I summarized the Alquin-reader the Romantic Period for my oral of English.
The following topics are included in this summary:
- John Keats
- Poem: La Belle Sans Merci
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- William Blake
- Poem: The Schoolboy
- Poem: London
- William W...
The Romantic Period [1798 - 1837]
● The Romantic period was the most important period in the history of English literature.
● This period started with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads.
● This period ended when Queen Victoria came to the throne. [then Victorian age]
● The Romantic Period in English literature was the product of its socio-economic setting:
○ A: The invention of the steam engine led to two industrial revolutions, which were to
transform Britain. From an agricultural country to an industrial one; from a rural culture to
an urban one.
■ VB: Writers of the day were unhappy about what was happening to their homeland
and began to idealize pre-industrial England as a sort of unspoilt Eden.
○ B: The French revolution sent shock waves through British society. Events across the
channel brought new ideas and a sea change in attitudes.
■ VB: The shout for freedom and the rejection of authority are very evident in the
literature.
Literature: Poetry in particular. Prose and drama were less prominent. The Romantic Period did produce
novelists, but they wrote mainly about an earlier time [eighteenth century].
Poets in the first generation: gave shape and substance to romantic ideals.
● William Wordsworth
● Samuel Taylor Coleridge
● Robert Southey
Poets in the second generation: developed the ideals formulated by their predecessors and gave them full
expression. They led intense, turbulent lives and, by living “on the edge”, almost all died young.
● John Keats
Characteristics of the Romantic Period:
1. Focus on the power and grandeur of nature.
2. Superiority of emotion over intellectual thought. Science had brought only misery!
3. Superiority of imagination over logic. Mysterious and frightening subject matter was also
addressed.
4. Originality was prized and slavish reproduction despited. All earlier literary forms were adapted to
the style of the day.
5. There was great interest in [medieval] history. The middle ages were celebrated as a time before
the world was spoilt by industrialisation. Consequently, much of the poetry and prose of the
Romantic Period is set in the past.
6. There was also a fascination with the exotic [particularly anything oriental] and the unfamiliar.
7. Much Romantic literature is anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment. Parents, royalty, government,
church leaders and teachers are cast as the agents of oppression and exploitation.
8. Common people are portrayed as possessing a form of nobility deriving from their closeness to
nature; concepts such as the noble workman and the noble savage emerge.
9. Much Romantic poetry is about children. Poets regarded children as innocents, uncorrupted by
knowledge and therefore closer to nature than adults.
, John Keats
● One of the most admired poets of the Romantic Period. After his death his work became widely
appreciated.
● He was born in London. His father was killed in a riding accident. The family had no breadwinner.
After Keats’ mother remarried, she took her family to live with her own mother in Edmonton.
● He has been an energetic youth and he was a keen reader: he took particular delight in books about
Greek mythology, a subject to which he was to refer frequently in the poetry he wrote later.
● His mother died of tuberculosis, a common disease in that period. Keats’ grandmother appointed
two guardians for the children: Richard Abbey, who was to play a shameful role later in Keats’ short
life. Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon and an apothecary.
● While learning, he continued to pursue his love of literature [particular in the work of the
Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser]. Keats moved to London because he had fallen out with the
doctor to whom he was apprenticed. In London he continued his studies. Nevertheless, despite
already having money problems, he gave up the idea of a career in medicine within a matter of
months. From then on, he devoted himself to poetry.
● Through his friend Leigh Hunt, he met many famous artists who encouraged him to follow his
dream. One was the poet Shelley, with whom Keats became friendly. Keats chose not to get too
close to Shelley, however, fearing that the strength of Shelley’s personality would interfere with his
own development.
● The response to Keats’ first collection, Poems, in 1817 was very disappointing. Poems consisted
mainly of sonnets including Edmund Spenser, Greek mythology and describing the beauty of
nature.
● In the same year Keats’ brother Tom was ill with tuberculosis. Keats moved in with his sibling and
took care of him. While looking after Tom, Keats pressed ahead with his latest, ambitious literary
project. It was mercilessly criticized and prompting Keats to consider giving up poetry. Tom died.
● Before Tom died, Keats met the eighteen-year-old Fanny Brawne and fell in love. Their relationship
was not an easy or happyone. Keats’ feelings for Fanny brought him a lot of sadness:
➔ Jealousy: Fanny would often flirt with Keats’ friends.
➔ Poverty: Ketas had no way of supporting a wife
➔ Fear: his deteriorating health could be an obstacle to their love.
● Keats set off on a long walking tour through Scotland, Ireland and Lake District together with friends
and his brother George, with the aim of thinking things over and finding new inspiration. Keats
found the tour long and exhausting. He developed a throat infection, which he was never able to
shake off. It was the start of a decline in his health that ultimately led to his death.
● He shouldn’t have money worries: he was the victim of a deception brought about by his former
guardian, Richard Abbey, who neglected to inform Keats that he had inherited a significant sum of
money from his grandfather.
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