Romantic idea of poetry and its role

1. Romantic idea of poetry and its role Second generation of romantic poets

2. The second generation of poets (since 1812): • George Gordon Noel Byron 1788-1824

3. BIOGRAPHY • Lord Byron was born as George Gordon on January 22, 1788 in London, England. As the son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, Lady Catherine Gordon. • Lord Byron received his education at the Grammar School in Aberdeen until 1801, when he was sent to Harrow and remained there until 1805. After, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge and became fascinated with history, fiction and extravagant life. • On February 27, 1812 Lord Byron took his seat at the House of Lords and made his first speech there.

4. Scandalist? Love Affairs? Byron then became the most popular person in Regency London, writing poetry and carrying on illicit affairs, most notably with Lady Caroline, wife of future Prime Minister, William Lamb.

5. William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841).

6. Incestuous relationship… There are also rumors of Byron's involvement with a choir boy and an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, however many scholars dispute this.

7. Travelling… • Lord Byron began spending much of his money on the Greek rebellion. He later met a Greek boy, Loukas Khalandritsanos, and employed him as a page and possibly had a sexual relationship with.

8. Good husband? • To help avoid scandal, Byron chose to marry Anne Isabella Milbanke (Annabella), cousin of Lady Caroline who refused him a year earlier. The two married at Seaham Hall, County Durham on January 2, 1815. As a stipulation in her mother's will, Annabella's beneficiaries must take her family name. Lord Byron then became known as George Gordon Noel Byron in 1822.

9. Anne Isabella Milbanke (Annabella) Her portrait

10. Bad father… • The marriage was an unhappy one, mainly due to the birth of a daughter, Augusta Ada, instead of a son. On January 16, 1816 Lady Byron left George and took Ada with her. On April 21, the two were legally separated. George then left England, due to pressure by his creditors leading him to sell his library, forever.

11. Unwanted daughter, but later… famous Her portrait

12. In literature sphere • the great English romantic poet, epic, dramatist, radicalist, affairs, scandalist. liberal • influence for Polish Romanticism • poet with ‘foreign’ face and called Napoleon of poets • lyrical poetry and satire • ‘lyric mask’ technique in literature

13. WORKS: • ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ Childe Harold, a young English nobleman, became despondent, because the only young woman he loved would not return that love. He had long been engaged in drinking and general idleness, and was generally seen as a very unpleasant character by almost everyone, including his parents. Desperate, he decided to embark on a journey in an attempt to find happiness, or at least to give some meaning to his life. He left England by ship, with no clear destination. As he left, he sang a mournful song, bidding farewell to his homeland, to his parents, and especially to his...

14. ‘The Giaour’ • The tale which these disjointed fragments present is founded upon circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the "olden time," or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise. • The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes, on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea; during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful.

15. ‘The Corsair’ • was a semi-autobiographical tale in verse by Lord Byron in 1814, which was extremely popular and influential in its day, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of sale. Its poetry, divided in cantos (as Dante's ‘Divine Comedy’), narrates the story of the corsair Conrad, how he was in his youth rejected by society because of his actions and his later fight against humanity (excepting women). The opera ‘Il corsaro’ by Giuseppe Verdi, the overture ‘Le Corsaire’ by Hector Berlioz and the ballet ‘Le Corsaire’ by Marius Petipa were based on this work.

16. ‘The Corsair’ The cover of book

17. ‘Don Juan’ • Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire" (Don Juan, c. xiv, st. 99). Modern critics generally consider it Byron's masterpiece, with a total of over sixteen thousand individual lines of verse. Byron completed 16 cantos, leaving an unfinished 17th criticized for its 'immoral content', though it was also immensely popular. • canto before his death in 1824. Byron claimed he had no ideas in his mind as to what would happen in subsequent cantos as he wrote his work. • When the first two cantos were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was criticized for its 'immoral content', though it was also immensely popular.

18. ‘Song For The Luddites’ The term "Luddites" dates from 1811, and was applied first to frame-breakers, and then to the disaffected in general. It was derived from a half-witted lad named Ned Lud, who entered a house in a fit of passion, and destroyed a couple of stocking-frames. The song was an impromptu, enclosed in a letter to Moore of December 24, 1816. "I have written it principally," he says, "to shock your neighbour who is all clergy and loyalty- mirth and innocence- milk and water."

19. ‘ Hours of Idleness’ • first collection of poems by Lord Byron, published in 1807 when he was 19 years old. The poems are generally regarded as commonplace at best. The date of each poem’s composition was noted in the book. A sneering review published in ‘The Edinburgh Review’ in 1808 dismissed his efforts as the self-indulgent work of a titled youth. In response Byron published, anonymously, his satiric poem ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ (1809).

