Download Romantic Notes

Romantic Notes
Mrs. Hurd
John S. Battle High School
Blake – “The Lamb”
• From Songs of Innocence – a child’s
perspective
• Lamb = Jesus
• God made the delicate, gentle lamb
• Optimistic view of life – almost like a nursery
rhyme
Blake - “The Tyger”
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From Songs of Experience
Adult perspective (realistic)
Tyger = fear
God made the carnivorous animal
Blacksmith imagery – anvil, fire, hammer,
chain, furnace
• God made the gentle lamb and the ferocious
tiger
Blake -“The Chimney Sweeper” - SOI
• Narrator is a chimney sweeper
• Tom Dacre – gets hair shaved but narrator
assures him
• Dream = locked in coffins of black (soot,
experience, narrow, spoiling of innocence)
• Angel rescues them, play and wash soot off in
river
• -use religion to reinforce obedience
• “doing duty and not harmed
“The Chimney Sweeper” – SOE
• Child weeping in the snow
• Parents = praying in church
• Pretending to be happy – people take
advantage of him
• People attempt to “make a Heaven” of their
misery
Byron - “She Walks in Beauty”
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Girl = black dress because she is in mourning
Simile – girl is like the night
*he compliments her grace, beauty, purity
*she has a peaceful mind, innocent heart
Byron -“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”
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Byronic Hero – conflicted hero has a flaw, rebel
Addresses the ocean
Apostrophe – address something nonexistent
“I love not man less, but nature more” – has a
deep respect and admiration for nature
Poem is at the end of Harold’s life
Religious journey ends with nature
Fear of nature – he felt like Ocean’s child
Life ends, but nature continues
Keats - “Chapman’s Homer”
• Chapman – translated Homer
• Chapman has given him a new perspective of
the text
• Helps Keats “discover” Homer
Keats - “When I Have Fears”
• Keats – awareness of death
• -had so much to say, but not the time to say it
• -He worries about never looking upon his
love’s face again
• -Love and fame fade when compared to losing
her love
Keats - “Ode to a Nightingale”
• Synethesia – combining of senses – “tasting green”
• Night = near death, morning = death (new day/new
beginning)
• Nightingale- sings at night, when morning comes, it
stops (like Keats)
• Stanza 3 –“Why stay here where beauty fades, men
complain, and people despair?”
• Song – Keats is carried away
• Fly not with drink but with poetry
• Nightingale’s song encourages him to embrace death
(embrace nature/God)
• Keats says “goodbye” to night and nightingale
• Does not know if it was real or imagined – “Do I wake
or sleep?”
Keats - “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
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Art – eternal (frozen in time)
Urn does not exist, but Keats imagined it
Scene or urn – rural
-cows walking, pipers playing, lovers in a near-kiss
Art = happy because it will remain untraished by
age
• “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
• Art – is it truth? Honesty?
Shelley – “Ode to the West Wind”
• Personification – Wind addressed
(Apostrophe)
• Destroyer and Preserver – W.W. brings
autumn, which ushers in winter.
• Winter brings in Spring (nature). Wing brings
winter but eventually spring
• -Like the wind, Shelley wants his words to
“blow over the universe”
• Words = powerful like the wind
Shelley - “Ozymandias”
• Trunk of an old statue (pharaoh)
• -statue has a cold, sneering look
• -statue reads “King of kings” and advises
people to fear the pharaoh
• Power and influence FADE with time
• Power/tyranny will die with the leader
• All that’s left is a broken statue.
Wordsworth – “Tintern Abbey”
• Poetry = spontaneously overflow of feelings / humane =
“for everyone”
• Tintern Abbey – old abandoned church in the mountains
• -has been 5 years since his last visit
• -with his sister Dorothy
• Returns in his mind to the Abbey when he’s in “lonely
rooms” in the city (thought is a comfort for him)
• In youth, Wordsworth was drawn to nature’s beauty only
(lines 88-90)
• As an adult, Wordsworth feels a deeper meaning (a “spirit”)
• -Abbey – holy, religious experience
Wordsworth - “Westminster Bridge”
• About London – Wordsworth usually does not
admire the city (dirty)
• At dawn, the town is beautiful
• City = majestic
• Smokeless air = no pollution
• Silent, still city
Wordsworth - “The World is Too Much
With Us”
• We ignore nature. We don’t deserve it. We
“lay waste” our powers and ignore the great
things that nature has to offer
• “I’d rather be a pagan, than ignore nature”
(which represents God)
Coleridge - “Kubla Khan”
• Xanadu – “Heaven”
• Pleasure dome – has forests, fertile ground,
sunny (floating)
• -Then beneath it is a turbulent sea, women
wailing, pieces flung form fountain
• Xanadu = Heaven Sea = Hell
• Men are fragile, in a precarious state. They
can tip into the sea from Xanadu at any
moment