Romanticism: Religiosity
Secretarial Team:
Margarita Martí
Sandra Gisbert Sánchez
Xihong Liu
Marta Lizana Orosa
Ana Such Torregrosa
Neu Zorrilla Benito
Cristina Boix Casanova
Tania Martínez Alonso
INDEX:
1.Introduction 3
– 4
2. W. Blake 5
– 7
3. William Wordsworth 8 – 12
4. S.T Coleridge 13- 17
5. Lord Byron 18
– 23
6. P.B Shelley 24
– 26
7. J.Keats 27
– 31
8. Conclusión 32
9. Bibliography 33
- 34
10.Paper’s Task 35
INTRODUCTION
Our work is focussed in the Romanticism period, when it was originated,
what were its influences and who were its most important authors.
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that
originated in late 18th century Western Europe. In part a revolt against
aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment
period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art
and literature it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience,
placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the
experience in confronting the sublimity
of nature. It elevated folk art, language
and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on usage and custom. It
was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly evolution and uniformitarianism, which argued that
"the past is the key to the present", and elevated medievalism and elements of art and
narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The name
"romantic" itself comes from the term "romance" which is a
prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in the medieval.
The ideologies and events of the French Revolution are thought to have
influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it
perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society.
It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which
permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong
recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its
ideas.
Romanticism
in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated with the poets William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, whose co-authored book "Lyrical Ballads" (1798)
sought to reject Augustan poetry
in favour of more direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were
also involved in Utopian social thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The poet and painter William Blake is the most extreme
example of the Romantic sensibility in
Lord
Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase of
Romanticism in
Blake introduces
us in his universal world in which he mixed image and text.
Blake’s thought begin the English
Pre-Romanticism. His life and his work were a fight between Spirit and reality.
The modern critic doesn’t accept his
agrupations but in English Lyrics there are two generations:
1st: lakistas poets: Wordsworth y Coleridge.
2nd: Satanic poets: Lord Byron, Shelley and Keats.
After having done this explanation of the
context, having shown the most important authors and their most important
themes, we are going to focus our work in the religiosity of the English
romantic period.
WILLIAM
BLAKE
F
irstly we are going to analyse the
life of a Pre-Romantic, William Blake
and his poem The Chimney Sweeper.
William Blake was the first of the great English
Romantics, principally because he was the first of the English poets to assault
the principles of science and commercialism in an age when the twin imperatives
of industrialisation and ‘system’ were beginning to dominate human life. He
wrote lyrics, vast verse epics and verse dramas. He redefined the poetry of
radical protest.
William
Blake's significance in the Romantic Movement came late in the 19th century,
after what is officially considered the Romantic period.
He
was born
Blake's
early childhood was dominated by spiritual
visions which influenced his personal and working life. A passionate
believer in liberty and freedom for all, especially for women, he courted
controversy with his views on Church
and state.
After
following a traditional artistic career as an apprentice engraver he attended
the
In
1782 Blake married Catherine Boucher, an inseparable companion he taught to
read, write and draw and would aid him in the production of his work.
After
leaving the Academy he set himself up as an engraver and illustrator,
publishing his own work. His first book, Poetical Sketches, was
published in 1783. From then on he published everything himself. He produced
his most famous works, Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of
Experience (1794), by engraving both words and pictures on the same plate,
his lasting style.
Although
Blake struggled to make a living from his work during his lifetime his
influence and ideas are possibly the strongest of all the Romantic poets.
The Chimney
Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep.
Theres little Tom Dacre. who cried when his
head,
That curl'd like a lambs back, was shav'd, so I said,
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned and Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,
And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open'd the coffins and set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left
behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy.
He'd have God for his father and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm,
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
In the first paragraph
we can see how the author focuses the poem in chimney’s work and their lives
and we also can see that this is the reason for the title of the poem.
W. Blake makes a protest
with this poem because he was terrified seeing the bad conditions of chimney
sweepers.
In the second paragraph
the children “Tom Dacre” Looks like
an angel. It seems that it is not a general angel, it sounds that he knows who that
child is. And another thing that shows that Tom is younger than the reader is the soot cannot spoil your white hair.
