The American Revolution

Under the power of George III (1760-1820), Great Britain had the control of the seas and was enjoying a long period of
internal peace.
The American colonies were rich and well populated, but they didn’t have a good relationship with the mother
country. Because the British government imposed strict control on the colonies, in fact it nominated a governor.

The causes of conflict were two:

the American colonies

Great Britain didn’t want to pay any taxes because they had no
claimed her right to tax her colonies representation in the British Parliament
<<No taxation without representation>>

1773 -> The ‘Boston Tea Party’ the rebels threw tea imported from Britain into the harbour.

1775 -> The war began with fighting at Concord and Lexington

The thirteen American-colonies met in Philadelphia.

GEORGE WASHINGTON was given military command.

The Americans were divided into:

‘Patriots’  ‘Loyalists’
wanted independence; wanted to remain part of Britain;
had no army, knew the land; their army was too small both to attack and defend
supported by the French fleet. their army was distant from supplies and orders.

4 July 1776 -> the Declaration of Independence, drawn up by THOMAS JEFFERSON, was approved.
It stated the principle that all men are born equal, with the same rights, such as the right to life, to freedom and to the
"pursuit of happiness".

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-90) went to Paris to raise support for the American cause.
So France, followed by Spain, sent an army to America.

1781 -> at Yorktown the American and French forces won the British army

1783 -> with the Treaty of Versailles Great Britain accepted American independence.

1787 -> The republic of the United States of America adopted a federal constitution.

1789 -> GEORGE WASHINGTON became the first President

The French Revolution

The new Colonies: India, Australia and Canada.
1
England quickly recovered from the loss of the thirteen American colonies.
The new Prime Minister, WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER, promoted a policy of financial stability, and reorganized the
administration.
In India - the Governor General controlled the Indian continent; he was appointed by the Crown.

Between 1768 and 1779 CAPTAIN JAMES COOK ,a British explorer, had discovered a new continent : Oceania.
Its biggest island, Australia, soon became an important colony.

People were also emigrating to Canada. Here Pitt divided Canada into two provinces:
French-speaking and Catholic English-speaking and Protestant

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars

The French Revolution (1789) was a great shock for Britain:

Because it was united in condemning the Revolution for its violence.

From 1793 to 1814 Britain became leader of the six European coalitions against Napoleon.
The coalitions were won by the French armies, Britain obtained significant victories thanks Horatio Nelson.

1815 -> at Waterloo Napoleon was won by the British with the Duke of Wellington.

A treaty was signed in Paris that restated what had been decided by the Congress of Vienna:
the re-establishment of the monarchies of Europe
Social unrest
To prevent disorder public meetings of workers were made illegal.
This did not stop the workers:
1811-12 -> the Luddite Riots (named after their leader, Ned Ludd):
workers attacked factories and destroyed machinery.

1819 -> at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, the army was called in to disperse a meeting of workers calling for
parliamentary reform. Eleven people were killed and hundred injured.

This episode was called as the Peterloo Massacre (ironic reference battle of Waterloo)

Under the power of GEORGE IV, the son of George III, a post-war crisis started a cause:
-the fall in the demand for wartime goods
-the presence of the demobilized troops, who enlarged the work force.

The Industrial Revolution

Economic liberalism.
The 17th century had been the age of monopolies and protectionism.
The 18th century had a different economic philosophy: ECONOMIC LIBERALISM

Meant free trade and unrestrained economic activity ‘laissez-faire'

2
This was illustrated by ADAM SMITH in The Wealth of Nations (1776): the true basis of a nation's wealth is the work of
its population, which must be left free to act as it wishes,

The industrial Revolution

1760 – 1840 -> The Industrial Revolution started in England, after in other part of the world.

It was a process of change from an agrarian economy to economy based to industry and machine manufacture.
The change had enormous social and political consequences.
The most important was the Technical innovations, favoured by the application of science to industry:

> the use of new materials like iron and steel;

>the use of new energy sources: coal, petroleum, electricity and the steam engine;

> the invention of new machines that greatly increased production and reduced the number of workers needed;

> important developments in transportation and communication;

> a new organization of work: the factory system (division of labour and specialization of functions).

Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

Working and living conditions.
The industrial revolution had a lot of consequences, for example:
-The unemployment was very high,

-many people had to leave their native places to work in industry.

-the masses of labourers, badly-paid, badly-fed and badly-clothed, worked in the factories for sixteen hours a day, in
terrible conditions of hygiene and safety.

