The Romantic Period

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The Romantic Period
The Later Poets - The Rebels/Rock Stars
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
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The Romantic Period
George Gordon, Lord Bryon
The most notorious Romantic poet and satirist,
Byron was famous in his lifetime for his love
affairs with women. He created his own cult of
personality, the concept of the 'Byronic hero' -
a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some
mysterious, unforgivable in his past. "There's
not a joy the world can give that it takes away /
When the glow of early thought declines in
feeling's dull decay, / 'Tis not on youth's
smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so
fast, / But the tender bloom of heart is gone,
ere youth itself be past." (Lord Byron)
Byron's influence on European poetry, music,
novel, opera, and painting was immense, although
the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by
his contemporaries.
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• George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the son of
  Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon of
  Gight, a self-indulgent, somewhat hysterical
  woman, who was his second wife. He was born with
  a club-foot and became extreme sensitivity about
  his lameness. His life did not become easier when
  he received painful treatments for his foot by a
  quack practitioner in 1799. Eventually he got a
  corrective boot. (Lord Bryon).

• In his works short and stout Byron glorified
  proud heroes, who overcome hardships. The poet
  himself was only 5 feet 8 1/2 inches tall and his
  widely varying weight ranged from 137 to 202
  pounds - he once said that everything he
  swallowed was instantly converted to tallow and
  deposited on his ribs. One of his friends noted
  that at the age of about 30 he looked 40 and "the
  knuckles of his hands were lost in fat."

• At the age of fifteen he fell in love with Mary
  Chaworth, his distant cousin, whom he wrote the
  poem 'To Emma'.

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• In 1807 appeared Byron's first collection of
  poetry, HOURS OF IDLENESS. It received bad
  reviews. The poet answered his critics with
  satire ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWS in 1808.
  Next year he took his seat in the House of Lords,
  and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain,
  Albania, Greece, and the Aegean.

• Success came in 1812 when Byron published the
  first two cantos of CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE
  (1812-1818). "I awoke one morning and found
  myself famous," he later said. He became an
  adored character of London society, he spoke in
  the House of Lords effectively on liberal themes,
  and had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline
  Lamb. ''Mad - bad - and dangerous to know,'' she
  wrote in her journal on the evening she first saw
  him.

• During the summer of 1813 Byron apparently
  entered into a more than brotherly relationship
  with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, who was a
  mother of three daughters. In 1814 Augusta gave
  birth to Elizabeth Medora, who was generally
  supposed to be Byron's.

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• In the same year he wrote 'Lara,' a poem about a
  mystical hero, aloof and alien, whose identity is
  gradually revealed and who dies after a feud in
  the arms of his page. THE CORSAIR (1814), sold
  10,000 copies on the first day of publication.

• . Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815,
  and their daughter Ada was born in the same year.
  The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal
  separation next year. When the rumors started to
  rise of his incest and debts were accumulating,
  Byron left England in 1816, never to return.
  ''The only virtue they honor in England is
  hypocrisy,'' he once wrote a friend.

• Byron settled in Geneva with Mary Godwin, Percy
  Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire
  Clairmont, who became his mistress. There he
  wrote the two cantos of Childe Harold and THE
  PRISONER OF CHILLON. At the end of the summer
  Byron continued his travels, spending two years
  in Italy.

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• During the years in Italy, Byron wrote LAMENT
  OF TASSO, inspired by his visit in Tasso's cell
  in Rome, MAZEPPA, THE PROPHECY OF DANTE, and
  started DON JUAN, his satiric masterpiece.

• After a long creative period, Byron had come
  to feel that action was more important than
  poetry. With good wishes from Goethe, Byron armed
  a brig, the Hercules, and sailed to Greece to aid
  the Greek's, who had risen against their Ottoman
  overlords. He worked ceaselessly and joined
  Alexander Mavrocordato on the north shore of the
  Gulf of Patras..

