Romantic Poetry

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Romantic Poetry

• John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Outline

• John Keats the odes
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Bright Star
• La Belle Dame san merci
• Ozymandias
• Notes
• Lord Byron She Walks in Beauty (for reference)

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Romantic Age

• First Generation The emphasis on
• Idealism Quest
• Wordsworth Nature and correspondence between
  Nature and human nature (e.g. US Whitman,
  Dickinson)
• Wordsworth Common people (London)
• Natural Supernaturalism Coleridge and Blake
  Art (Tiger), Imagination Vision (Kubla Khan
  The Rime of Ancient Mariner)
• Feeling (spontaneous overflow of powerful
  feeling emotion recollected in tranquility)
• Individualism vs. (e.g. I Wandered Lonely as a
  Cloud and Rose)

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Romantic Age

• 2nd Generation The emphasis on
• Feeling
• Art Imagination (e.g. Ode on a Grecian Urn)
  Vision
• Individualism Quest for the remote (myth)
• Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the sensual,
  the moral)
• against authority (Ozymandias)

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John Keats

• October 31, 1795-February 23, 1821 died at the
  age of 25 of tuberculosis . Published only 54
  poems.
• Originally a surgeon (apothecary-surgeon) and
  changed his mind in 1813-1814.
• Literary Creation 1816 1821 love with Fanny
  Browne 1818-? the odes 1819 poverty
• 1820 symptoms of TB
• 1821 -- "Here lies one whose name was writ in
  water."
• Major Ideas Life as the Vale of soul-making.
  Shakespeare with negative capability (like a
  chameleon???imaginative identification with the
  other).

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Keats Great Odes

• 4. Ode on Melancholy
• She dwells with BeautyBeauty that must die   
• And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
• Bidding adieu and aching Pleasure nigh,   
• Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

• Ode to Psyche
• --the goddess Psyche in the arms of Cupid
• Ode on a Grecian Urn art
• 3. Ode to a Nightingale --art
• 5. Ode on Indolence
• 6. 'To Autumn a finale

• Journey to (or Quest) artistic eternity and
  transcendence and return to the mortal world

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

1. Pay attention to a) the form of address
   (apostrophe) and the object of address in
   different stanzas, which imply the speakers
   different relations with the urn
2. Pay attention to the use of metaphors in
   calling/describing the urn
3. The two sides of the urn their differences and
   similarities
4. The closing lineshow to interpret them.

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STANZA I
Bluemetaphor red sound Underline-- rhetoric
skills questions

• Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
• Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
• Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
• A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme
• What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
• Of deities or mortals, or of both,
• In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? (1)
• What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
• What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
• What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

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STANZA II
Bluemetaphor Red sound Underline-- rhetoric
skills Imperative, concession, repetition

• Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
• Are sweeter therefore, ye soft pipes, play on
• Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
• Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone
• Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not
  leave
• Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare
• Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
• Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve
• She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
• For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

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STANZA III
Bluemetaphor Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Exclamation repetition

• Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
• Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu
• And, happy melodist, unwearied,
• For ever piping songs for ever new
• More happy love! more happy, happy love!
• For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
• For ever panting, and for ever young
• All breathing human passion far above,
• That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
• A burning forehead, and a parching
  tongue.              

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STANZA IV
Bluesubjects Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Exclamation repetition

• Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
• To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
• Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
• And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
• What little town by river or sea shore,
• Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
• Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
• And, little town, thy streets for evermore
• Will silent be and not a soul to tell
• Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

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STANZA V
Bluemetaphor Orange sound Underline--
rhetoric skills Exclamation repetition

• O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
• Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
• With forest branches and the trodden weed
• Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
• As doth eternity Cold Pastoral!
• When old age shall this generation waste,
• Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
• Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
• "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
• Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

1. Using apostrophe to speak to the Urn in order to
   enter its realm (the realm of art and
   permanence)
2. The process question? empathy ? confirmation ?
   differentiation between the human and the
   artistic.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn

• Using apostrophe to address and speak to the Urn
  in order to enter its realm (the realm of art
  and permanence)
• The Emphathic(???/Ekphrastic (??/????) Process
• 1) approach question? understanding ?
  confirmation ?
• 2) differentiation between the human and the
  artistic
• A Creative Process
• After all, the urn is just an ancient utensil
  Keats creates its artistic meanings by teasing
  out the dualities between time and
  timelessness/frozen moments, sound and silence,
  thinking and thoughtlessness, the static and the
  eternal.