-Women were paid less than men

-children were used for work in mines and they were paid less than women

-Workers lived in over-crowded slums which there aren’t the elementary sanitation, where alcoholism and illnesses
were common and the death rate was high.

1824 -> the first Trade Unions were founded.

1830 -> a new word was born in political language: SOCIALISM

In Britain, ROBERT OWEN (1771-1858), an industrialist, introduced the first socialist reform who improved working
and living conditions for his workers and their families in his factories at New Lanark, Scotland.

Humanitarian movements
There were the new social problems:
child-labour and the conditions of the poor and prisoners.
Children began to be considered as real human and their rights were finally recognized in a society where child-
beating and the exploitation of children at work were very common.
This new consideration was reflected in Romantic poetry.

The emancipation of women

Women were less in the early 19th century than they had been in the 18th.
Many women worked with men in workshops and factories, but they were subject to discrimination and also had to
work at home.
Even elementary schooling was thought to be superfluous for women.
3
Women in the higher classes had less freedom because of the rigid code of sexual and social.
The end of the 18th century women began to demand emancipation, or equal rights with men.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-97) was a pioneer in this field, with her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

Social reforms
1832 -> After the power of William IV (1830-37), brother of George IV, a REFORM BILL was passed. It was most
important beause
-eliminated 150 so-called ‘rotten boroughs' (old electoral districts).
- extended the right to vote to much of the middle class

Reform Bill did not make Britain a democracy, in fact half the middle class and women had no right to vote.

Other important reforms were:

> the FACTORY ACTS (1833), forbidding the employment of children under nine and generally improving working
conditions;
> the ABOLITION OF SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE in the British colonies (1833) as a result of a long campaign by
William Wilberforce;
> a new SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION (1834) influenced by liberal theories.

The Romantic Revolution

The romantic age the period in which new ideas and attitudes arose in reaction to the dominant 18th-century ideals of
order, calm, harmony, balance,and rationality.
 
Pre-Romantic poetry
In the second half of the 18th century the individual's sensibility and on the mind's capacity to react to sounds were
very important.

SUBLIME as an aesthetic and philosophical ideal = indicates strength, irregularity, death, imbalance and fear
Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) means classical
harmony, balance and regularity in form

BEAUTIFUL was set against the SUBLIME = classical harmony, balance, peace and regularity form

4
 Typical of the pre-Romantic sensibility were:

a predilection for night, darkness and death; the cult of ruins; terror and fantasies; exotic, dream-like poems and
tales; interest in popular and dialect literature; an interest in medieval and northern literature and folklore.

The Romantic Revolution

The literature and art of the Romantic Age started with the French Revolution.
The impact it had on British culture and society was immense. In its first phase, nearly all the Romantic writers were
in favour of it.
This revolutionary spirit took various forms:
> political and social revolution in America and France;
> revolt against all forms of authority for human dignity, free choice and the social results of the Industrial Revolution
(radicalism, anarchism, socialism, sexual freedom and feminism);
> the free expression of personal feeling (artistic revolution against neoclassical rules).

Romanticism vs Enlightenment
Enlightened trends Romantic trends
 emphasised reason and judgement;  emphasised imagination and emotion;
 focused on impersonal material;  valued subjective, autobiographical material;
 elevated subjects;  looked for freedom;
 interested in science and technology.  represented common people;
 interested in the supernatural.

Feeling vs Rationality
The essential qualities for the Romantic poet were instinct, feeling and intuition.
In the Romantic Age the ‘knowledge of the heart’ was felt to be greater than the ‘knowledge of the head'.

Imagination - ‘in ward eye’

It connected the individual mind and the universe, the human and the divine, mortality and eternity, emotions felt and
poetry written
The central point of the creating process, and of interaction between the human mind and the physical world.
For William Blake all of nature was "imagination", For Percy Bysshe Shelley the imagination was a creative power.
A love of nature
No poetry had ever contained so many descriptions of nature as we find in the works of the Romantics.
The Romantic writers saw a natural scene as more than simply physical; they endowed it with life, passion and
feeling. ‘organing living whole’

The commonplace and the supernatural

Simple scenes, objects and people began to acquire a new value.
Wordsworth and Coleridge tried to reveal the ordinary in its splendour and taking away the "film of familiarity"
(Coleridge), so didn’t describe things as they are.
The interest in the commonplace was accompany with supernatural and magic.
The universe was a living entity that could reveal itself to man on two levels:
-the visible (nature) -the invisible (the supernatural)

Poet prophet
the poet is a prophet because he expresses his knowledge with a simple poem and with the common language

Individualism
Romanticism was introspection.
The Romantics discovered that reality and truth are subjective.
5
The individualism had an effect on literary forms and genres:
-the first-person lyric became major - In prose was written about heroes and ordinary people
The Romantics' individualism was also reflected in isolation from society.
Isolation took various forms: isolation in nature; revolt against the establishment; exile (sometimes
voluntary) from the mother country.

