The End

Okay, so some would argue that I've covered only the abre essentials of English romanticism, completely ignoring all those outside of English-speaking areas. Then again you have people like William blake who influenced the Romantics into romanticism to quite and extent. Jane Austen, though not a poet, was a pretty huge part of the whole romantic movement, as was the little-known Fannie Burney who published was is considered the first house-hold novel, which influenced Jane Austen to no extent and resulted in her own genre of house-hold novels, about "normal" families istead of romantic heroes for a change. As far as all this is concerned it's all well and fine but I focused on the five romantics who are the backbone of english romanticism and who revfolved around each other in the same circle of friends. My aim was to take a look at them and see who it was that really makes up the "Romantics". I love their poetry and an very glad I did this. Too bad, I couldn't go into everyone else, other countries, etc., but that would outweigh this blog and time is of the essence.

John Keats

Definitely one of the milder romantics, in that he didn't irritate anyone as Percy Shelley did what with his pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism". Keats was a true soft-hearted romantic in life. He had a weird sor of luck in friends, people seemed to like him. As a young man he befriended a fellow called Charles Cowden Clarke who was the son of the headmaster at the school they attended. Clarke encouraged Keats in his education and, by 1811, he was apprenticed to a surgeon. soon after he met Leigh Hunt, a prominent critic, journalist, and writer whose home was a renouned meeting-place for well known writers of the time. Here Keats rearranged his life, gave up surgery and became a poet. A colourful writer, his poems were always full of imagery, even when his structure collapsed ever few lines. an absolutely tragic thing is that he died at twent-five (in 1821) from turbucleosis, (after having only just fallen madly in love with Fanny Brawne) which he contracted by taking care of his ill brother who died three years before he did.

Now here's a really neat thing that I found, someone decided to scan Keats' original manuscripts and post them on the web, this is the link to "Ode to a Nightengale", as well as many others: http://englishhistory.net/keats/manuscripts.html

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

samuel taylor coleridge
Originally uploaded by a passenger.

A good friend of shelley, Byron, Wordsworth and Keats Coleridge is another of this circle of friends who had the most widely known influence on Romantic poetry. While there were others who are to be considered in the full value of romantic poetry I focused on this particular circle of contemporaries and fireds. The only woman who truly was one of their intellectual circle was Mary wolestonecraft Shelley, Percy Shelley's wife. She was not however a poet, so as far as gender discrimination goes in this look at the romantics, there were no female poets amongst these friends who made a significant impact on Romantic poetry.

Many people do include one woman most difinitively when talking about romanticism in literature and that is Jane Austen but she too was not a poet and I'm unfortunately going to overlook her.

Now back to Coleridge, who was a very interesting and impulsive fellow. He's considered oen ofthe most versatile and generally influential individuals of the romantic movement, not only influencing those students of later years but his contemporaries as well. Born the son of a clergy man he was a dreamy sort but loved learning and was well educated before ever entering university at Camberidge. Like Shelley he left university early, but unlike events surrounding Shelley's expulsion, his leaving was due to an impulsive decision to join the Dragoons. His brothers thankfully managed to get him out of it before it was too late for the poet.

Just as he influenced his contemporaries, so did they him. The finest of his work came into being, though he had been quite prodictive before, after he befriended Wordsworth. The friendship was a great one and resulted in great works, the most famous of which was probably the jointly published "Lyrical Balalds". That book is one that is considered a major work of the romantic movement and one that set many a standard for romantic poetry.

For our class, though, that which we would recognize him the best by is the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner".This is a link to the full text, with a few illustrations: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_Mariner.html,

and this is an excerpt I liked, a moment of peace in the carnage:

The moving Moon went up the sky,

And no where did abide :

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside--

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,

Like April hoar-frost spread;

But where the ship's huge shadow lay,

The charméd water burnt alway

A still and awful red.