In the third paragraph
Tom is having a dream. Here he died in black coffins and the only way to be
free is death. Here we find a symbolism between dream which usually is during
night and the night is dark.
In the fourth paragraph
we also can find some green symbols, better said some natural symbols as a
garden or the Even. But we also can see the
Sun which is to be able to enjoy the nature or to be happy. And if we have
a look we can see that the child now is an Angel who is happy.
In the fifth paragraph
there are some words like Then naked and
white which symbolises that they have all the truths in their backs. Naked refers to going back to their origins and white refers to something
clean.
He'd have God for his father and never want joy. That sentence refers that the
happiness is never going to be out because he have had a God which was his
father.
But in the last
paragraph Tom awakes and returns to reality, he has to go to his job but he is
happy because he had a beautiful dream where he could see him as an Angel.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Wordsworth,s verdict after Blake's
death reflected many opinions of the time: "There was no doubt that
this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which
interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."
Blake's influence grew through Pre-Raphaelites all over Britain.
This last statement allows me to introduce the next romantic poet:
W.Wordsworth.
William Wordsworth’s poems are defined as poems
of nature, but in his early life he was dominated by the French Revolution and
the libertarian ideals of the time and that was also reflected in some of their
poems. 1 2
Following this revolutionary ideas, he
repudiated not only the Christian faith but also the family and marriage institutions.
Narrating Wordsworth's
progressed out of the Church to the position of "at least a semi-atheist"
(Coleridge's phrase).3
Inspired by the French Revolution,
he created elements of a new type of poetry, based on the “real language of
men” so his poems where written in the language of the common man and talked
about real but common situations.1
Wordsworth also met Taylor Coleridge
and developed a big friendship with him that brought them to produce an
important work in the English Romantic movement which name was Lyrical
Ballads.1
The poem we are going to analyse is
a fragment of “The Last of the Flock”
which is included in this volume and talks about a man who has been forced to
sell his lambs through poverty and now he feels extremely sad because he has
lost his last one.
In this poem we can find the
Wordsworth’s ideals about religion in this moment and also we can observe that
the topic is a story of a common man with a common life. Wordsworth proves with
that poem that a normal story can be inspiration to make poetry too.1
1.www.wikipedia.org
2.www.wordsworth.org.uk
3.
http://www.rc.umd.edu/reviews/back/ryan.html
The Last of the Flock
When I was young, a
single man,
And after youthful follies ran.
Though little given to care and thought,
Yet, so it was, a ewe I bought;
And other sheep from her I raised,
As healthy sheep as you might see,
And then I married, and was rich
As I could wish to be;
Of sheep I numbered a full score,
And every year increas'd my store.
Year after year my
stock it grew,
And from this one, this single ewe,
Full fifty comely sheep I raised,
As sweet a flock as ever grazed!
Upon the mountain did they feed;
They throve, and we at home did thrive.
--This lusty lamb of all my store
Is all that is alive;
And now I care not if we die,
And perish all of poverty.
Six children, Sir! had
I to feed,
Hard labour in a time of need!
My pride was tamed, and in our grief,
I of the parish ask'd relief.
They said I was a wealthy man;
My sheep upon the mountain fed,
And it was fit that thence I took
Whereof to buy us bread:
"Do this; how can we give to you,"
They cried, "what to the poor is due?"
I sold a sheep as they
had said,
And bought my little children bread,
And they were healthy with their food;
For me it never did me good.
A woeful time it was for me,
To see the end of all my gains,
The pretty flock which I had reared
With all my care and pains,
To see it melt like snow away!
For me it was a woeful day.
Another still! and
still another!
A little lamb, and then its mother!
It was a vein that never stopp'd,
Like blood-drops from my heart they dropp'd.
Till thirty were not left alive
They dwindled, dwindled, one by one,
And I may say that many a time
I wished they all were gone:
They dwindled one by one away;
For me it was a woeful day.
To wicked deeds I was
inclined,
And wicked fancies cross'd my mind,
And every man I chanc'd to see,
I thought he knew some ill of me.
No peace, no comfort could I find,
No ease, within doors or without,
And crazily, and wearily
I went my work about.