The dark Romantic hero

There is an area of Romantic sensibility that may be defined as 'negative'.
The typical Romantic hero is a glorious failure, haunted by remorse for his faults and wasted opportunities.
Many of these solitary heroes often exiles are presented as if they had committed some horrible and unconfessed
crime. Byron's great figures are representative of this.

Striving for the infinite

The desire to create myths, drawing on personal experience, was characteristic of the age.
It was described by German Romantics as "striving for the infinite".
The desire to exceed human limitations became glorious.
Romantic artists knew that the search for infinity was destined to fail, but was the artist's glorious mission. It made
him or her a prophet-like figure.
The artist-prophet's objective was to awaken the common man and make him realize both the potential of the human
mind and the healing qualities of nature.

The new American tradition

The first decades of the 19th saw the creation of an American literary tradition which was no dependent on the English
one. The proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine officially stated that the United States would no tolerate European
interference in American affairs in field.
The result of this sense of political and intellectual freedom was the creation of new literary genres or the adaptations
of old. Writers began to favour local subjects and settings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson urged the need for independence from foreign models, stating that "America is a poem in our
eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination’’
Pre-Romantic literature
Pre-romantic poetry
The term 'nature' indicates external nature (fields, rivers.), as opposed to its Augustan or neoclassical meaning
(universal order, the supreme organiser of the physical and spiritual).

Poets such as the SCOT JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748) began to describe natural country scenes, in simple language,
often with a pervading sadness.

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771) lived before the American and French revolutions and was the first to show a real interest
in the life of humble people. This may be seen in his Elegy Written in a Country Churcbyard (1751), a funeral elegy
which anticipated the Romantic cult of melancholy and death.

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) was a self-taught poet who sang of elementary things such as love, music, country life
and the nature of the Scottish Highlands. He wrote in a simple language and dialect, his native Scots, using popular
verse forms such as the song or the ballad.
The gothic novel
The first signs of the new Romantic temper can be found in the Gothic novel.
Its archetypal work is The Castle of Otranto (1764) by HORACE WALPOLE, the novel is set in an old castle in medieval
Italy and it contains what will become the stock-and-trade of Gothic fiction. Some Gothic novels concluded with a
rational explanation of their mysteries, as The Myiteries of Udolpho by Ann Radeliffe ;The Monk by M.G. Lewis.
European Romanticism
German origins

6
The great German writers at the turn of the century were Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) and Friedrich Schiller
(1759-1805).
The Romantic movement was anticipated in Germany in the 1770s by the so-called 'Sturm und Drang’, which included
such poets as Goethe, Herder and Schiller.
They believed in the freedom of the individual and the artist, and asked for a return to nature.

The beginnings of European Romanticism

In France, Romanticism developed later and mainly under the influence of two Swiss-born writers:
- the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) laid the basis of the Romantic cult of nature and the belief in man's
natural goodness and his consequent corruption by society.

- Madame de Staël (1766-1817) made known German philosophy and literature and also started the Romantic vogue
for Italy.
Her lesson was followed by the great French writers of the early 19th century, especially Victor Hugo (1802-85) with
his historical novel Notre- Dame de Paris (1831).

In Italy the beginnings of the Romantic movement go back to the 1810s and are associated with Giovanni Berchet
(1783- 1851), Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) and Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827).

The Romantic novel

The state of the novel. 
By 1830 The novel had become the major literary form. 
Fiction was already highly descriptive; now two other characteristics began to develop: 
 the full analysis of a situation: a social situation, involving relations between different people and
classes; or a character's state of mind; 
 the incorporation of rhythms and constructions of the spoken language: dialogue was greatly improved
and extended. 

THE NOVEL OF MANNERS. 

Some authors still looked back to the 18th century, such as Fanny Burney , who, with Evelina, created a new genre:
'the novel of manners'. 
The same un-Romantic quality is found to a higher degree in Jane Austen, the major novelist of the early 19th
century. 
Her best novels (Sense and Sensibility, 1811; Pride and Prejudice, 1813) are set in provincial middle-class England and
are based on simple plots centred on love stories between genteel young women and men.

THE NOVEL OF PURPOSE. 

