Romantic Poetry

Keats, Shelley and Byron

 The Big Six
William Blake (1757-1 John Keats (1795-182
827) 1)
Willliam Wordsworth Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1770-1850) (1792-1822)
Samuel Taylor Colerid Lord Byron (1788-182
ge (1772-1834) 4)

Jane Austen 1775-1817

 Romantic Age
First Generation: The emphasis on
Nature and correspondence between Nature
and human nature (e.g. US Whitman,
Dickinson)
Feeling (spontaneous overflow of powerful
feeling)
Imagination (e.g. I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud) & Vision
Common people (Infant Joy Infant Sorrow)
Individualism & Quest
 Romantic Age
2nd Generation: The emphasis on
Feeling
Art & Imagination (e.g. Ode on a Grecian U
rn) & Vision
Individualism & Quest for the remote (myth)
Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the s
ensual, the moral);
against authority (Ozymandias)
John Keats
October 31, 1795-Februa
ry 23, 1821; died at the a
ge of 25 of tuberculosis .
Originally a surgeon and
changed his mind in 181
3-1814.
"Here lies one whose na
me was writ in water."

 Ode on a Grecian Urn
1. Using apostrophe to speak to the Urn in
order to enter its realm (the realm of art
and permanence);
2. The process: question empathy
confirmation differentiation between
the human and the artistic.
 Percy Bysshe Shelley
eloped with the 16-year old Harriet Westbr
ook; disinherited because of this marriage.
In 1814, Shelley traveled abroad with Mar
y Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of t
he philosopher and anarchist William God
win (1756-1836). Harriet committed suicid
e, and then Shelley married Mary.
Shelley was Drowned in 1822.
 Ozymandias
The use of frames: the travelers story
Contradictions used to present the ironies
of human ambition:
shatter visage frown and sneer;
Passion on these lifeless things survives
the hand and the heart (whose heart?)
colossal wreck boundless sand.
 Lord Byron
See the video
Born with a clubfoot
Child Harold the
disparity between
Romantic ideals and
reality
Involved in affairs with
a married woman and
his half sister.
portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian dress by Thomas Phillips, c1835 (source)
 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
1. How is she described? With what
images (of contradictions)? What does
beauty means? And walk?
2. How do the sound effects help convey
the meanings of the poem?
 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace,
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet expres
s,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-plac
e.
 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that
glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace at all below,
A heart whose love is innocent !
 SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
she
sheds tender light (combines darkness and
light//aspect and eyes//appearance, heart and
thought.)
-- grace in motion on her dress and her face, and
expressive of her pure mind and thought.
-- cheeks and smile glow to reveal her goodness,
mind and heart.
rhythm: iambs with one trochee
Sounds: [m] [s] [o] [e]