William Wordsworth

Poet laureate in 1883, Wordsworth published a book of poems, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, called "Lyrical Ballads", in 1798. That book was one of the major things that helped establish romanticism in England. This is a link to "The Prelude":http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww286.html, which is basically an autobiographical work written in, count 'em, fourteen books. It was partially dedicated to Coleridge, a great romantic poet himself, and good friends with Wordsworth. The books of the pome are bluntly titled with lines like: "Introduction- Childhood and Schooltime", "Summer Vacation", "Camebridge and the Alps", "Residence in London", "Residence in France". It basically chronicles his development through the years, mental more than anything. The last few books have the word imagination in the title.

A bit about him: he graduated Camebridge, which is kind of funky since Shelley got kicked out of Camebridge, and stay in France he came home greatly influenced the the French Revolution. He took a lot of inspiration from Rousseau's writings, as well as other philosophy floating around at the time. Anyone remember Socials 9? Voltaire was floating around there too with his radical thoughts, "I don't agree with a word you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it".

Wordsworth was a lover of nature and it influenced much of his work as well. THe political, radical side fo things cooled off eventually and he became closer to the sensibilities of society as he grew older, hence being named poet laureate. I suppose of greatest mention is his friendship to Coleridge, which was to the poin that they were inseperable, like Asterix and Obelix, just not as violent, and during the span of which he produced his finest works.

A couple of Wordsworth quotes (I love the dreamer one):

"I was the Dreamer, they the Dream...."
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

I love this, it's the opening verse to a poem called "Written in Germany, On One of the Coldest Days if the Century", you can see exactly how cold he is in it:

A PLAGUE on your languages, German and Norse!

Let me have the song of the kettle;

And the tongs and the poker, instead of that horse

That gallops away with such fury and force

On this dreary dull plate of black metal.

(Link to the full poem:http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww160.html)

Percy Byshee Shelley

A link to "Queen Mab": http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel111.html. I love the way he writes, as though he wrote it all in one fell stroke, as each line came to him. Percy Shelley is definitely one of my favorite poets, and an interesting character. He was deathly afraid of water because he was convinced he'd die by drowning. Once, through a simple accident, he fell overboard and, not being able to swim, since he'd never seen a point to learn if he was gonna die by drowning anyways, he didn't even bother to struggle. Even when a friend pulled him out he didn't do much to make it easy. Ironically he did die by drowning, in 1822 he was "lost at sea", though his body was later recovered and cremated. Shelley always had a bit a a relationship with death. Even in the opening verses of "Queen Mab", he speaks of death. An atheist to heart he never had qualms about heaven or hell, rather looked at death as an inevitable end and treated it as such. The first lines of "Queen Mab":

HOW wonderful is Death,

Death, and his brother Sleep!

One, pale as yonder waning moon

With lips of lurid blue;

The other, rosy as the morn

When throned on ocean's wave

It blushes o'er the world;

Yet both so passing wonderful!

Shelley was an interesting fellow in general, no only in that he decided exactly how he was going to die, after a gypsy woman told him so. He was passionate about knowing things and learning. There are anecdotes where a freind would see him pick up a book at ten in the morning, stand next to a fireplace and begin to read. The friend returns, it's ten at night by now, to find Shelley still standing in the exactly same spot reading something. There are many stories of his reading for sixteen hours almost daily. The poet was, as knowledgeable, so opinionated. He even got kicked out of Camebridge at one poin after publishing and anonymous pamphlet: "the Necessity of Atheism". Here's a link to a full text of it : http://www.wam.umd.edu/~djb/shelley/necessity1880.html. Shelley, being a renouned and stubborn atheist was of course the first suspect of spreading this heresy and he made no effort to argue. They expelled him almost immediately.

On a more personal note, Shelley had two wives, the first of which divorced him, but the second of which outlived him and is at least as famous as her husband over a little story she wrote in a contest between Shelley, Byron, Herself, and another fellow, perhaps Trelawney. That story was of course "Frankenstein". To think it was all over a contest between bored poets as to who could write the scarier story.

Lord Byron

lord byron
Originally uploaded by a passenger.