Also popular was the 'novel of purpose', written with the purpose of propagating ideas.
To achieve its ends, the novel of purpose often took over the plots and devices of the novels of adventure and Gothic
horror. 
The best-known example of this tendency is Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley, a modern Romantic version of the
very ancient dream of the creation of artificial life. 

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL 

7
Plots of the novels of Sir Walter Scott are based on strange and uncommon incidents, linking them to the romance
tradition. 
Scott inaugurated the 'historical novel', that is a story set in the past where the actions and lives of characters are set
against great historical events (Waverly, 1814; Ivanhoe, 1820). 
He set a model that European writers, including Alessandro Manzoni and Victor Hugo, would follow.

THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY.  

Edgar Allan Poe in his short tales of mystery and terror, such as The Black Cat, infused a truly Romantic feeling for the
unexplored abysses of the human mind. 
Unlike the Gothic novels, in his stories the horror is internal, not external. 
In his tales he carefully traces the logical steps that lead up (or back) to the crime, usually murder. 

Romantic Poetry
First generation.
Language simple
Themes: -nature and humble life -ideals of French Revolutions and against Industrial Revolution
The poets are William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Second generation.
They had a strong identity and died very young in other states
The poets of the second generation are Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.
They are often called as disillusioned poets because they do not believe that feeling can win the failure of ideals.
Language complicate
Themes:- defend the justice for weak people -nature as supranatural force
-senses -individuality -poet is a warrior to defend the right in society

WILLIAM BLAKE
Life
William Blake was born in London in 1757 into a middleclass family. 
Blake took to writing poetry when he was twenty years old.
When he published his first collection of poetry, SONGS OF INNOCENCE, in 1789, the poems were engraved; he also
illustrated each one with a picture that was its visual counterpart – like the famous The Lamb and The Tyger. 
In 1794 he published his SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE, in a combined volume. 
They did not bring him fame or financial success.  
His complex symbolism and personal reworking of myth, biblical and historical materials are best exemplified in his
paintings and engravings. 
Blake chose to accept poverty and obscurity rather than compromise his artistic vision. 
An exhibition of his paintings was a total failure, and he lived in obscurity for the rest of his life, supported by a small
group of faithful friends. 
In 1827 he died

A revolutionary artist. 
-against all traditional forms:
-He was in favour of both the French and American revolutions. 
-He attacked such national institutions as the Church of England and the monarchy.
 -supported abolition of slavery and egalitarian principles.

-saw the culture during his time as an instrument for the oppression of men.

-had a sense of religion.

-The most important literary influence in his life was the BIBLE.
-He claimed he had visions.
8
-Explored the eternal battle between the law and reason against the powers of love and imagination.
Blake's style. 
Blake's poetry is difficult because of his use of complex symbols. 
To him, a lamb or a tiger, or a chimney sweeper were symbols of a supra-natural reality. 
Used symbols because he didn’t want the realism (he ‘real’ world don’t see the greater reality that lies behind him).
His language and syntax are simple.
He often adopts an apparently naive style, using Anglo-Saxon vocabulary there are a lot of repetitions, typical of
ballads, children’s songs and hymns.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

The two contrary states of human soul. 
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience were clearly intended by Blake to be read together, since he published no
separate editions of them in his lifetime. 
On a first level, they were songs intended for children, but they were meant to show “the two contrary states of the
human soul", that is innocence and experience. 

The WORLD OF INNOCENCE is apparently unthreatening and fearless, full of joy and happiness. 
Externally it seems like a Garden of Eden, peopled by such figures as the lamb and the child.
Songs of Innocence is written in the pastoral mode with simple imagery.
The child becomes as the symbol of innocence.

The WORLD OF EXPERIENCE is tainted by cruelty and social injustice.

Songs of Experience is more complex and pessimistic. Its symbol is not the lamb but the tiger.
Blake's philosophy of contrasts. 
The relation between the two states of mind, is not simply one of regression or superiority. 
They co-exist in the same person or situation.
He finds in man and the universe the presence of good and evil, purity and corruption, innocence and experience in
eternal balance and fruitful contrast. 

Imagination for Blake. 

For him, the representatives of a rationalistic and materialistic philosophy were HERETICS, since they denied the
value of FAITH AND INTUITION. 
Blake, on the contrary, believed in these as the only source of true knowledge and refused the truth of sensorial
experience. 
Like Wordsworth and Coleridge later, he thought that imagination enabled man to see beyond physical reality. 
The internal mind really builds the external world that man sees. 
The Tyger ends with a question which casts doubt on the possibility of understanding the universe through the senses
and reason. 

The child as the object of poetry. 