Oft-times I thought to run away;
For me it was a woeful day.
Sir! 'twas a precious
flock to me,
As dear as my own children be;
For daily with my growing store
I loved my children more and more.
Alas! it was an evil time;
God cursed me in my sore distress,
I prayed, yet every day I thought
I loved my children less;
And every week, and every day,
My flock, it seemed to melt away.
They dwindled. Sir,
sad sight to see!
From ten to five, from five to three,
A lamb, a weather, and a ewe;
And then at last, from three to two;
And of my fifty, yesterday
I had but only one,
And here it lies upon my arm,
Alas! and I have none;
To-day I fetched it from the rock;
It is the last of all my flock.4
In
this poem we can see how the man blames God of his tragedy:
Alas! it was an evil time;
God cursed me in my sore distress
Perhaps he can’t understand why the church
didn’t want to help him to keep his Flock which was the only way to earn money
in his family.
4.http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/3139/
The flock was his happiness, and when all his
lambs died his happiness died with them too. He lost the love he had to his
children and his hatred to God and the Church increased for making him unhappy.
He feels completely sad and desperate
Another still! and still another!
A little lamb, and then its mother!
It was a vein that never stopp'd,
Like blood-drops from my heart they dropp'd.
Till thirty were not left alive
They dwindled, dwindled, one by one
The
desperation is reflected in the repetitions like still and still another, they
dwindled ,dwindled one by one and other expressions like Alas! and For me it was a woeful day. The last one is repeated along the
poem.
In our opinion, that can be a critic
to the Church because they were more interested in the monarch instead of the common
people during the French Revolution.
Around 1880 the intellectual and
political ideas of Wordsworth changed to become conservative. The poet was
disappointed with the events in France and also changed his social circle.1
Some
students of this topic like Robert.M Ryan argue that “Wordsworth does not later abandon his radical views, but rather
accommodates them to the importance of public religion in the national life.”5
5 . Robert M. Ryan, The Romantic
Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature,
1789–1824. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism http://www.rc.umd.edu/reviews/back/ryan.html
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
BIOGRAPHY[1]
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge was born October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary's,
In
December 1793 he left school and joined the Dragoons (under the alias Silas
Tomkyn Comerbacke), but kept falling off his horse. By the following April his
brothers had found out where he was, bailed him out, and convinced him to
return to
By
now Coleridge, who was earning his keep partly as a Unitarian preacher, had begun seriously to
write poetry. He became close friends to William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who moved to Alfoxden
in 1797 to be near the Coleridges at Nether Stowey, and the two poets planned Lyrical
Ballads, which appeared in 1798. Coleridge's most important contribution
was "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." That same September the
three of them visited
In
1799 Coleridge joined the Wordsworths, who were staying at the
From
the time of his marriage on, Coleridge was searching for a vocation that would
pay the rent, although the annuity of £150 from the Wedgwoods eased these
concerns after 1798 and meant that he did not need to take up a career as a
Unitarian minister. It is interesting to speculate if he would have later
returned to the Church of England without that timely annuity (see "Coleridge's religion,"
linked here).
Perhaps
because he conceived such grand projects, he had difficulty carrying them
through to completion, and he berated himself for his
"indolence." It is unclear whether his growing use of opium was
a symptom or a cause of his growing depression. "Dejection: An Ode," written in 1802, expresses
his despair at the loss of his creative powers. In 1804 he travelled to
At
this same time he was establishing himself as the most intellectual of the
English Romantics, delivering an influential series of lectures on Shakespeare
in the winter of 1811-12 and bringing out his Biographia Literaria in
1817. Among his contemporaries, he was best known as a talker, in the tradition
of Samuel Johnson: his "Highgate Thursdays"
became famous. He died July 25, 1834.