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Note (1)

• Tempe and Arcady considered as heavenly paradise
  in Greece, frequently mentioned in pastoral
  poems symbol of artistic realm.
• Sylvan of the forest shady

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Note (2)

• Ekphrasis poetic writing concerning itself with
  the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly
  visual scenes (source)
• Examples Musee des beaux arts Ozymandias My
  Last Duchess
• Issues
• art and life
• different languages of art (an inter-art
  approach) temporal/kinetic arts (verbal, filmic)
  art vs. static (visual vs. plastic)
• Possibilities of re-creation with different
  messages.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn as an Ekphrastic poem

• Keats first appreciates the values of plastic art
  which eternalizes one (frozen) moment
• With the reading of the funeral procession, he
  places it back to the temporal flow.
• There is then a contrast between the urns beauty
  and truth, and those of humans mortal world.

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Bright Star

• Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou
  artNot in lone splendour hung aloft the
  nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like
  nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving
  waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution
  round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new
  soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and
  the moorsNoyet still stedfast, still
  unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's
  ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall
  and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet
  unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken
  breath,And so live everor else swoon to death.

hermit
Cosmic, religious
cleansing
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Bright Star

• Paradoxes?
• Between steadfastness and mortality (unrest, fall
  and swell, death)
• No, yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow
  'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel
  for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever
  in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her
  tender-taken breath,And so live everor else
  swoon to death.
• 2. Poetic Form?
• abab, cdcd, efgfhh
• Between Shakespearean (rhyme) and Italian sonnet
  (form)

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Bright Star In Context (1)

• The poem was written by Keats in 1819 and revised
  it in 1820, perhaps on the (final) voyage to
  Italy (a common treatment for tuberculosis, a
  trip to Italy).
• Keats was aware that he was dying. Some critics
  have theorized that this poem was addressed to
  his fiance, Fanny Brawne, and connect the poem to
  his May 3, 1818 letter to her.

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Ode on Melancholy (1819)

• She Melancholy dwells with BeautyBeauty
  that must die     
• And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips  
• Bidding adieu and aching Pleasure nigh,     
• Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

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The Film Bright Star

• Bright star 0112, 152
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci 0122
• 014022,216 --Let's pretend I will return in
  spring.
•  
•  

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La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 1819)

Sir Frank Dicksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci,
 based upon John Keats poem (source)
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La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 1819)

1. How does the speaker present the knight? And the
   knight, the lady?
2. Why are the last lines repetitions of the first
   stanza? "though the sedge is wither'd from the
   lake / And no birds sing." Note that they are
   spoken first by the narrator, and at the end, by
   the knight.
3. What role does dream play in this poem?
4. Pay attention to the effects of alliteration
5. In what ways is this poem (as a literary ballad)
   different fold ballad?

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1-3 Speaker to a pale knight

• I
• O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,   
• Alone and palely loitering?
• The sedge has witherd from the lake,   
• And no birds sing.  
• II
• O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!        
• So haggard and so woe-begone?
• The squirrels granary is full,   
• And the harvests done.
• III
• I see a lily on thy brow   
• With anguish moist and fever dew,         
• And on thy cheeks a fading rose   
• Fast withereth too.

narrator
Lily pale white
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4-9 The knight about

• IV
• I met a lady in the meads,   Full beautifula
  faerys child,
• Her hair was long, her foot was light,         
•  And her eyes were wild.  
• V.
• I made a garland for her head,   
• And bracelets too, and fragrant zone
• She lookd at me as she did love,   
• And made sweet moan.         
• VI.
• I set her on my pacing steed,   
• And nothing else saw all day long,
• For sidelong would she bend, and sing   
• A faerys song.