Okay so, like I said before, now I'm gonna start looking at the Romantic poets, Lord Byron (George Gordon, really) is first up:

"I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?"

- Lord Byron, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 5 July 1821.

I like that snippet I found from a letter. It probabaly tells you more about Byron's character than many an essay written on the thing.

Child Harold is probably one of, if not his most famous work, this is one section of Canto Four:

The beings of the mind are not of
clay;

Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more belov'd existence: that which
Fate

Prohibits to dull life, in this our
state

Of mortal bondage, by these spirits
supplied,

First exiles, then replaces what we
hate;

Watering the heart whose early flowers
have died,

And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

One thing to be said about Byron is that he did get around when it came to wives. Not so much his own, but that never stopped him. There are countless odes and sonnets, poems, to the love of his life. Her name seems to change quite a bit though. There's even a Very amusing poem berating a woman who had cheated on her husband to be with him and then somehow broken his heart, he doesn't go into detail. It's called "Rememebr thee, Remember Thee!":

Remember thee! remember thee!

Till Lethe quench life's burning stream

Remorse and shame shall cling to thee,

And haunt thee like a feverish dream!
Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.

Thy husband too shall think of thee:

By neither shalt thou be forgot,

Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

Third Review of a Literary Review Blog.

http://www.papaya-palace.com/katbooks/ is a great place for reviews. These reviews are extremely detailed, going to great lengths no to be biased one way or another about the books. Of course the review is not just a summary but comes with an opinion too. The summary is not, however, lacking anything that would not support the final opinion of the blogger, as some reviewers are prone to be selective in what they say. I thought that this reviewer was particularly objective about what they wrote and though they like a book did not hesitate to point out a flaw. I kind of like that sort of blunt objectivity when it comes to reviews because then you can figure things out for yourself concerning whether you like the book or not. Otherwise you're just trying to decide whether you agree with the reviewer, not so much whether you like the book or not. I like this format of review, though keeping it perhaps a bit shorter would make it more concise for my part.

Second review of a Literary Review Blog.

http://www.kbuxton.com/weblog/. I know it's not exactly a literary review blog. But it is a page containing lots of little blog entries, reviewing a pile of books. I think these reviews are pretty good. They are short and sweet, explaining what the book is and why one might or might not like it. Then again they are maybe a bit too short if one wanted to find out more about the book without having to read it. There is not much speculation about the general meanings of the author in the process of writing the book or assumptions about what could mean what in it. I mean that the reviews are blunt, not speculative. That sort of review might give one the best idea whether or not one wants to read the book, or find out more about it. Also the blogger knows a bit about many of the authors and can objectively compare with other works, which she does. These are good reviews, though perhaps lacking in inforamtion for some, I liked them.

First Review of a Literary Review Blog.

This is a link to a series of blog entries reviewing different books: http://www.eend.nl/dfc/. These reviews were pretty good. They make the books sound either very engaging or particularly not so. The reviews are pretty good in that they sort of tell you about a part of the story that will make you want to read it, or repel you from it but they aren't that great for basically anyone but the blogger. I don't really like how it's particularly one-sided. Yes the blogger states a lot about the story but it's sort of like they made up their mind and are trying to sell their point of view to you. Then again, as a blog it is personalized. Just as a general review it might not have the necessary information to let people decide for themselves about he book. These reviews are okay, but maybe not the greatest, for anyone but the blogger.

Intro

After I review a few literary blogs, I'm thinking to look at the Romantic poets, Shelley, Byron, etc. Particularly since I just got this book called "Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author". Edward Trewlaney is "the Author" so little of the information in the book can be believed. He once wrote an autobiography in which he was a pirate, stabbed tigers, and rescued beautiful Arab damsels in distress. In this book he claims, among other things, to have been the one to discover Shelley's body after his drowning death. Trewlaney also organized the oven for the cremation, removed Shelley's heart to bury it, buried it, and scattered the ashes.
I suppose now I want to know about Shelley and Byron more than before encountering this book, not to mention those they kept company with.