LIMBO[2]
The sole true something – This! In
Limbo Den
It frightens Ghosts as Ghosts here
frighten men –
For skimming in the wake it mock’d
the care
Of the old Boat-God for his
Fathering Fare;
Tho’ Irus’ Ghost itself he ne’er
frown’d blacker on,
The skin and skin-pent Druggist
crost the Acheron,
(The very
names, methinks, might thither fright us --)
Unchang’d
it cross’d -- & shall some fated Hour
Be
pulveris’d by Demogorgon’s power
And given
as poison to annilate souls --
Even now
It shrinks them! They shrink in as Moles
(Nature’s
mute Monks, live Mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back
from light – then listen for its sound; --
See but to
dread, and dread they know not why --
The
natural Alien of their negative Eye.
‘Tis a
strange place, this Limbo! – not a Place,
Yet name
it so; where Time & weary space
Fettered
from light, with night-mair sense of feeling,
Strive for
their last crepuscular half-being; --
Lank
space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and
soundless so the measuring sands,
Not mark’d
by flit of shades, -- unmeaning they
As moonlight
on the dial of the day!
But that
is lovely – looks like Human Time, --
An Old Man
with a steady look sublime,
That stops
his earthly Task to watch the skies;
But he is
blind – a Statue hath such eyes; --
Yet having
moon-ward turn’d his face by chance,
Gazes the
orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant
white hairs, with foretops bald & high,
He gazes
still, -- his eyeless Face all Eye; --
As ‘twere
an organ full of silent sight,
His whole
Face seemed to rejoice in Light!
Lip
touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb,
He seems
to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!
No such
sweet sights doth Limbo Den immure,
Wall’d
round and made a Spirit-jail secure,
By the
mere Horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose
circumambance doth these Ghosts enthral
A lurid
thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that
is but a purgatory curse;
Hell knows
a fear far worse,
A fear – a
future fate. –‘This positive Negation.
COMENTARY
As we can see in this poem,
Coleridge uses a religious term, the Limbo to create his own world of loss,
desire, fragmentation and melancholia.
Coleridge’s latest poetry reflects
the poet’s ability to imagine and dissect both sides of life’s grand
antagonisms. Here we see that he places the world or the situation he wants to
create nor in the hell neither in the heaven, he uses the Limbo in order to see
the two sides in one. In fact, the definition of Limbo is : The abode (neither heaven nor hell) of the
souls of unbaptized pagans and infants.[3] Trapped in his opium’s addiction and
depression, the older Coleridge felt chronically incomplete, confused,
dissatisfied. This melancholy state brought him to the curious frontier where
no one achieves double vision, the capacity to perceive two sides of the world
at once. Although this double refraction kept Coleridge from finding peace, the
psychic Limbo became a muse, an inspiration to complete works on the
impossibility of completion.
Seeing a little analysis of the
poem, we can see that the first part shows us a terrible image of the Limbo,
and describes the Limbo as The sole true
something – This! , so nothing concrete. Here we contemplate that the poet
uses mythological names that might
thither fright us.
The middle part begins so: ‘Tis a strange place, this Limbo! –not a Place Yet name it so; -- and describes us a world based on the
empty space and almost death, or as
the poet says unmeaning . Nevertheless,
he also says: But that is lovely – looks
like Human Time, -- . So we can discover the comparison between the Limbo,
the terrible world that he describes (but look, not as terrible as the
hell), and the true life (human time). And here can we see the way the poet was:
melancholic, depressed and opium’s addict.
Suddenly appears in the poem an old blind man who guesses the moonlight
(Could this man be God? The old loved God who now has forgot Coleridge? Maybe
he is angry with God and he has placed Him in the Limbo, as a way of
punishment?)
In the third part he shows us the
Limbo as a place where reigns the mere
Horror of blank Naught-at-all, so the fear is the hopeless of the empty,
the nothing. The poem ends so: This
positive Negation. Maybe here ha wants to express the duality of the
things, the two sides that he sees, because can the negation be positive?
In conclusion, this poem reflects
the two sides of the things that he can see and he has situated it in a
religious context, because maybe he blames Got of his melancholic life. Perhaps
he feels as in the Limbo, where nothing has reason, an empty space where he
does not find himself. [4]
GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON, LORD BYRON
From Lord
George Gordon Byron, the 6th Byron, we can say that
he was an atheist. In this section, an outline of Byron’s biography has been provided regarding his religious influences, and in the second part, the approach
will be focused on the different extracts of Byron’s works to support this idea of atheism. During the essay we will also take into account
the contrasting sides of Byron.