• However, before Byron saw any serious military
  action, he contracted the fever from which he
  died in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. Before his
  death he had suffered a seizure, and his
  condition was worsened by a leeching procedure.
  Memorial services were held all over the land.
  The Greeks wished to bury him in Athens, but only
  his heart stayed in the country. Part of his
  skull and his internal organs had been removed
  for souvenirs. Byron's body was returned to
  England but refused by the deans of both
  Westminister and St Paul's. Finally Byron's
  coffin was placed in the family vault at Hucknall
  Torkard, near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire

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Characteristics of the Byronic Hero
A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic
traits, and in many ways he can be considered a
rebel.

• is a rebel (against convention, society, etc.)
• has a distaste for society and social
  institutions
• is isolated from society (a wanderer, an exile)
• is not impressed by rank and privilege (though he
  may possess it)
• is larger-than-life in his ability--and his pride
  
• has a hidden curse or crime
• suffers from titanic passions 
• tends to be self-destructive

One of the key connections to understanding the
Byronic Hero is that he is, in some ways, like
the Romantic conception of Satan in Paradise
Lost--the rebel who fights against a tyrannical
establishment but is destroyed by his own
overwhelming pride.  This figure is an
unconventional hero--dangerous and destructive,
but admirable because he is larger than life.
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The Romantic Period
Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 July 8,
  1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets
  and is widely considered to be among the finest
  lyrical poets of the English language.

• Lyrical poems are a form of poetry that does not
  attempt to tell a story but is of a more personal
  nature instead.

• He is perhaps most famous for such anthology
  pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a
  Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy.

• Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising
  idealism, combined with his strong skeptical
  voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated
  figure during his life.

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• He became the idol of the next two or three
  generations of poets (including the major
  Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert
  Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel
  Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as
  William Butler Yeats

• He is famous for his association with
  contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron an
  untimely death at a young age was common to all
  three. He was married to the famous novelist Mary
  Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and wrote the
  introduction to the 1818 edition of the novel.

Mary Shelley

• In 1814 Shelley fell in love and eloped with
  Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of William
  Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. For the next few
  years the couple travelled in Europe. Shelley
  continued to be involved in politics and in 1817
  wrote the pamphlet A Proposal for Putting Reform
  to the Vote Throughout the United Kingdom. In the
  pamphlet Shelley suggested a national referendum
  on electoral reform and improvements in working
  class education.

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• In 1822 Shelley, moved to Italy with Leigh Hunt
  (friends with other young writers who favored
  political reform) and Lord Byron where they
  published the journal The Liberal. By publishing
  it in Italy the three men remained free from
  prosecution by the British authorities. The first
  edition of The Liberal sold 4,000 copies. Soon
  after its publication, Percy Bysshe Shelley was
  lost at sea on 8th July, 1822 while sailing to
  meet Leigh Hunt.

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John Keats

• . John Keats was born in Finsbury Pavement near
  London on October 31st, 1795.

• The first son of a stable-keeper, he had a
  sister and three brothers, one of whom died in
  infancy. When John was eight years old, his
  father was killed in an accident. In the same
  year his mother married again, but little later
  separated from her husband and took her family to
  live with her mother.

• . John attended a good school where he became
  well acquainted with ancient and contemporary
  literature.

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• In 1810 his mother died of consumption, leaving
  the children to their grandmother. The old lady
  put them under the care of two guardians, to whom
  she made over a respectable amount of money for
  the benifit of the orphans. Under the authority
  of the guardians, he was taken from school to an
  be apprentice to a surgeon. In 1814, before
  completion of his apprenticeship, John left his
  master after a quarrel, becoming a hospital
  student in London.

• Under the guidance of his friend Cowden Clarke
  he devoted himself increasingly to literature. In
  1814 Keats finally sacrificed his medical
  ambitions to a literary life.