20. Byron’s hero • The Byronic hero is an idealized but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". The Byronic hero first appears in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’ (1812–1818).

21. His motto: ‘Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame’ /from ‘English Bards and ScotchReviewers’, 1809/

22. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Poetry: • abstract ideas • ‘poet of idea’ • with ‘tone of revolutional etiude’ • hellenism • neoplatton esthetic • methaporic poetry • revolutional and indenpendence ideas • admiration to space

23. As a person and artist… • radicalist • poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist • sad private life • his poetry connected old generation with younger • poet for poets, poet of the moon and stars

24. ‘Ode to the West Wind’ 1820 - Five sonnets IV If I were a dead leaf you mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share /Gdybym był martwym liściem, który mógłbyś unieść; Gdybym był chmurą i mógł z tobą iść w zawody; Falą, której odbierasz dech, a która sunie/ V Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth /Rozrzuć po świecie moje słowa pośród ludzi Jak z niewygaszonego pieca iskry chyże! Przez me usta bądź ziemi, którą trzeba zbudzić,/

25. ‘Ode to the West Wind’ 1820 part 2 • This poem is a highly controlled text about the role of the poet as the agent of political and moral change. This was a subject Shelley wrote a great deal about, especially around 1819, with this strongest version of it articulated the last famous lines of his "Defence of Poetry": "Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

26. ‘The sensitive Plant’ 1820 …That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there,In truth have never passed away:‘Tis we, ‘tis ours, are changed; not they. For love, and beauty, and delight,There is no death nor change: their might  Exceeds our organs, which endureNo light, being themselves obscure.

27. ‘Queen Mab’ 1813 • dedicated to his young wife, Harriet Westbook, in 9 parts • Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem; With Notes, published in 1813 in nine cantos with seventeen notes, was the first large poetic work written by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), the English Romantic poet. After substantial reworking, a revised edition of a portion of the text was published in 1816 under the title The Daemon of the World. • This poem was written early in Shelley's career and serves as a foundation to his theory of revolution. It was his first major poem. In this work, he depicts a two-pronged revolt involving necessary changes, brought on by both nature and the virtuousness of humans.

28. Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) • the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley • an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘The Modern Prometheus’ (1818). • Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

29. ‘Prometheus Unbound’ 1820 • is a four-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1820, concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus and his suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by Aeschylus ‘Prometheus Bound’ and concerns Prometheus release from captivity. Unlike Aeschylus version, however, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Zeus. Instead, Zeus is overthrown, which allows Prometheus to be released. • Shelley's play is closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be produced on the stage. In the tradition of Romantic poetry, Shelley wrote for the imagination, intending his play's stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers. However, the play is filled with suspense, mystery and other dramatic effects that make it, in theory, performable.

30. ‘The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ • The speaker says that the shadow of an invisible Power floats among human beings, occasionally visiting human hearts—manifested in summer winds, or moonbeams, or the memory of music, or anything that is precious for its mysterious grace. Addressing this Spirit of Beauty, the speaker asks where it has gone, and why it leaves the world so desolate when it goes—why human hearts can feel such hope and love when it is present, and such despair and hatred when it is gone. He asserts that religious and superstitious notions—”Demon, Ghost, and Heaven”—are nothing more than the attempts of mortal poets and wise men to explain and express their responses to the Spirit of Beauty, which alone, the speaker says, can give “grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.” Love, Hope, and Self-Esteem come and go at the whim of the Spirit, and if it would only stay in the human heart forever, instead of coming and going unpredictably, man would be “immortal and omnipotent.” The Spirit inspires lovers and nourishes thought; and the speaker implores the spirit to remain even after his life has ended, fearing that without it death will be “a dark reality.”

31. ‘The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’part 2 Form • Each of the seven long stanzas of the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” follows the same, highly regular scheme. Each line has an iambic rhythm; the first four lines of each stanza are written in pentameter, the fifth line in hexameter, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh lines in tetrameter, and the twelfth line in pentameter. (The syllable pattern for each stanza, then, is 555564444445.) Each stanza is rhymed ABBAACCBDDEE.

32. ‘The Cloud’ • I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,From the seas and the streams;I bear light shade for the leaves when laidIn their noonday dreams.From my wings are shaken the dews that wakenThe sweet buds every one,When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,As she dances about the sun.I wield the flail of the lashing hail,And whiten the green plains under,And then again I dissolve it in rain,And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below,And their great pines groan aghast;And all the night 'tis my pillow white,While I sleep in the arms of the blast.Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,Lightning, my pilot, sits;In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,It struggles and howls at fits;

33. ‘Liberty’ • I.The fiery mountains answer each other;Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;The tempestuous oceans awake one another,And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. II.From a single cloud the lightening flashes,Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the soundIs bellowing underground. III.But keener thy gaze than the lightening’s glare,And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stareMakes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lampTo thine is a fen-fire damp. IV.From billow and mountain and exhalationThe sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,--And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night In the van of the morning light.