George
Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was born in
His vices were aggravated by his early indoctrination on
Calvinism. He was
initiated prematurely into sexual awareness at the age of nine, when his Scots
nursemaid, May Gray, who used to preach Calvinism to him during the day, would
"come to bed with him at night and play tricks with his person". She
was sacked, but Byron's romantic inclinations were awoken, as was his distrust
of two-faced Christianity. 2
Regarding the scandals, apart of the sexual molestation of Byron by
his governess May Gray, his later homosexual inclinations prior to his travels in
Turkey and Greece, his divorce and the incest relationship with his half-sister Augusta, are
four episodes that is
going to be odd, startling and unaccepted by a traditional British society,
where religion was mainly conservative. These four episodes lead us to think
that Byron was a really modern man of his times, who kept an subversive
attitude towards religion and towards the conservative established society. 3
Calvinism indoctrination continued later on
in
From
1805 to 1807, Byron studied in
“… this place is the
Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University,
but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for Study is the
last pursuit of the Society; the Master eats, drinks and Sleeps, the Fellows drink,
dispute and pun, the employments of the under Graduates
you will probably conjecture without my description …” 4. This religious
university would probably deceive anyone in order to believe in such a
religious Institution as something didactic or acting as a model of moral
correctness.
His friends would frequently
represent to him the dangerous influence of his writings upon the religious
principles of the public; but he replied only by asking, who was ever altered
by a poem. Besides, “he could not understand why he was accused of irreligion;
he was no enemy to religion – he thought that people could never have enough,
if they had any; he was a better Christian than the parsons, who were all
preaching against him, from Kentish Town and Oxford to Pisa – the scoundrels of
priests, who do more harm to religion than all the infidels that ever forgot
their catechisms.” All this was said by a man whose live was almost one
perpetual outrage upon every moral and religious sanction.5
Regarding to Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage, it is a quite autobiographical poem, as Byron freely admitted, and
is based upon his travels through the Mediterranean and
XXXIV
Or, it may be, with demons, who impair
The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey
In melancholy bosoms, such as were
Of moody texture, from their earliest day,
And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay,
Deeming themselves predestined to a doom
Which is not of the pangs that pass away;
Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. (CHP Canto
IV. XXXIV) 6
Byron’s mood at that
time is exactly what he describes in these verses “with demons, who impair / The strength of better thoughts, and seek
their prey” (CHP Canto Four. XXXIV) 6. The evil is always present, and in a way,
spoiling the good. Byron was tormented “with
demons” in his real life as Childe Harold in the poem. Again we have the
opposition between good and bad, a controversial attitude that will find a
terrible destiny “Deeming themselves predestined to a doom” (CHP Canto Four. XXXIV) 6, the idea of “ineradicable
conviction that he was damned”, mentioned before, takes shape in this stanza.
In
Cain, the subversive attitude and his conflict towards traditional religion
evolve to a stronger position. According to Edward E. Bostetter (“Byron and the Politics of
Paradise”) “He uses the biblical cosmos as the setting for the
first act, superimposes upon it in the second act the cosmos of 19th century
scientific speculation, and in the third act returns to the biblical cosmos. By
so doing he shows up the inadequacy of the traditional cosmology at the same
time as he reveals its continuing power over the minds of men.”
Act 1, scene 1 from
“Cain”
"What had I done in this? I was unborn."