Blake is the first to write the poetry of the child. He doesn’t describe children in his songs, he is also interested in
their peculiar world. Blake defended them against the cruel and oppressive of families and society,
The child becomes the object of Blake’s poetry because:
he is closer than the adult to the original state of harmony with nature.

In The Chimney Sweeper, the story of the chimney sweeper is both a radiant dream and a realistic picture. 
the lamb
In stanza 1 the lamb is shown as free and happy, in an unspoiled environment where it receives and gives pleasure. 
The lamb's innocence and the perfect harmony of its existence make the poet ask, "who made thee?". 
The answer comes in stanza 2, where the identification of the lamb with Christ
Both the child and the lamb are united in God's name. He is the also to write the name of ‘God’.

9
Theme: innocence and the creation.
Setting: Idyllic of ‘stream and mead’.
Image of God : ‘Good shepherd’ and ‘The Lamb of God’.
Key images:
Child: innocence
Father: experience
Christ: higher innocence
Lamb: symbol to indicate GOD.

the tyger
The Tyger is fascinating, bursting with energy.
There are contrasts: the darkness of night and deep forests, and flames and fire on the other. 
Fire is the link between the tiger's strength
On the last part of the song there was the metaphor where the tiger is seen as God's creation, the product of a
mighty hammer and anvil. 
The poem ends with a question: possibility of understanding the universe through the senses and reason.
Theme: The power of creation
Key images: The tiger as seen by Blake’s poetic imagination: ‘fearful symmetry’; ‘burning bright… fire of thine eyes’.
Devices:
Repeated (rhetorical) questions.
Hammering rhythm (like casting a spell).
The Creator presented as a blacksmith. (fabbro)
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Life
1770 Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, (nord-ovest) in the Lake District, an area of supreme natural beauty.
He went to St John's College, Cambridge, where graduated in 1791.
He left England in the same year for a walking tour of France and the Alps.
He defended the causes of the Revolution.
He also fell in love with a French girl, ANNETTE VALLON, whit her had a daughter, CAROLINE
They didn’t had money forced him to return to England, abandoning both his political beliefs and Annette.
And he had nervous breakdown.
1850 he died

The friendship with Coleridge.

He went to live in Dorset with his sister Dorothy.
In 1797 he met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Their friendship was important to the development of Romantic poetry.
The result of this friendship was a collection of poems called LYRICAL BALLADL1798.

The poetry of the child.

Wordsworth was, together with Blake, the first English poet to make the CHILD the subject of his poems.
In the first time: he wrote several poems centred an children's feelings (fear of darkness, love of one's parents and
brothers and sisters, the ecstatic sense of communion with nature.)
After: The idea was that the child, in his simplicity and goodness, was closer than the adult to the original state of
harmony with nature.

The pre-existence of the soul.

Wordsworth believed in the pre-existence of the soul and that the soul after birth gradually loses its perfect
knowledge.
This means that as the child grows up he/she gradually loses his/her memory of a perfect union with the universe.
(Recallections of Early Childbood 1807).

10
 Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads was written jointly by Wordsworth and Coleridge, though it first appeared anonymously in 1798:
-Wordsworth contributed poems on common events written in ordinary language,
-Coleridge those of exotic or fantastic nature .

The 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads contained Wordsworth's famous Preface: it is considered the English
Romantic Manifesto, because all his major ideas are described:

> the choice of ordinary subjects and ordinary language as a way of creating a 'democratic' kind of poetry accessible
to all men;

>a description and theory of the poet as "man speaking to men". -poet prophet
An ordinary man who possesses more imagination than other men, who is more easily affected by what he
experiences and is able to communicate his experiences to other men;

> how poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" originating from "emotion recollected in
tranquillity"

The nature poems- the word ‘Nature’, there was a lot of time in the poem and indicates:

> Nature as the countryside.

Mountains, rivers, lakes are often opposed to confusion of the town.
The rural scene is usually silent and solitary but by no means desolate.
The scene the poet describes is peopled not by other men but by nature; the crowd he sees is made up of golden
daffodils.

> Nature as a source of inspiration.

Wordsworth's revolutionary on writing about nature, as opposed to neoclassical canons, depend:
- no his description of places, sights, sounds and colours
-as describe the relationship that joins man to nature - Nature is not a power external to man, but is a part of it.

> Nature as a life force.

The natural world of Tintern Abbey or the fields and the lake in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud seem to have a life of
their own. The same is true of the great city of London in the sonnet Compased Upon Westminster Bridge, where the
houses and the public building are described as breathing entities asleep in the open fields and along the river.
In these poems, man too seems to communicate with nature in a literal sense.
This view, that God is present in nature and not separable from it, is often called pantheistic.

