Unit 4 Literary Focus Essays

1. Unit 4Literary Focus Essays Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry

2. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Influences on Romantic Poetry • Spread of democratic ideals through the American and French Revolutions and disillusionment after failure of French Revolution • Reactions against harsh living and working conditions created for urban poor by the Industrial Revolution and laissez-faire economics • Fascination with nature and country life, which seemed a blissful retreat compared to city slums

3. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry A New Focus in Poetry • Invited readers to feel power and passion • Tried to capture personal experience Romantic Period Augustan Era • Society needed social change • Order had just been restored • Poets celebrated order, hierarchy, and enlightened rule • Poets wrote about personal feelings, supported individual rights, and used everyday language

4. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry A New Focus in Poetry Romanticcomes from the world romance. • A medieval romance is a tale of high adventure that idealizes knightly virtues and has supernatural elements. • Romantic writers used elements of romance to go beyond neoclassical formality and explore psychological and mysterious depths of human experience.

5. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry A New Focus in Poetry Romantic poets • Were fascinated with youthand innocence, particularly a child’s fresh view of the world • Saw history as a cycle in which tradition and authority must be constantly questioned to improveliving conditions Percy Bysshe Shelley • Believed people had to accept change to survive

6. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Imagination: The Inspired Guide • Many say the Romantic movement began in 1798 when Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads. • The Romantics are often considered nature poets. • However, they are really “mind poets” who sought to understand the bond between humans and the world of the senses.

7. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Imagination: The Inspired Guide The Romantics saw imagination as the link between mind and nature. • To them, imaginative experi-ences were especially moving, perhaps superior to human reasoning. • The mysterious forces of Nature inspired them. • All six of the major Romantic poets had their own ideas about imagination, but all believed that it could be stimulated by nature and the mind.

8. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Nature: The Wise Teacher If imagination is the Romantic poet’s guide to truth, Nature is the wise teacher that can deliver the lesson. • Romantic poets considered themselves especially sensitive. • They wanted to help people see the world in all its beauty, sadness, and tenderness.

9. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Nature: The Wise Teacher For the Romantic poets, nature was a balmto soothe the relentless hounding of an industrialized world. • The poets had a strong sense of nature’s transformative properties. • Poets tried to translate scenes of natural beauty into words so that readers might know the power of natural forces to shape thought and feeling.

10. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Nature: The Wise Teacher The Romantics’ interest in natural images and themes was reflected in Gothic literature. Novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein appealed to the imagination through • Eerie settings • Supernatural events • Questions about humans’ ability to manipulate nature

11. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Experience: The Worthy Subject Romantic poets favored idealized rural settings. However, some celebrated the people who lived in crowded cities. They promoted rights to • Healthful living conditions • Relief from political or economic oppression • Self-expression

12. Child workers in coal mine Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Experience: The Worthy Subject Some Romantics dreamed that poetry could offer an example of model behavior to improve horrific social conditions: • Undemocratic governments • Dangerous factories • Child labor • Laissez-faire economic policies that left businesses unregulated

13. Collection 7: Themes of Romantic Poetry Ask Yourself 1. Where did Romantic poets look for inspiration? Why? 2. Why do you think Romantic poets wrote about nature during a time of change? [End of Section]

14. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry Characteristics of Romantic Poetry • Expresses the emotions and concerns of an individual as well as of society • Varies the structure of traditional forms to suit a poem’s purpose • Focuses on a poet’s personal connection to nature

15. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry Function over Form The Romantics took poetry in a new direction. Romantic Poets 18th Century Poets • Poetry was a playground of feelings. • Poetry was a strictly defined literary genre. • Poets experimented with forms and expressed feelings in natural language. • Poets used formal language and structured traditional forms such as odes and sonnets. • Function was more important than form. • Form was more important than function.

16. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry Function over Form “Tintern Abbey” a First • In “Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth for the first time used blank verse that sounds like the flowing rhythms of natural speech. • Like other Romantics, he experimented with simpler rhythms and language. Tintern Abbey by J. M. W. Turner

17. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry Romantic Forms The Romantics favored these poetic forms: 1 ode 2 sonnet 3 Spenserian stanza

18. Percy Bysshe Shelley Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry 1 The Ode An ode is a long complex poem (usually a meditation on a serious topic). “Ode to the West Wind” Ode • Looks both inward and outward—exalting the powerful,but invisible, wind and reflecting on unseen forces in the poet’s own mind • Each stanza is a variation on the sonnet form.

19. Wordsworth made the sonnet popular again. Byron used the Spenserian stanza. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry 2 The Sonnet A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter. The Spenserian stanza 3 Invented by the Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser, this form has nine lines with a complex rhyme and rhythm pattern.

20. Collection 8: Forms of Romantic Poetry Ask Yourself 1. What was more important to Romantic poets, form or function? Why? 2. What topics did Romantic poets pursue? Why? [End of Section]

21. The End