INDEX
INTRODUCTION
WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)
- The Chimney Sweeper
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
- The Last of the FLock
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)
- Limbo
LORD BYRON (1788-1824)
- Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)
- Queen Mab
JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)
- When I have fears that I may cease
to be
- Why did I laugh tonight? No voice
will tell.
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
(By Marta Lizana)
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
(By Marta Lizana)
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
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
(By Patricia García)
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Some students of this
topic like Robert.M Ryan[1]
argue that “Wordsworth does not
later abandon his radical views, but rather accommodates them to the importance
of public religion in the national life.”
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(By Ana Such)
The next poet is of course Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Limbo
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.
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 anabaptized pagans
and infants. (2) [2]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! (3), so nothing concrete. Here we contemplate that the
poet uses mythological names that might
thither fright us. (4)
The middle part begins so: ‘Tis a strange place, this Limbo! –not a Place Yet name it so; -- (5) and
describes us a world based on the empty space and almost death, or as the poet says unmeaning
(6). 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) (7). 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
forgotten 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, (8) so the fear is the hopeless of the
empty, the nothing. The poem ends so: This
positive Negation. (9) 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.
GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON, LORD BYRON
(By Xihong Liu)
Lord
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), has been considered as one the members of "the big
six" of English romantic literature. Although Byron is appointed to a specific
group, as we are going to deal with the theme of religion, we will see that
Byron has his own religion perspective as each of the rest of “the big six”.
An
outline of Byron’s biography will try to draw a clear explanation of how he has
gone through several religious influences. And on the other hand, with the aim
to summarize how he achieved his own ideology, different extracts from
different works of Byron has been used to explain how he sees the traditional
beliefs from that period.
George
Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, was born in
The
poet spent his early years with his mother in
Influences
from Calvinism continued appearing during the following years in the life of
Byron. At the age of nine, his mother assigned to him a Calvinist nursemaid
called Mary Gray, who introduced the Bible and at the same time, it has been
rumoured that the nursemaid herself awoke Byron’s sexual inclinations. This
controversial situation has always been present in Byron’s life, on the one
side we have the established social religion, and on the other side the sex,
the scandals, the divorce and many other aspects in life that could be seen as
sins, or not accepted socially.
From
1805 to 1807, Byron studied in
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.
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”.
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” , 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?"
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.
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.
“In
hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell” by George Gordon Byron (from Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto I, stanza 15)
PERCY BYSSHE
SHELLEY
(My task:
Sandra Gisbert)
Another one if the Big Six 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[3]
"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”
Let’s see another poem by Shelley which represents his union with Keats:
Adonais
Adonais was published in 1821 just
after Keats death, who died in
Adonais comes from Adonis, the
mythological character who was eternally young and who symbolizes death and the
renovation of nature. He was the beautiful youth loved by Venus and killed by a
wild boar.
Adonais
(extract)[4]
|
|
I weep for Adonais - he
is dead! |
|
Where wert thou, mighty
Mother, when he lay, |
|
O, weep for Adonais -
he is dead! |
|
Most musical of
mourners, weep again! |
|
Most musical of
mourners, weep anew! |
|
But now, thy youngest,
dearest one, has perished - |
The poem is formed by
nine verses in each stanza and the rime is ababbcbcc.
It is full of rhetorical questions
and it refers to a second singular person, mainly talking to nature, so there
is a big presence of “thy” and “thou”. There is also a third singular
person referring to Adonais, who represents John Keats, but he has added an “a”
as it comes from Adonis.
He refers continually to nature
being elements like “flower” “sun” “bloom” “petals”, etc. The
death is continually present and repeats “he
is dead” “he lay” “he perished” “he went into the gulf of death” and also the sorrow that it
provokes “I weep” “our tears” “our despair” “lament”.
In the first stanza,
Shelley cries for Keats’s death. But, although he cries, he can’t fight against
death. His tears can’t “thaw the frost
which binds so dear a head”. Here, he uses the image of frost to make
reference to the immutability of death. The irrevocability of death is
reinforced by its personification, calling it “sad hour” and the self death saying “with me died Adonais”. He says that we should not forget Keats
because his “fate and fame” should be eternal “an echo and a light unto eternity”.