The ordinary world.

He talks about the ordinary things in life, and them are really great and inspiring. He substitutes the great epics of
the past with shorter epic tales of simple country folk.

Focus on the text.

11
The poet is wandering alone through the countryside.
The scene he describes is peopled not by other men but by nature; the crowd he sees is made up of golden daffodils.
They are located in the landscape and are also seen to move continually in a dance together with the waves of the
nearby lake.
The moment of vision brings a shock of happiness at the beauty of the scene; the flowers seem to feel the same
pleasure as the poet.
The poem is, however, about Wordsworth remembering the daffodils, not the moment when he actually saw them.
The final stanza illustrates Wordsworth's characteristic procedure of composition through the recollection of a precise
event, and his finding his own emotions confirmed in nature.

 Man and nature are inseparable.

 Pantheistic view of nature: nature is the seat of the spirit of the universe.
 Nature comforts man in sorrow, it is a source of joy an pleasure, it teaches in a moral way.
 Wordsworth exploited the sensibility of the eye and ear to perceive the beauty of nature.
 The sensations caused by physical experience lead to simple thoughts.
 The senses and memory : These simple thoughts later combine into complex and organised ideas. Memory is a
major force in the process of growth.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Life
1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St Mary, Devon.
1794 he left Cambridge without graduating.
1797 Coleridge settled at Nether Stowey, Somerset, where William and Dorothy Wordsworth also lived.
This was the start to the intellectual collaboration that produced Lyrical Ballads in 1798, a collection which included
Coleridge's most famous poem: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
After two friends sad in Lake District.
The years 1799-1810 were full of frustration for Coleridge.
He began to take increasing quantities of opium: for his choice or because it was prescribed medical for his chronic
rheumatism. He gradually became addicted to it.
1810 he quarrelled with Wordsworth.
In his last years, reconciled with Wordsworth, he became the leader of a group of artists and intellectuals.
1834 he died

The 'demonic poems'.

Coleridge's best poetry seems to come from a dream world of oriental or medieval charm.
His 'demonic poems' talk about supernatural in various forms:
-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
-Christabel (1816, a long poem set in a Gothic castle about a vampire in the form of a beautiful lady)
-Kubla Khan (1816).

They are all dreams of haunted souls, and other their exotic richness but there were mysterious forces are at play.
According to a reading that fits in well with Romantic ideas these poems may be seen presence as nightmares of
passivity: the ancient Mariner "does not act but is acted upon".

Coleridge's importance.
Coleridge's role in the development of English Romantic poetry was fundamental.
12
He represents a complex Romantic personality: unfulfilled genius who never fully realized his potential.
He is the poet of wonderful fragments (his best poems are apparently unfinished because do not conform to realistic
standards).

A philosophical and critical mind.

Coleridge was religious and political theorist.

Against the British tradition of empiricism, he thinks that the creative mind as capable of recreating the world of
sense.
His idealism influenced political and philosophical thinking in England and American.
Most important is his criticism of SHAKESPEAR

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

It represents Coleridge's major contribution to Lyrical Ballads. It is in ballad form.
The story comes from a dream by Coleridge’s friend George Cruikshank, and it was originally planned as collaboration
between Coleridge and Wordsworth- who suggested the killing of the albatross and the dead men sailing the ship.
It is thus an example of joint poetic work typical of Lyrical Ballads.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is defined as a mixture of Gothic romance, travel literature (which supplies the
exotic), and traditional ballad.
The poem is divided into seven parts:

1. An old Mariner meets three guests going to a wedding and stops one to tell him a story. The guest is fascinated by
the old man's glittering eye and cannot help listening. The Mariner tells of how the ship he sailed in, once it had
crossed the Equator, was driven by storms towards the ice of the South Pole. Suddenly through the fog comes a white
sea bird, an albatross, welcomed by the crew as an omen of good luck. The Mariner, however, kills the bird for no
reason.

2.From now on an evil spell is cast upon the ship, which is first blown by a favourable wind towards the Equator but
then suddenly stops in a deadly calm.

3.The mariners aboard are dying of thirst when suddenly another ship appears: it is a ghost ship manned by Death and
Life-in-Death. These two plays at dice with the crew's lives: Death wins the Mariner's fellows - who all die one after the
other - and Life-in-Death wins the Mariner.

4.He survives but is haunted by the dead men's eyes. He gradually begins to feel compassion, especially as he observes
the water snakes moving around the ship under the moonlight.

