Download The Romantics

Literary Analysis
Dialect is the language, and particularly the speech habits, of a specific social class, region, or group. A
dialect may vary from the standard form of a language in grammar, in pronunciation, and in the use of
certain expressions. In literature, dialect helps achieve these goals:
•Establishing character, mood, and setting
•Adding “texture” or charm for readers who do not speak the dialect
By using dialect, Burns and Baillie broke with tradition and made their work accessible to the common
folk who spoke that dialect. As you read, note the ways in which the poets infuse the dialect with poetic
effects.
Social commentary is writing or speech that offers insights into society. Social commentary can be
unconscious, as when a writer points to a problem caused by social customs without explicitly
challenging those customs. The commentary is conscious when a writer directly attributes a problem to
social customs. As you read these selections, analyze the political assumptions about women they
expose, consciously or unconsciously.
Reading Strategy
Even if you do not know Scottish dialect, you can analyze information from text features to interpret
words. As you read, pay attention to features such as footnotes and apostrophes indicating missing
letters in a word. Use a chart like the one shown to help you translate the dialect.
Literary Analysis
Blake was a poet who had one eye on mystical visions and the other on the real social ills around him.
His mystical visions were based on a perception of archetypes—plot patterns, character types, or
themes with emotional power and widespread appeal. Critics argue that archetypes reveal in symbolic
form universal truths about humanity. Blake often expressed such archetypes in paired poems, like “The
Lamb” and “The Tyger.”
Blake is perhaps less well known for his social commentary, his criticism of the ills caused by the
Industrial Revolution and political tyranny. This Blake, author of “The Chimney Sweeper,” had his eye
not in the clouds but on urban slums and on the factories in which men, women, and children labored for
long hours and little pay.
Reading Strategy
Applying critical perspectives will help you better understand Blake’s complex vision of society. As
you read, use the following perspectives as ways of understanding Blake’s use of archetypes and social
commentary:
•Historical and political perspective: look for details that suggest economic or political oppression.
•Archetypal perspective: look for images, characters, and patterns that have universal meaning and a
strong emotional charge.
Use a chart like the one shown to apply both of these perspectives.
Literary Analysis
Romanticism was a late-eighteenth-century European literary movement. While the earlier Neoclassical
writers, such as Pope and Johnson, favored reason, wit, and outward elegance, the works of many
Romantic poets include these elements:
•simplicity or directness of language
•the expression of spontaneous, intensified feelings
•responses to nature that lead to a deeper awareness of self
English Romanticism began with William Wordsworth. The lyric, a poem in which a single speaker
expresses personal emotions and observations, was particularly suited to his vision.
Reading Strategy
You can better understand a work by evaluating the influence of the historical period on it.
Wordsworth lived in an age of political and social revolutions, and he himself helped bring about a
revolution in literature. Use a chart like the one shown to identify the revolutionary political and
philosophical assumptions that colored the view of life in his work.
Literary Analysis
Unlike lyric poetry, which expresses the thoughts and feelings of a speaker, narrative poetry tells a
story. Romantics admired the storytelling of folk ballads, so it is no wonder Coleridge uses a ballad
stanza (abab) in much of his narrative poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He also uses these
poetic sound devices to heighten the music and evoke emotions:
•Alliteration, a repeated consonant sound at the beginnings of words: “The fair breeze blew, the white
foam flew, . . .”
•Consonance, repeated similar final consonant sounds in stressed syllables with dissimilar vowel
sounds: “. . . fiend / . . . behind”
•Assonance, a repeated vowel sound in stressed syllables with dissimilar consonant sounds: “The
western wave was all aflame.”
•Internal rhyme, the use of rhymes within a poetic line: “With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, . . .”
Reading Strategy
By comparing and contrasting sound devices in two of his poems, you can understand how
Coleridge evokes a range of emotions and moods. As you read, use a chart like the one shown to find
examples of sound devices in the two poems and to compare their effects.
Literary Analysis
Poetry often uses figurative language, or language not meant literally, to evoke emotions and state
ideas in an imaginative way:
•Similes—direct comparisons of dissimilar things using like or as: “Her eyes glowed like the moon.”
•Metaphors—comparisons in which one thing is identified with another, dissimilar thing: “All the world’s
a stage.”
•Personification—giving human qualities to nonhuman subjects: “The trees danced in the wind.”
Reading Strategy
When you do not understand a difficult passage, question yourself to repair your comprehension. For
example, to figure out the subject of a passage, ask yourself “Whom is the speaker talking about?”
Begin your questions with who, what, where, when, and why. Use a chart like the one shown to ask and
answer questions as you read.
Literary Analysis
Imagery is descriptive language that re-creates sensory experience. Writers may use imagery to create
metaphors and other figures of speech. Poetic imagery has these characteristics:
•It appeals to any or all of the five senses.
•It often creates patterns supporting a poem’s theme.
In “Ode to the West Wind,” for example, Shelley uses wind images that appeal to sight, sound, and
touch. As you read, think about how images and their patterns help you understand Shelley’s message.
By gathering together powerful images of the west wind or of a skylark, Shelley links these natural
beings to the strivings of his own spirit. His images all depict concrete objects, such as leaves in the
wind. Yet they also stir up longings and dreams. In the Romantic philosophy of the imagination, an
image connects what is “outside” the mind with what is “inside,” linking nature and spirit.
Reading Strategy
You can better understand an author’s poetry by comparing and contrasting elements from different
texts. For example, you might contrast the desert images of “Ozymandias,” which suggest the bleakness
of tyranny, with the wind images of “Ode to the West Wind,” which suggest political rebellion. Use a
chart like the one shown to compare the imagery in different poems by Shelley.
Literary Analysis
An ode is a lyric poem, characterized by heightened emotion, that pays respect to a person or thing,
usually directly addressed by the speaker.
•The Pindaric ode (named for the ancient Greek poet Pindar) uses groups of three stanzas, one of
which differs in form from the other two. Pindar’s odes celebrated victors at the Olympic Games.
•Roman poets later developed the Horatian ode (also called homostrophic), which contains only one
type of stanza.
•The irregular ode has no set pattern.
Keats created his own form of the ode, using ten-line stanzas of iambic pentameter (lines containing
ten beats with a repeated pattern of weak-strong). Often those stanzas begin with a heroic quatrain (four
lines rhymed abab) followed by a sestet (six lines rhymed in various ways). Note the various forms of
Keats’s odes.
Reading Strategy
You can determine the main idea of a difficult passage or work by paraphrasing it—restating it in your
own words. Use a chart like the one shown to paraphrase difficult passages in Keats’s poems.