In the second stanza, he
appeals to Nature “mighty Mother” to
ask her why she permitted him to die. “Where
wert thou (…) when thy Son lay?” He
compares death with the “shaft which
flies in darkness”, the one which pierce us and kill us. He also makes an
appealing to Urania (in Greek mythology, the muse of Astrology and Astronomy
and also the name given to Venus). She did nothing to prevent Keats’s death. It
was then written in his destiny.
He refers also to
Keats’s youth “with soft enamoured breath”.
The last three verses of this paragraph make reference to Keats’s poetry and
the fact that he knew he was going to die as he had tuberculosis. “He adorned and hid the coming bulk of death”.
In the third stanza, he cries again
for the death and tells nature to do it too. “Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and week”. He asks her again the
reasons to let him die and tells her to die too as the death of Adonais is
parallel to the death of nature. “Let thy
loud heart keep, like this, a mute and uncomplaining sleep”. He says that
he is gone into paradise “where all
things wise and fair descend”. He dreams that he returns to be alive “oh, dream not that the amorous Deep will yet
restore him to the vital air”, but he realizes that he is already gone and
it would be impossible because death will never permit it. “Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at
our despair”.
In the fourth stanza, he tells “the most musical of mourners” to cry. I
am not sure who he refers to, but I would say it is death. He tells Urania to lament again because Keats
died. He tells that God “the Sire of an
immortal strain” permitted him to die, one of “his country’s pride” asking why death attacks to everyone “the priest, the slave and the liberticide”
by the same rite if there are people who merit it more than other. But “his clear Sprite yet reigns o’er earth”
giving an indication of immortality. He went “unterrified”, giving and expectation of future hope. With “the third among the sons of light” he
could refer to Keats after to earlier big poets, although, according to the
In the fifth stanza, he repeats
again to the “most musical of mourners”
to cry. He says that not everyone knows that death is coming, and Keats who
knew it, “dared to climb” from the
deep and fight against his disease. And those who knew that “their tapers yet burn through that night of
time” are happier because they could be ready to die. He calls death “night of time, in which suns perished”.
Later, he makes reference to the “envious”
critics that criticised Keats’s early works. Other poets are still alive and
have the opportunity to tread the “thorny
road which leads, through toil and hate, to fame’s serene abode”. Keats
will never have that opportunity again.
In the sixth stanza, he talks about
the youngest son of nature, who has died “thy
youngest, dearest one has perished”. With “the nursling of thy widowhood” he makes reference to Keat’s works
and compares them with a flower grown “by
some sad maiden cherished”. Here, an influence of nature elements. He had
lots of things to offer us because he died so young and couldn’t have a long
work “died on the promise of the fruit”.
Percy hoped him to be a great poet, but his “petals nipped before they blew”. His work is finished because he
lies: “the storm is overpast”.
Shelley also believed that the poet died because of the harsh and negative
reviews of his poetry.
It is a beautiful work, and one of
which Shelley was justly proud. Most critics consider it one of his finest
works. In general, the poem is of lamentation because Keats is dead; he was too
young and it was a sad lost for Shelley, but he talks also about his production
and celebrates it.
JOHN KEATS
(By Marga
Martí)
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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”, and thinking about it makes him stay in such a desperate state,
asking those repetitive questions as in the first poem we were dealing with.
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.
CONCLUSION
(My task: Sandra Gisbert)
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
•
BBC
website. Queen Mab. 14th November 2006.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/shelley_queen_mab.shtml
•
Wikipedia:
the free Encyclopedia. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 14th November 2006.
•
BBC
website. Romantics. 14th November 2006.
- BBC. 24th November
2006
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/shelley_adonais.shtml
·
English
Literature Essays. J V Ward. “The Constant Theme of Death in the works of Keats
and Shelley.” Written on 14th
August 2003. 24th November 2006.
http://www.english-literature-essays.com/keats_and_shelley.htm
JOHN KEATS
•
The
Norton Anthology. English Literature. Sixth Edition volume 2. W.W. Norton
&company.
•
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.bartelby.com/65/ro/romantic.html
•
http://www.wwnorton.com/nto/romantic/welcome.htm
•
http://oldpoetry.com/oauthor/show/John_Keats
My task in this paper:
Percy Bysshe Shelley, union and conclusion.
Academic year 2006/2007
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Sandra Gisbert Sánchez
sangis@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press