• He soon got acquainted with celebrated artists
  of his time, like Leigh Hunt, Percy B. Shelley
  and Benjamin Robert Haydon.

• In May 1816, Hunt helped him publish his first
  poem in a magazine. A year later Keats published
  about thirty poems and sonnets printed in the
  volume "Poems".

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• After receiving scarce, negative feedback,
  Keats travelled to the Isle of Wight on his own
  in spring of 1817. In the late summer he went to
  Oxford together with a newly-made friend,
  Benjamin Bailey.

• In the following winter, George Keats married
  and emigrated to America, leaving the
  consumptuous brother Tom to the John's care.

• Apart from helping Tom against consumption,
  Keats worked on his poem "Endymion". Just before
  its publication, he went on a hiking tour to
  Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles
  Brown.

• First signs of his own fatal disease forced him
  to return prematurely, where he found his brother
  seriously ill and his poem harshly critisized. In
  December 1818 Tom Keats died.

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• John moved to Hampstead Heath, were he lived in
  the house of Charles Brown. While in Scotland
  with Keats, Brown had lent his house to a Mrs
  Brawne and her sixteen-year-old daughter Fanny.
  Since the ladies where still living in London,
  Keats soon made their acquaintance and fell in
  love with the beautiful, fashionable girl.

• Absorbed in love and poetry, he exhausted
  himself mentally, and in autumn of 1819, he tried
  to gain some distance to literature through an
  ordinary occupation.

• An unmistakable sign of consumption in February
  1820 however broke all his plans for the future,
  marking the beginning of what he called his
  "posthumous life".

• In the late summer of 1820, Keats was ordered
  by his doctors to avoid the English winter and
  move to Italy. His friend Joseph Severn
  accompanied him south - first to Naples, and then
  to Rome.

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• His health improved momentarily, only to
  collapse finally. Keats died in Rome on the 23rd
  of February, 1821.

• The inscription at the bottom is in Severn's
  hand, and reads (in partial shorthand)
• 28 Janry 3 o'clock mng.  Drawn to keep me awake
  - a deadly sweat was on him all this night.

• Keats passed away on Friday, 23 February 1821,
  around 1100 pm. 

• He was buried on the Protestant Cemetary, near
  the grave of Caius Cestius. On his desire, the
  following lines were engraved on his tombstone
  "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

This is the last known portrait of the poet.
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Works Cited
Allen, Dr. Rosemary. The Bryonic Hero. English
213, Spring 2003. Georgetown University.
23 Apr. 2007. lt http//spider.georgetowncollege.ed
u/english/allen/byron2.htmgt.
----. Characteristics of Romanticism. English
213, Spring 2003. Georgetown University.
23 Apr. 2007. lt http//spider.georgetowncollege.ed
u/english/allen/romantic.htmgt.
English History.Net. The Final Months of John
Keats. 12 Jan. 2007. 21 Apr. 2007. lt
http//englishhistory.net/keats/death.htmlgt.
George Byron, 6th Baron Byron Wikipedia, the
free encylopedia. 21 Apr. 2007. Wikipedia
Foundation,Inc. 21 Apr. 2007.
lthttp//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byrongt.
John Keats.com. Biography. 21 Apr. 2007 lt
http//www.john-keats.com/gt.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Byron (of Rochdale),
George (Gordon), 6th Baron. 2007. Kuusankosken
kaupunginkirjasto. 21 Apr. 2007.
lthttp//www.kirjasto.sci.fi/byron.htmgt.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Apr. 2007. Spartacus
Educational. 21 Apr. 2007. lthttp//www.spartacus.
schoolnet.co.uk/PRshelley.htmgt.
Percy Bysshe Shelley Wikipedia, the free
encylopedia. 21 Apr. 2007. Wikipedia
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Apr. 2007. Spartacus
Educational. 21 Apr. 2007. lthttp//www.spartacus.
schoolnet.co.uk/PRshelley.htmgt.
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Fini
Thats French for THE END