Besides, wasn't Jehovah guilty of entrapment: "The tree was planted, and
why not for him [Adam]? / If not, why place him near it, where it grew, / The
fairest in the center?" In any event, why proscribe knowledge and life:
"How can both be evil?" (C. I.ii.) [1]
Cain
puts the blame on his parents to have eaten the forbidden fruit, a course that
is going to hand down from generation for generation. Cain did not provoke the
original sin; instead he has inherited the course of being a mortal human. On
the other hand, he accuses “Jehovah
guilty of entrapment” as the tree was deliberately planted in the Paradise
of Eden to lead them into crime. [1]
Cain
is an individual who is fighting against the social and religious convention as
Byron does. The clash existed in the 19th century between Romantics
as Byron and the traditional understanding of religion starts here. The
questioning of a society dictated by social and religious rules is more
emphasized at this point near to the modern times. Byron acts as a kind of
rebel defying the society and its faith. [1]
From Switzerland Byron moved to
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry. (DJ. I. LXXXIII) 7
Don Juan is very long, yet remained unfinished, Byron having
"not quite fixed whether to make him end in Hell, or in an unhappy
marriage, not knowing which would be the severest ".8
“In hope to merit heaven by making earth a
hell” by George Gordon Byron (CHP.I.15) 9
Consulted:
4th December 2006
[1] (Gary Sloan, Lord Byron: The Demons of Calvinism. July/August 2002. <http://www.eclectica.org/v6n3/sloan.html>)
Consulted: 5th December 2006
2 (The International Byron Society, Byron’s Early Childhood and Schooldays. Date of version?
<http://www.internationalbyronsociety.org/default.asp>).
Consulted:
5th December 2006
3 (Jeffrey D. Hoeper,
Consulted:
6th December 2006
4 (Peter Cochran, An introductory Biography of Byron. November 7, 2002. <http://www.hobby-o.com/index.php>)
Consulted:
6th December 2006
5 Review of the Life and Character of Lord Byron:
Extracted from the British Critic for April, 1831. London: J.G. &
Rivington 1833. Google Book Search. <http://books.google.com/>
Consulted:
12th December 2006
6 Project
Gutenberg. Lord
Byron. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. 2003-2006 Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation <http://www.gutenberg.org>
Consulted:
12th December 2006
7 Fay - English Department,
Consulted:
7th December 2006
8 Hamish Johnson，Byron: The Expert View. 2006 The BBC and The Open University. December 6, 2006. http://www.open2.net/marksteel/byron_expert.html
Consulted:
12th December 2006
9 Coolquotes
– Coolest quotes on the web. Quotations By Category:- 'Heaven'.
<http://www.coolquotes.com/heaven.html>
PERCY BYSSHE
SHELLEY
Another one if the Big Six (name given to the six big poets of the
Romantic Period, including William Blake) is Percy Bysshe Shelley.
He was born in
After just one year at
University, he wrote “The Necessity of
Atheism” with Thomas Jefferson Hogg and therefore, he was expelled from
University. The same year, he eloped with 16-year-old aristocratic girl called
Harriet with whom, he had two children. They both travelled through
After Harriet’s suicide,
Shelly married Mary Godwin and moved to
His life was usually
encouraged by his desire of social and political reforms, for that, he offered
an emotive and passionate appeal to the social improvement of society although
he caused scandal with his views on religion and his love life.
The extract
that we are going to analyze is part of the poem “Queen Mab”, which was first published in a limited edition of 250
copies intended for individuals chosen by Shelley. For him, poetry had to be
spontaneous, an unconscious creativity, a need of the individual to express his
feelings. He talks to the Queen Mab, (character that we’ll see in Romeo and
Juliet by William Shakespeare) the queen of the fates who allows him to see the
mistakes committed by human being and the future of the world. In this Romantic
period, we’ll find a lot of these visions of future as the individual is not
happy with the present.
It is a
youthful poem of political protest which attacks the main institutions of
society by means of which the people are oppressed: law, marriage, war, commerce,
established religion, the fraudulent rhetoric of power and privilege. The power
of the individual is essential in the Romantic thinking. He believed that the
perfect society would not come by violent acts but by people becoming virtuous
by evolution. In this sense, he was an idealist encouraged by his youth (he was
just 21 years old).
Queen Mab[5]
"Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee (1)
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
His being in the sight of happiness (2)
That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
Beneath whose shade all life is wither'd up, (3)
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
A temple where the vows of happy love
Are register'd, are equal in thy sight:
No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame (4)
Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
Because thou hast not human sense,
Because thou art not human mind. (5)
(1)
The “Spirit of nature” stands
for God. He claims God to see the world he has created. How it has developed
because of the “human error”. We can
see his protestant ideas in the sense that “thou
requir’st no prayers or praises”. The autonomous dialogue with God is
enough and the existence of prayers or praises is just the result of “man’s week”. There is no need to pray.