The knights narration
the beautiful fairy-like Lady images of fairy,
flower, sweet root, moan and song, wildness
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The knight left alone

• VII.
• She found me roots of relish sweet,         
• And honey wild, and manna dew,
• And sure in language strange she said   I love
  thee true.  
• VIII.
• She took me to her elfin grot,   
• And there she wept, and sighd fill sore,     
• And there I shut her wild wild eyes   
• With kisses four.  
• IX.
• And there she lulled me asleep,   
• And there I dreamdAh! woe betide!
• The latest dream I ever dreamd
• On the cold hills side.

????
Dream ? cold hill
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The knight alone

• X
• I saw pale kings and princes too,   
• Pale warriors, death-pale were they all
• They criedLa Belle Dame sans Merci   
• Hath thee in thrall!         
• XI.
• I saw their starved lips in the gloam,   
• With horrid warning gaped wide,
• And I awoke and found me here,   
• On the cold hills side.
• XII.
• And this is why I sojourn here,
• Alone and palely loitering,
• Though the sedge is witherd from the lake,   
• And no birds sing.

Dream ? cold hill, knights Awake on the cold
hills side
??
cold hill bot h in the dream and awake/
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Interpretations

• The knight ill, fatigued and/or diseased
• -- The lady in foreign tongue, beautiful but
  unreal (like a fairy)
• Image late autumn, withered plants,
• -- the ambience of a dream he wakes to find
  himself in the dreamscape.
• Sound and sense sadness, obsession (e.g. the
  use of alliteration and nasal sounds-- woebegone,
  gloam.)
• a. Unrequited love ???????,???????
• b. Impossible love with Fanny Browne
• c. Impossible quest for some ideal (in illness)

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• eloped with the 16-year old Harriet Westbrook
  disinherited because of this marriage.
• In 1814, Shelley traveled abroad with Mary
  Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the
  philosopher and anarchist William Godwin
  (1756-1836). Harriet committed suicide, and then
  Shelley married Mary.
• Shelley was Drowned in 1822.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• eloped with the 16-year old Harriet Westbrook
  disinherited because of this marriage.
• In 1814, Shelley traveled abroad with Mary
  Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the
  philosopher and anarchist William Godwin
  (1756-1836). Harriet committed suicide, and then
  Shelley married Mary.
• Shelley was Drowned in 1822.

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Ozymandias

• The use of frames the travelers story
• Contradictions used to present the ironies of
  human ambition
• shatter visage? frown and sneer
• Passion on these lifeless things survives the
  hand and the heart (whose heart?)
• colossal wreck boundless sand.

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The Romantics The Big Six

• William Blake (1757-1827)
• Willliam Wordsworth (1770-1850)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

• John Keats (1795-1821) -- died at the age of 25
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) -- died at the
  age of 29
• Lord Byron (1788-1824) age 36

Mary Shelley 30 August 1797 1 February 1851)
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Art in the Romantic Age

• The First Generation The emphasis on
• Inspired by French Revolution
• Nature and the Natural
• correspondence between Nature and human nature
  (e.g. US Whitman, Dickinson)
• Democracy Common and Rustic (???) people
• Feelings (spontaneous overflow of powerful
  feeling)
• Imagination and Vision (e.g. I Wandered Lonely
  as a Cloud) Vision
• Individualism Quest so called Natural
  Supernaturalism

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Art in the Romantic Age

• The 2nd Generation The emphasis on
• Feelings Free Love
• Art Imagination (e.g. Ode on a Grecian Urn)
  Vision
• Individualism Quest for the remote (myth)
• 3. More Radical
• Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the sensual,
  the moral)
• against authority (Ozymandias)
• Romantic or Satanic Hero (? Frankenstein)
• 4. (Lyrics?) narrative poems

