMISTin poetry, social and sexual
    relations, in spirituality, in politics
  • (When we mention poetry to people, this is often
    the kind of poetry they think of)

3
Romanticism the Enlightenment
  • Revolt against aristocratic social and political
    institutionsnot unlike Enlightenment
  • Fulfillment of promise of Enlightenment
  • Romantic musical movement (Beethoven, for
    example)
  • Throwing off Classical models, more direct,
    simple, style derived from folk speech
  • Utopian social thoughtFrench Revolution
  • But

4
Romanticism in Art
  • Temeraire (Turner)
  • Salisbury Cathedral (Constable)

5
Nationalism
  • Folk speechplebeian poets
  • National languages
  • Celebration of folklore, cultural identity
  • Geography as determiner of national identity
  • J. G. Fichte Those who speak the same language
    are joined to each other by a multitude of
    invisible bonds by nature herself
  • National movements in Greece, Belgium, Italy,
    Americas (N and S), Germany between 1776-1870

6
Nature
  • Reaction, in part, to and against the beginnings
    of the Industrial Revolution (Blakes dark
    satanic mills)
  • Nobility of nature (idea of noble savage)
  • Industrial revolution represented progress to
    some, bad things to others
  • The world is changing
  • Concept of idyll

7
Freedom (a la the Romantic poets)
  • Freedom of spirit
  • Freedom of conscience
  • Freedom of action
  • Freedom from conventional artistic aesthetic
  • Freedom from social restraints
  • The suffering of the Artist for the Art
  • apotheosis
  • Poetic experience as ultimate culmination
  • Imagination as ultimate authority

8
Major poets, major poems
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Kubla Kahn, Rime of
    the Ancient Mariner)
  • William Blake (The Tyger, Jerusalem)

9
William Blake (1757-1827)
  • The first multimedia poet revered for his
    poetry and his art
  • Wrote, illustrated, engraved, and printed his own
    bookstotal control over the experience of
    reading his work
  • Elements (ha!) of mysticism in his art and
    poetry claims to have had visions from
    childhood.
  • Elemental themesredemption, renewal, the new
    Jerusalem, God, God in nature
  • Imagination over the materialism and rationalism
    of the 18th century

10
Blake and the mind
  • This is your brain

11
This is your brain after youve read BLAKE!

12
Blake Links
  • Blakes Jerusalem in a modern context (BBC)
  • William Blake Archive
  • Jerusalem RealAudio file (and other
    quintessentially English tunes)
  • Garden of Love mp3 file
  • Picture of the Tyger (Blake)
  • Website of Tyger studies

13
Coleridge (1772-1838)
  • Yes, he did drugs. Specifically, opium.
  • DeQuincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
  • Kubla Khanallegedly written in a drug trance,
    broken when a friend interrupted himpoem is
    unfinished
  • Rime of the Ancient Mariner

14
Coleridge Links
  • Rime of the Ancient Mariner (read aloud)
  • Kubla Kahn (read aloud)
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