(2)
The religion is the cause because of the man is not happy. The “lust spread misery o’er the world”. That
notes an entire unbelief in religion of any sort.
(3)
The man must get free from mad: “the
poison-tree” which rules the world: “beneath
whose shade all life is wither’d up”. This process will bring them into
paradise.
(4)
The ideal state would be the one in which equality and freedom would
exist; it is represented by the “fair oak”,
a world with no social classes and full of love: “A temple where the vows of
happy love are register'd, are equal in thy sight”. Freedom meant more than
ever as they were almost like slaves. To fight for freedom meant a lot for
people. We can find here the spirit of French Revolution (Liberté, Egalité,
Fraternité). We see also the presence of nature as the state represented by the
“fair oak” or the mad by the “poison-tree”.
(5)
But that state is unreal, it would exist only in the imagination. God
can’t feel the human suffering because he is not one of them, he does not
really exist and can’t do anything to solve problems in the world: “Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel”
JOHN
KEATS
Keats was one of the most important
figures of early nineteenth-century Romanticism, a movement that showed
emotion, imagination, and the beauty of the natural world. Many of the ideas
and themes in Keats's great odes are Romantic concerns: the beauty of nature,
the relation between imagination and creativity, the response of the passions
to beauty and suffering, and the transience of human life in time. [6][7]
As we have been reading
in different poems, we notice how worried he was about death and what remains
after it, and the most important for him was to gain Eternity. But not mention
of God, Heaven or passing to a better life. Granted his belief that most contemporary
religion was a fraud and that the Christian god, at least, was mere fantasy,
man in general remained the highest subject that verse could address; and the
poet should still approach humanity with respectful optimism. [8]
Here is an example of
fear to death, in his sonnet:
When I have fears that I may cease
to be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; -- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
When reading this poem, we really
appreciate the fear to death, the author regrets not having time to write down
his thoughts” And think that I may never
live to trace their shadows”, he
realises that his death would occur before he could complete his writings and
above all, that nothing matters when you die “then on the shore Of the wide world stand alone, and think Till Love
and Fame to nothingness do sink”. 3
The expressive agony in
the face of death it is once again in this poem
“Why did I laugh
Tonight” where we can appreciate the themes of fear, loneliness and despair
characteristic on his poetry
Why did I laugh
tonight? No voice will tell.
Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No god, no demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell.
Them to my human heart I turn at once_
Heart! Thou and I are sad alone;
Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness!darkness! ever must I moan,
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain!
Why did I laugh? I know this being’s lease_
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads:
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,
And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds.
Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed,
But death intenser_death is
life’s high meed.
3http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm
The poet makes a
question, this rhetoric question is: why did he laugh that night? But nobody
answers; neither any god nor demon can answer it. He has not any help by god or
demon. It is the first time he addresses to any god, for help and it is in vain,
he is suffering, feeling a strong pain because he could die in that very moment
and the only thing that probably remains would be his verses.
There is an internal
struggle which causes him pain and makes him moan in the dark, during the
night. Probably is the fear to death, because is in the darkness when he moans,
and usually the death comes during the night. However he does not know the
reason and makes the question again and again, three times in total, probably
to reinforce the idea that he is sad and alone and has any reason to laugh.
Keats puts profound
meaning into this poem, his interior fight let us see his feelings, it
could happen that in that night he “cease”, he pass away, but in what sense?,
here we notice that on the one hand, this word might enclose the meaning of
“death”. He fears the death, he feels pain and sorrow because of the transitory
life and could cease in that midnight.
But on the other hand,
he could “cease” referring to writing, and he is referring to that idea through
musical verses, it seems a litany, a lament. As he is a poet, for him Art, the poetry, is very important, Art and
death are both escapes from time and change, and the relation between art,
death and life, not a happy life but a lonely and sad one, is the true theme of
the poem. As it is of the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:
......
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain,
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“beauty is truth, truth is beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
But here Art represents the escape
from change and decay into eternity, and it will be the only thing that shall
remain, the rest will disappear. The piece of art, the Grecian Urn is symbol of
the timeless, of the escape from the world.
