INDEX

INTRODUCTION (my task) (Sandra Gisbert)

WILLIAM BLAKE(1757-1827) (my task) (Sandra Gisbert)

- The Chimney Sweeper

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) (by Patricia García) (Sandra Gisbert)

- The Last of the FLock

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE(1772-1834) (by Ana Such) (Sandra Gisbert)

- Limbo

LORD BYRON (1788-1824) (By Xihong Liu) (Sandra Gisbert)

- Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) (by Sandra Gisbert)

- Queen Mab

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) (By Marga Martí) (Sandra Gisbert)

- When I have fears that I may cease to be

- Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell.

CONCLUSION (by Sandra Gisbert)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (Sandra Gisbert)

INTRODUCTION (my task)

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 Britain. Blake's artistic work is also strongly influenced by medieval illuminated books.

Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain. The historian Thomas Carlyle and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood represent the last phase of transformation into Victorian culture. William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, referred to his generation as "the last romantics."

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:

1^st: lakistas poets: Wordsworth y Coleridge.

2^nd: 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 (my task)

Firstly 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 1757 in London, his recognition as an artist and poet of worth began when Blake was in his sixties.

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 Royal Academy, but he did not take well to the 'stifling' atmosphere and clashed with the ideals of the Academy's founding members, especially Sir Joshua Reynolds.

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.