British Poetry Seminar I(2019)
 

 

1. Romanticism & Revolution

 

          OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
          For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
          Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
          Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
          But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
          In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
          Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
          The attraction of a country in romance!
          When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
          When most intent on making of herself                      
          A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,
          Which then was going forward in her name!
          Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
          The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
          (As at some moment might not be unfelt
          Among the bowers of paradise itself)
          The budding rose above the rose full blown.
 
                                        William Wordsworth, The Prelude, XI, 105-44.
 
 

2. Romantic Period: 1785-1830

 

1757: Blake born

1770: Wordsworth born

1772: Coleridge born

1788: Byron born

1789-1815: Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France

1789: The Revolution begins with the assembly of the States-General in May and the storming of the Bastille on July 14.

1792: Shelley born

1793: King Louis XVI executed: England joins the alliance against France.

1793-94: The Reign of Terror under Robespierre.

1795: Keats born

1804: Napoleon crowned emperor.-

1815: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

1821: Keats died

1822: Shelley died

1824: Byron died

1827: Blake died

1834: Coleridge died

1850: Wordsworth died

3. A Painting  from the Romantic Period: "Liberty leading the People"


 

 

A painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman personifying the concept and the goddess of Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution – the tricolour flag, which remains France's national flag – in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne

(from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People) 


4. British Romantic Poets


Portrait of William Blake Portrait of William Wordsworth Portrait of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Blake / Wordsworth / Coleridge

 

 

Portrait of Lord Byron Portrait of Percy Byssche Shelley Portrait of John Keats  

Byron / Shelley / Keats


5. BBC Documentary on the English Romantic Poets

Peter Ackroyd(2006)


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Related Binaries

Romanticism by Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature.pdf  An article on Romanticism in A Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature

 

  Related Links

An Introduction to Romanticism

 

   Related Keyword : Romanticism Introduction
 

 

 
 
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