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Romanticism Summary

Explore the key elements of English Romantic literature, including the celebration of nature, the importance of the sublime, the pursuit of transcendence, the exalted role of poets, and the liberation from oppression. Discover the poetic forms and the emphasis on imagination over reason.

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Romanticism Summary

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  1. Romanticism Summary English 223, Spring 2019

  2. What characterizes English Romantic literature? • Obvious celebration of nature, especially Wordsworth and Blake, but both Coleridge & Keats found both solace & delight in the natural world. For all, the natural world had divine significance. • The importance of the sublime.

  3. Near the Lake District

  4. What else characterizes English Romantic literature? • The great Romantic project was to achieve through poetry a transcendent vision. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the moment of transcendence comes when the speaker is with the nightingale. • Can you think of other moments?

  5. What characterizes English Romantic literature? • All of the poets assigned themselves an exalted role. Shelly wrote a defense of poetry; he argues that poetry creates the world for the rest of us to live in. • Poets are the prophets and visionaries, and even the “unacknowledged legislators” of the world.

  6. Poets are the true priests Poets discover the truth behind the false front of the world. Poets are the true seers, the true priests, the true articulators of the truth.

  7. Poetic Forms The sonnet The ballad The ode Meditative blank verse

  8. Politics Blake’s poetry works to liberate us from all forms of oppression: cultural, political, religious, emotional, and mental. Wordsworth enobled the marginalized. The second generation, especially Byron & Shelley, celebrated liberating politics.

  9. Imagination over Reason Romantics elevated the imaginative over what we might now call the scientific, the reasonable.

  10. Statue of Lord Byron • Byron, the most popular poet of the 19th century in England and the US. Known for his lonely, heroic protagonists.

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