34. ‘Love’s Philosophy’ 1819 • The fountains mingle with the river •    And the rivers with the ocean, • The winds of heaven mix for ever •    With a sweet emotion; • Nothing in the world is single; •    All things by a law divine • In one spirit meet and mingle. •    Why not I with thine?— • See the mountains kiss high heaven •    And the waves clasp one another; • No sister-flower would be forgiven •    If it disdained its brother; • And the sunlight clasps the earth •    And the moonbeams kiss the sea: • What is all this sweet work worth •    If thou kiss not me?

35. ‘Epipsychidion’ 1821 • Source: love to Emily Viviani, ‘the spirit od poet’s spirit’ • Topics: beauty of world, free love, full of life • Scenary: middeterranian ‘great Arkady’, mythic ‘Golden century’ • Hedonism of spirit and body

36. John Keats (1795-1821) • No-aristicratic roots • Son of the owner of horse stable • junior surgeon (occupation) • Without upper education • The same political camp like Byron and Shelley • Esthetic, lyric, epic • Excellent odes • Untypical romantic • Died on tuberculosis in 25th year of life • Very maturitypoetry • ‘Play of 5 senses’ • Poet of the sun • Poet for optimistics

37. Two important sentences of Keats: • „The poetry of earth is never dead” • „ A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”

38. Topics of poetry: • nature • beauty around the world • works of art • ancient world • hot summer scenery • full contact with nature

39. Isabella Jones • ‘Hush, Hush! ‘ ["o sweet Isabel"] • in 1821, Jones was one of the first people in England to be notified of Keats's death

40. the first version of „Bright Star” • Keats befriended Isabella Jones in May 1817, while on holiday in the village of Bo Peep, near Hastings. She is described as beautiful, talented and widely read, not of the top flight of society yet financially secure, an enigmatic figure who would become a part of Keats's circle. Throughout their friendship Keats never hesitates to own his sexual attraction to her, although they seem to enjoy circling each other rather than offering commitment. He writes that he "frequented her rooms" in the winter of 1818–19, and in his letters to George says that he "warmed with her" and "kissed her". It is unclear how close they were but Bate and Gittings suggest the trysts may represent a sexual initiation for Keats. Jones' greatest significance may be as an inspiration and steward of Keats's writing

41. Fanny Brawne • „Bright Star" • Their love remained unconsummated; jealousy for his 'star' began to gnaw at him

42. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ • Written in 1819, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' was the third of the five 'great odes' of 1819, which are generally believed to have been written in the following order - Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian Urn, Melancholy, and Autumn.  Of the five, Grecian Urn and Melancholy are merely dated '1819'.  Critics have used vague references in Keats's letters as well as thematic progression to assign order.  ('Ode on Indolence', though written in March 1819, perhaps before Grecian Urn, is not considered one of the 'great odes'.)

43. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ part 2 • This ode contains the most discussed two lines in all of Keats's poetry - '"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'  The exact meaning of those lines is disputed by everyone; no less a critic than TS Eliot considered them a blight upon an otherwise beautiful poem.  Scholars have been unable to agree to whom the last thirteen lines of the poem are addressed.  Arguments can be made for any of the four most obvious possibilities, -poet to reader, urn to reader, poet to urn, poet to figures on the urn.  The issue is further confused by the change in quotation marks between the original manuscript copy of the ode and the 1820 published edition.  (This issue is further discussed at the bottom of this page.)

44. ‘To Autumn’ • "To Autumn" describes, in its three stanzas, three different aspects of the season: its fruitfulness, its labour and its ultimate decline. Through the stanzas there is a progression from early autumn to mid autumn and then to the heralding of winter. Parallel to this, the poem depicts the day turning from morning to afternoon and into dusk. These progressions are joined with a shift from the tactile sense to that of sight and then of sound, creating a three-part symmetry which is missing in Keats's other odes.

45. ‘To Autumn’ part 2 • "To Autumn" is a poem of three stanzas, each of eleven lines. Like others of Keats's odes written in 1819, the structure is that of an odal hymn, having three clearly defined sections corresponding to the Classical divisions of strophe, antistrophe, and epode.The stanzas differ from those of the other odes through use of eleven lines rather than ten, and have a couplet placed before the concluding line of each stanza