Another good example of the desire
to escape of this world, which is sad for Keats is in these stanza, an extract
from the poem “Ode to a Nightingale”:
...
Fade away, dissolve, and quiet
forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where the men sit and hear eachother groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad,last
gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of
sorrow
And leaden-eye despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.
For Keats, the real
world is sad, a hostile environment “Here, where
the men sit and hear each other groan;”,
where humans are summated to change from youth to old age till they pass away:
“youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and
dies”.
Thinking about it makes him stay in
such a desperate state, asking those repetitive questions as in the first poem
we were dealing with. Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" springs from a
poet's personal life-changing, mind-wrenching experience of a timeless paradise,
a world "with no pain" Only
someone who has spent days tending the terminally ill can understand with what
depth Keats longs for this respite. 4
It is “Verse, Fame and Beauty” three important things in life, the Art of
Literature and the Fame it carries if the writing is beautiful. But the poet
situates “Death” above all these
things, and as a culmination of Life.5
CONCLUSION
After having analysed
these romantic authors we can say that they all share the ideals of their time.
They form a kind of rebellious group who denounce the human conditions and
problems caused by Industrial Revolution, which was quite developed in
They want a utopic state
which is reflected in their poems by meanings of dreams or desires inspired by
French Revolution.
This rebellion takes
also place in their own spirits. They all have an internal struggle between
good and madness and want to escape from religious conventions. For example,
Wordsworth and Shelley share atheism.
So, religion has a very
important rule in the Big Six’s poetry becoming an essential element in
Romantic ideals.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WILLIAM BLAKE
•
http://www.bbc.co.uk/williamblake
•
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/blake_chimney_sweeper.shtml
•
http://www.artehistoria.com/frames.htm?http://www.artehistoria.com/historia/contextos/2474.htm
•
http://www.online-literature.com/blake
•
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wblake
WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH
•
www.rc.umd.edu/reviews/back/ryan
•
www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics
SAMUEL TAYLOR
COLERIDGE
•
Robert M. Ryan, The Romantic Reformation: Religious
Politics in English Literature, 1789–1824. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
•
www.rc.umd.edu/reviews/back/ryan
•
www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics
LORD BYRON
•
http://www.internationalbyronsociety.org/
•
A life of Byron
•
http://engphil.astate.edu/gallery/BYRON11.HTML
•
Biography of George
Gordon Byron by E. H. Coleridge published in The Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1905 (Scanned and edited by Jeffrey D. Hoeper, May, 1999)
•
http://www.eclectica.org/v6n3/sloan.html
•
Lord Byron: The Demons
of Calvinism by Gary Sloan
•
George Byron, 6th Baron Byron from Wikipedia
•
http://www.online-literature.com/quotes/
•
http://www.bartelby.com/65/ro/romantic.html
•
http://www.wwnorton.com/nto/romantic/welcome.htm
•
http://www.internationalbyronsociety.org/
•
http://engphil.astate.edu/gallery/BYRON11.HTML
•
http://www.poetseers.org/the_romantics
•
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
•
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/shelley_queen_mab.shtml
•
www.rc.umd.edu/reviews/back/ryan
•
www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics
JOHN KEATS
•
The new Pelican guide to English literature
edited by Boris Ford. 5 From Blake to Byron. Penguin books.
•
A critical History of English Literature. Volume
IV. David Daiches. Second edition. London.Secker & Warburg.
•
http://www.englishistory.net/keats/contents/.html
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
•
http://www.wwnorton.com/nto/romantic/welcome.htm
•
http://oldpoetry.com/oauthor/show/John_Keats
•
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_I_have_fears_that_I_may_cease_to_be
•
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/
PAPER’S TASK
1.Introduction
2.W.Blake. Marta Lizana
3. W.Wordsworth.Patricia Garcia
4. S.T Coleridge. Ana Such
5. Lord Byron. Xihong Liu
6. P.B Shelley. Sandra Martinez
7. J. Keats. Marga Martí
8. Conclusion. Sandra Martinez
9. Power point and gathering information. Tania Martinez
9. Power Point and gathering information. Cristina Boix