5.The spell begins to break, the Mariner hears strange noises and sees strange beings, including spirits who take the
form of the dead mariners and sail the ship at an unearthly speed.

6.Meanwhile the Mariner has fallen in a trance and overhears two spirits companions of the Polar Spirit that has
avenged the albatross' death - talking about his sin and expiation.

13
7.The ship finally reaches the Mariner's native land, where a small boat with a holy hermit in it comes near. As soon as
the Mariner jumps into the boat, the ship sinks. The Mariner then asks the hermit to hear his confession; once he has
told his tale, his soul finds peace. But now and then he still feels awe-stricken and must wander and tell other people
his story, so that they learn through his example- to love and respect all God's creatures.
the supernatural and magic in The Rime.
Coleridge mixes the supernatural with the real:
-realistic details
wedding, the weather at sea, the position of the sun as the ship changes hemisphere, and the Mariner's native country
(the church, the lighthouse, the hill) .

-supernatural and magic details

> the figure of the old mariner: he comes from nowhere and has a "glittering eye" which has a hypnotic power, making
people listen to his tale;
>he is compelled by a mysterious force to tell his tale again and again
>the albatross, a sacred bird in many religious and mythical traditions and it had supernatural powers;
>the poem is full of unearthly creatures: spirits, angels, sea monsters;
> the ship driven by mysterious forces and peopled by corpses, is derived from two medieval themes:
-the Ship of Fools, the ghost ship that carries men nowhere
-the Dance of Death where men are taken away to their graves by skeletons (Death is a skeleton).
There isn’t rational explanation of the supernatural events is offered at the end, unlike in certain Gothic tales. The
poem is rich in visual description which indicates a profound relation between the Mariner's state of mind and the
world he finds himself in: the external world of the poem becomes a metaphor for the Mariner's state of mind.

Interpretations of The Rime.

-disturbing psychological study of guilt, suffering and expiation:

killing the albatross is a sort of sin against nature and therefore against God:
for this sin the Mariner has to go through purgatorial fire; it is only after this that he may reach salvation, represented
by the return to his old country.
The turning point is in Part 4, where within the ship's shadow the water burns an "awful red" and the water snakes still
crawl around the ship: a change comes when the Mariner, suddenly and unexpectedly, blesses them from his heart.
That very moment the spell begins to break; the albatross falls off his neck and into the sea.

-artistic reading of the poem

the Mariner is an artist who leaves his habitual world to search for truth and knowledge, he goes through painful and
out-of-the-ordinary experiences and is finally saved by the power of imagination.
Here again the turning point may be seen in the artist being able to see beauty in the water snakes, back in the
ordinary world, the artist feels compelled to tell his story to the common man (the Wedding-Guest).
By being alone on the wide sea and sinning against a fellow creature (the albatross) he has finally learned to love all
God-created things.

Focus on the text

the first parte is full of suspense, from the very first line.
The Mariner appears out of nowhere; his fixed stance contrasts with the movements of the guests hurrying to the
wedding.

14
The only mobile thing about him is his glittering eye, which casts the spell that binds the Guest and makes him listen.
The Mariner's tale has this same quality of unexpectedness: the ship suddenly materialises, we know nothing about it
or its crew, nor about its destination.
The final touch of suspense comes in the last stanza: the Mariner's fear-stricken face surprises the Wedding-Guest; but
the cause Is given only in the last line.
However we still do not know why killing the bird was such a terrible action.

15
 George Gordon, LORD BYRON
Life
1788 George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London.
He came from an old noble family, the descendants or Scottish lords.
He was sent to Harow School and then to Cambridge.
There he won a reputation for drinking, gambling, and as a lover, freely spending huge sums of money
1809 Byron started a tour of Europe and he visited Portugal, Spain, Malta, Greece, Albania, and modern Turkey.
While on the tour he wrote the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pierimage, adventures set in the countries Byron
was travelling through.
1812 the cantos were published on his return to England. They were an overnight success.

Child Harold and the 'oriental tales'.

The success of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-18) and of oriental verse tales - The Giasur, The Corsair, Lara- made
him immensely popular.
Plot: They are tales of love and adventure, set in exotic lands, with a simple effective plot based on contrasted love,
forced separation, death and revenge.
Their heroes are proud courageous, never bending to social requirements; they were thought to be like their
author,'Byronic hero'

The Byron scandal and the Italian years.

Scandal broke out after Byron's marriage: his wife accused him of mental cruelty and ill treatment.
Lady Byron discovered Byron's passion for his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, which she claimed was incestuous.

