Romanticism and Its Major Poets

4. Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar
David Friedrich

5.  A movement that affected literature, art,
and intellect
 Reaction against the elevation of reason and
science above all else during the
Enlightenment as well as the changes
brought by the Industrial Revolution

6.  Who is the poet?
 “He is a man speaking to men….with….a
disposition to be affected more than other men
by absent things as if they were present.”
 What should he write about and how?
 “To choose incidents and situations from common
life, and to relate or describe them…in a
selection of language really used by men.”
 What is poetry?
 “The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”

7. I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and
hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but
they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little
thought
What wealth the show to me had
brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure
fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

8.  What is the poet’s mood when he begins his
walk?
 What examples of simile, personification,
and sensory detail are there?
 How does nature affect the poet?
 How does this scene of daffodils continue to
bring him joy?

9.  “When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow
park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side,
we fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore
& that the little colony had so sprung up— But as we
went along there were more & yet more & at last
under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was
a long belt of them along the shore, about the
breadth of a country turnpike road . . . [S]ome
rested their heads on [mossy] stones as on a pillow
for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced &
seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that
blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay
ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly
over the lake to them. There was here & there a
little knot & a few stragglers a few yards higher up
but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity
& unity & life of that one busy highway... —Rain came
on, we were wet. ”

10.  Stage One: Observation—poet observes and
experiences powerful emotion
 Stage Two: Recollection—poet recalls the
emotion in tranquility
 Stage Three: Filtering—poet filters that
which is not essential
 Stage Four: Composition—poet becomes
“man speaking to men”

11.  Imagination
 Nature
 Symbolism and myth
 Emotion
 Self/Individual
 Hero artist
 Children
 Simplicity/Innocence
 Supernatural
 Reconcile contrary states of being

12.  Only formal education in art; apprenticed as
an engraver
 1789 published 19 poems in “Songs of
Innocence” and in 1804 published 26 poems
in “Songs of Experience.” Each of the poems
has its own engraving
 “Illuminated painting” much like the
illuminated texts of the Middle Ages
 Etched in copper and then hand colored
probably by his wife
 Only 28 copies known to exist

16.  The central question is both poems is the concept of
the creator: “Little Lamb, who made thee?” “What
immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful
symmetry?”
 In “The Lamb”, images of the subject and maker are
pure/childlike: “softest clothing wooly bright”,
“tender voice”; “he is called by thy name”, “for he is
meek and he is mild”; repetition of “Little Lamb”
like childish inquiry
 In “The Tyger”, images of subject and maker are
scary/dangerous: “fearful symmetry,” “fire of thine
eyes”, “deadly terrors”; “what the hand dare seize
the fire”, “what dread hand? & what dread feet?”,
“what dread grasp/dare its deadly terrors clasp?”;
“what the hammer?/what the chain?.../what the
anvil? What dread grasp” like a repetitive hammering

17.  “What immortal hand or eye/could frame thy
fearful symmetry” to “What immortal hand
or eye/dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”—
will and deliberateness of the maker
 Blake’s contrary states of the soul: “Did he
who made the Lamb make thee?”
 Existence of good and evil in the same world,
in the same beings, and created by the same
maker

19.  Read through the two versions of “The
Chimney Sweeper” and analyze in what ways
the speakers are similar and in what ways
they are different.
 How do these two poems embody Blake’s
contrary states of the soul? Is one state
preferable to the other?
 What role does religion play in each?
 How is his work a critique of the Industrial
Revolution?