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Victorian Poetry

• More dramatic, less visionarysometimes sadder
• Influenced by the Romantics, but there is usually
  a conflict between their need for conveying
  personal emotions and their sense of social
  responsibility (educational) esp in Tennyson.
• Influenced by the popularity of novels at the
  time? dramatic monologue and narrative poems
  (e.g. Idylls of the KingsArthurian legends)
• Late Victorians the Pre-Raphaelites, Thomas
  Hardy and Matthew Arnold

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Ozymandias Starting Questions

• Main Idea and Ironies?
• How is Ozymandias described?
• The poems form?
• an Italian sonnet (octave sestet).
• Narrative frame the use of the narrator

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Ozymandias
(Rhyme ABAB ACDC EDEFEF).

• I met a traveller 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, King 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."

image
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The narrative frames?the effect of distantiation
I ? the Poem the one that survives

• Survival and death
• traveler

Lives the other kings
Ozymandias
his heart and the sculptors hand
passions on the sculpture lifeless sculpture
sand
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Ozymandias Historical Context (1)

• Its title Ramesses the Great (i.e., Ramesses
  II), Pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty of ancient
  Egypt. Ozymandias the Greek version of his
  throne name.
• The inscription on the pedestal of his statue
  "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would
  know how great I am and where I lie, let him
  surpass one of my works." (image and info
  source)
• Shelleys reading wrinkled lip

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Ramesses II
Front view of the temple of Ramesses II in Abu
Simbel, Egypt
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Ozymandias Historical Context (2)

• The poem Written in 1817, three years after the
  Waterloo in 1815 (which brought Napoleon's
  conquest to a stop). (source)
• Shelleys other poem Ode to the West Wind
• What inspired the poem The 'Younger Memnon'
  statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum ? an
  example of British colonialism

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• A radical thinker and pronounced atheist
• Supporter of free love
• Eloped first with Harriet, and then with Mary
  Godwin Shelley (as well as her step-sister, when
  both were 16).
• Set up a radical community of friends who
  shared everything with one another.
• Two family suicides (one of Harriet, the other
  Marys half sister)
• 1816-- the completion of Frankenstein.
• 1821-- Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned at sea, aged
  29.

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Lord Byron

• See the video
• Born with a clubfoot
• Child Harold the disparity between Romantic
  ideals and reality
• Involved in affairs with a married woman and his
  half sister.

portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian dress by
Thomas Phillips, c1835 (source)
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SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

1. How is she described? With what images (of
   contradictions)? What does beauty means? And
   walk?
2. How do the sound effects help convey the meanings
   of the poem?

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SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

• SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY, like the night  
• Of cloudless climes and starry skies  
       And all that's best of dark and bright  
       Meet in her aspect and her eyes       
  Thus mellow'd to that tender light        Which
  heaven to gaudy day denies.  

Song http//www.youtube.com/watch?vVxZvgp14MFc
(Vanity Fair opening ) Reading
http//www.youtube.com/watch?ve8kwvhsT850
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SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

• One shade the more, one ray the less,       
  Had half impair'd the nameless grace,       
  Which waves in every raven tress,        Or
  softly lightens o'er her face        Where
  thoughts serenely sweet express,        How
  pure, how dear their dwelling-place.    

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SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

• And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,       
  So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,        The
  smiles that win, the tints that glow,        But
  tell of days in goodness spent,        A mind at
  peace at all below,        A heart whose love is
  innocent ! 

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SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

• she
• sheds tender light (combines darkness and
  light//aspect and eyes//appearance, heart and
  thought.)
• -- grace in motion on her dress and her face, and
  expressive of her pure mind and thought.
• -- cheeks and smile glow to reveal her goodness,
  mind and heart.
• rhythm iambs with one trochee
• Sounds m s o e