SECOND
GENERATION
ROMANTICS
Romanticism in Britain and Germany diverged in the
second generation as a result of very different political experiences during
and after the Napoleonic wars.
The Second
Generation Romantic poets were the more spry of the Romantic poets. The major
Second Generation Romantic poets included Byron, Shelley, and Keats. These
young guns wanted to seperate themselves from the older poets like Wordsworth,
Colderidge, Blake, and Southey. They didn't want to just repeat what those
romantics were doing, but wanted to be different, and even better. All of these
2nd Generation poets unfortunately had a trend of early mortality, yet their
accomplishments are still impressive.
Byron's "Don "Juan is a particular satire of Robert Southey, the poet
laureate to George III, and first generation romantic poet. When Byron uses
"I" it is as the persona of Southey. This persona is incompetent with
the narrative: he mispronounces foreign words (Don JU-an instead of Don w-on),
he uses forced rhyme ("Most epic poets plunge in 'medias res'/[...]And
then your hero tells, whene'er you please"). "Res" and
"please" hardly rhyme. Byron's persona also uses the wrong verse form
in what is his "epic poem." The verse form being used is Ottava rima.
To Byron, Southey is a bad poet because 1) he is a political renegade, who
abandons his personal views for his career to the king and 2) he is a 1st
generation romantic poet. Byron extends his victimization to Wordsworth in
stanza 90 where he says, "unless, like Wordsworth, they prove
unintelligible."
Other examples of this 2nd generation romantic counter-culture is Shelley's
"Monte Blanc," where he challenges prior romantic notions that nature
is solely good, and focuses on the destructive potentials of nature.
Furthermore, the second generation romantic poets tend to disagree with 1st
generation poets use of themselves in their own poetry. The younger romantics
want to leave the reflections to their audience, not impress their own upon
them.