1816Byron wasn’t accepted and was practically forced to leave England in April.
He went to Geneva, entered a group that included the poet Shelley and his wife Mary.
In Italy, his second home, Byron became an active supporter of the revolutionary society of the Carbonari.
He was writing
-Manfred (1816-17), a verse play about a nobleman who lives alone in his castle in the Alps,
-Don Juan (1819-24), a long comic-epic poem which he left unfinished at his death.

Death in Greece.
In his last years Byron increasingly felt a desire for action.
He often wished for "a soldier's grave", that is for death in battle.
He had been one of the most influential voices in favour of the independence of Greece from the Turks, and in 1823
sailed from Genoa to Greece, where he became one of the leaders of the revolution.
1824 he died of fever in the small town of Misolonghi. Byron is considered a national hero in Greece.

The Byronic hero.

Byron was the best known in 19th-century Europe.
He influenced major poets and novelists, such as Goethe in Germany, Balzac and Stendhal in France, Dostoyevsky in
Russia, as well as painters and composers, Beethoven in particular.
Byron embodied the aspirations of freedom and the hate of social hypocrisy.
He was the incarnation of the Romantic hero: bold, impetuous, though at times melancholy, proud and independent;
he loved solitude and was attracted by the wild scenes of nature. While in company he always seemed to be distant.
Byron represents a living model of the Romantic rebel and so close was the identification between the man and his
work that his poems were read as autobiographical.

His works may be defined as Romantic in spirit and content, but late neoclassical in form and the Byron's models
were the great Augustan writers.

16
 JOHN KEATS
Life.
1795John Keats was born in London.
His father died when he was eight, and his mother (of tuberculosis) when he was fourteen.
He was an apprentice to a doctor and apothecary, and after went to study medicine at Guy's Hospital in London.
1818 Keats published Endymion, a long allegory of his search for an ideal female love.
Problems began to arise:
-his first poem was badly reviewed by critics
-the poet returned from a walking tour in the Lake District with the first clear signs of tuberculosis.
-he fell in love with FANNY BRAWNE, but his illness as his dedication to poetry made it impossible to marry her.

These sufferings and the haunting presence of death showed in his sonnet When I Have Fears Thut I May Cease to Be.
In the autumn of 1820 Keats went to Italy with the painter Joseph Severn
In February 1821 he died in Rome
He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there, where Shelley also came to rest the following year
Odes and ballads.

1819 Keats produced a series of masterpieces: his famous odes, To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, On
Melancboly, and Hyperion, a long unfinished poem in which mythological figures and incidents are reworked into a
new personal myth typical of the Romantics.

Other poems, display a taste for medieval themes and forms (the ballad): Lamia, The Evr of St Agnes and La Belle
Dame Sans Merci.
The cult of beauty.
Keats developed an admiration for the art of ancient Greece.
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN represents a glorious paradox as far as Romantic poetry goes.
It touches none of the typical Romantic themes, there aren’t:
- external nature -the life of ordinary people - magic and the supernatural -exotic tales of love and adventure.

Keats finds in the urn the perfect answer to man's longing for permanence.
It is obvious that the answer is perfect only insofar as we stay within the realm of art: what the poet has in front of
him is not real but still life.
He describes the urn "cold"; it is Keats imagination that brings life to the vase, which makes it live again.

It is only in our imagination that we can find perfection, but hat perfection cannot be reached through the physical
senses, because unheard melodies are sweeter than those actually beard, and they do not reach the physical ear.

Keat’s love of beauty has an ethical basis.

Like the ancient Greeks, he believed in the close union of beauty and truth: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".
Beauty is sufficient as an ideal in itself.
Like in Shakespeare's sonnets, the ode presents art as the only solution to mortality: Keats, in the last stanza,
explicitly compares the urn's effect on man to eternity.

Keats' style.
Keats' mastery of language and style is now universally acknowledged.
His search for beauty finds expression in melodic verse, and in a language which is sensuous and hypnotic.
He looks at his object so closely that he seems to lose his own identity- he defines this ability as "negative capability".
In Keats, Romantic poetry finds its highest technical achievement and his classical vein puts him in the same tradition
as Shakespeare and Milton - other poets who were both classical and highly representative of their own times.
Keats' tragic fame.
17
Keats' life and remarkable achievements have now acquired a mythical force thanks:
> the fact that he was born into an uncultured family yet became a great poet;
> his tragic illness and early death, like Shelley and Byron;
> his absolute dedication to his art at a great personal cost and self-sacrifice.

He became a major influence on later poets of the century but had to wait until the 20th century for full recognition
and popularity. He is now regarded as one of the most original and accomplished poets of all time.

18