20.  Co-authored Lyrical Ballads with William
Wordsworth
 Strong literary critic, poet, writer, lecturer in
his own right
 Once planned to establish an ideal
democratic community in America called
“Pantisocracy”
 Ended up addicted to laudanum (opium
dissolved in alcohol)

21.  In preface to poem, he described reading
about Kubla Khan in a book and then falling
into an opium-induced sleep where the
visions he later wrote down appeared before
him
 When he awoke and began writing his visions
down, he was called away and upon return,
could only remember these remaining lines
 Historical Kubla Khan founded the Mongol
dynasty in China in the 13th century

23.  Where do dreams and visions come from? Do they
mean something?
 Stanza 1: Xanadu is a combination of real and
imagined (“Alph, the sacred river”), a “fertile”
pleasure palace that is “sunny” with “gardens bright”
and other sensuous delights built by a river that runs
“through caverns measureless to man/down to a
sunless sea.”
 Stanza 2: “the deep romantic chasm” is seen as a
“savage”, “holy”, and “enchanted” place where a
woman could be wailing for her demon lover!
 Chasm is “seething”, “breathing”, “forced”, “burst”
and “’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far/Ancestral
voices prophesying war!” The actions of humankind
echoes the power of nature

24.  Stanza 3: States of contrast: “sunny” pleasure
dome with “caves of ice”; natural versus
manmade; “floating” above ground versus
underground caves; measured and planned
versus the wild and uncontained
 Stanza 4: Final vision of a woman with a
dulcimer from another time; her song would
enable him to build that “dome in air”; pleasure
of vision is contrasted with a warning to
“beware” and of another vision of “holy dread”—
perhaps an image of the poet or of Kubla Khan?
 And this is why we don’t do drugs, kids!

25.  A radical who scorned orthodoxy including
religion and marriage
 Married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who
later wrote Frankenstein
 Often in debt, having to move to avoid
creditors
 Felt radical social reform had to be based on
the redeeming power of love on people’s
morals and imagination
 Drowned in a storm when he was only 30

26.  Greek name for Ramses II of Egypt 13th
century BCE
 Why do people build monuments of
themselves?
 Consider the framing of the poem. Who is
the original teller of the tale? How is
interpretation being used by narrator?
Sculptor?
 What literary devices are used to tell the
tale?
 What Romantic values are found?

27.  Sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter
 Alliteration: “traveller” “two” “trunkless”;
“stand” “sand” “sunk”
 Consonance: “vast” “trunkless” “visage”
“lies”
 Enjambment: carrying the sense of one line
over to the next
 “Tell that its sculptor well those passions
read/which yet survive”

28.  Narrative frame/imagination:
 “I met a traveller from an antique land”
 Permanence of art
 “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/stand in
the desart”
 “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/of
that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/the lone
and level sands stretch far away”
 Role of the artist/creator
 “Tell that its sculptor well those passions
read/which yet survive, stamped on these
lifeless things”

29.  Keats was originally apprenticed as a doctor
but dropped out to be a poet
 Did not begin writing poetry until 18 years
old but was prolific
 Contracted same tuberculosis as that which
killed his mother and brother
 Fell in love with neighbor Fanny Brawne but
had a foreboding of early death
 Poetry embodied a wealth of “contrary
states”
 Died at age 24 of tb

31.  Stanza 1: contrast of “quietness” and “slow time”
with “mad pursuit” and “pipes and timbrels”;
“unravish’d bride”—innocent forever
 Stanza 2: contrast of pain of never reaching goal with
the fact that the lover will never fade/immortal;
outside of time but also of experience
 Stanza 3: Happiness is above the “breathing human
passion…that leaves a heart high-sorrowful and
cloy’d”; “forever piping…forever warm” yet will
never be fulfilled
 Stanza 4: Art stirs imagination of viewer beyond
what’s there “What little town…is emptied of this
folk…?”
 Stanza 5: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”--only
quoted part or entire last two lines spoken by urn?
Who does “ye” refer to? Meaning debated.

32.  Permanence of art:
 “Do not grieve;/ she cannot fade, though thou has
not thy bliss;/ For ever wilt thou love and she be
fair!”
 “Happy melodist, unwearied/For ever piping songs for
ever new;/More happy love! More happy, happy love!”
 Contrasting states of being
 “Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss…yet do not
grieve;/ she cannot fade, though thou hasn’t not thy
bliss
 Art as truth/ideal:
 “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all/ye know
on earth, and all ye need to know