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| English 458/Romantic Poets |
| Professor Rosso |
Authors
Blake | Wordsworth | Coleridge | Percy Shelley | Mary Shelley
1757-1772: Early Life
Blake was born in London, the second child in a Protestant Dissenting family; his father was a hosier or stocking maker, his mother probably of Moravian background. He was sent to Pars Drawing school at age 10 and apprenticed to an engraver at age 14.
1772-79: The Visionary Apprentice
Apprenticed to James Basire, engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, Blake was sent to make drawings of medieval monuments in Westminster Abbey and he developed a life-long devotion to Gothic or late-medieval, early-Renaissance art and literature.
1779-1788: Artist and Commercial Engraver
Following his apprenticeship, Blake became a journeyman copy engraver and married Catherine Boucher in 1782. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art, exhibiting several paintings there, and briefly went into business engraving and selling prints. His first volume of poetry, Poetical Sketches, was privately printed in 1783. In 1788 Blake invented a new method of engraving (or relief etching) called illuminated printing: his first illuminated work is There is No Natural Religion/All Religions are One (1788).
1789-1795: Illuminated Prophecies
An intensely active period, personally for Blake and historically for England, inaugurated by the French Revolution. Many scholars feel that the works of these years are Blake's most accessible and creative. He published engravings and illustrations for Joseph Johnson, a major bookseller of the day, at whose shop Blake's illuminated prints could be found. The Johnson circle included Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and other liberal and radical writers. Blake produced the following illuminated books in these years:
Songs of Innocence (1789)
The Book of Thel (1789-90)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790, 1794-5)
Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793)
America a Prophecy (1793), Europe a Prophecy (1794), The Song of Los (1795)
Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
The Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Ahania (1794), The Book of Los (1795)
1795-1800: Color Printing & Book Illustration
Blake (and his wife) experimented with color printing and in 1795 he produced the works known as the Twelve Large Color Prints, including Christ Appearing to the Apostles, Elohim Creating Adam, God Judging Adam, Satan Exulting over Eve, Newton, and Nebuchadnezzar. Between 1795-97 Blake painted 537 watercolor illustrations for an edition of Edward Young's popular poem Night Thoughts, followed by 117 illustrations for the Poems of Thomas Gray; he also began his epic poem Vala or The Four Zoas, which he revised over a ten-year period (1797-1807) and left unfinished.
1800-1805: Felpham & the Two Patrons
After the “failure” of his Night Thoughts illustrations (his patron abandoned the project before completion), Blake could not find employment and moved to Felpham, County Sussex, to work for a new patron, William Hayley, a wealthy poetaster and scholar who employed Blake to engrave designs for his literary projects and to paint portraits for his aristocratic friends. Blake grew very unhappy and returned to London in 1803 to answer his prophetic calling, but not before being charged, tried, and acquitted for seditious utterance in August 1803. These years were crucial to Blake's life and art: his poetic and pictorial vocabulary underwent a major transformation, taking on a pervasive biblical symbolism. He revised Vala or The Four Zoas in a biblical direction and painted over 100 watercolor illustrations to the Bible for a more congenial patron, Thomas Butts, including subsets on the Gospels and Revelation and a series on the Book of Job.
1806-1810: Controversy & a Public Exhibition
In these years, Blake continued to work as a journeyman engraver and to pursue recognition as a history painter and book illustrator. He drew illustrations to Robert Blair's The Grave (1805-8) and Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims (1809) but controversies engulfed both projects and Blake lost commissions to engrave his own designs. In response, he held a Public Exhibition in 1809 of 16 original paintings but turn-out was low and his visionary style was ridiculed in the press as insane. He defended his art in A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures (1809) sold at the exhibition and added the fiercely antagonistic "Public Address" (c.1810). Between 1806-9 he also painted several designs of The Last Judgment and wrote A Vision of the Last Judgment —both a description of one of the versions (now lost) and a further defense of his artistic theory and practice.
1811-1820: A Decade of Obscurity
As he entered a period of obscurity, Blake engraved his first work of illuminated printing since 1795, a prophetic epic titled Milton, a Poem (1811, 1818). Begun on his return from Felpham in 1804, the work revises Blake's understanding of Milton (as expressed in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) and offers a poetic account of his own “spiritual life” since the Felpham years. He continued to paint illustrations of Milton's work for Butts begun with Paradise Lost (1808): Comus and On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1815), L'Allegro and Il Penseroso (c.1816), and Paradise Regained (c.1816-20).
1821-1827: Final Years
Blake found a measure of recognition in his last years, primarily from a circle of younger painters who dubbed themselves the Antients and Blake the Interpreter. Of this group, the landscape painter John Linnell became a close friend and patron: he helped secure Blake a commission for twenty woodcuts to a new edition of Virgil's Pastorals (1821), which inspired Blake's illuminated prints On Homers Poetry/On Virgil (c.1822) and Laocoön (c.1826-7); and he commissioned a second set of watercolors to Job in 1821 which formed the basis of Blake's greatest artwork, the set of twenty-two engraved illustrations for the Book of Job (1826). Linnell also commissioned a series of watercolors to Dante's Divine Comedy (unfinished at Blake's death in 1827) and bought a copy of chapter one of Jerusalem (1820-21,1827), the culminating work and crowning achievement of Blake's illuminated poetic mythology.
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In his useful introductory book Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience, David Lindsay defines innocence and experience as follows:
"Innocence may be provisionally described as a state in which the human faculties are perfectly integrated, in which no being can refuse full sympathy to another, and in which the harmony of Man, God, and Nature is too complete to allow a non-human conception of divinity or matter. The separate poems contribute to Blake's celebration of this ideal, and draw added significance from it; and many critics have sought to interpret them by analysing the intricacies of their psychological drama. This can require some investigation of the relevant social and intellectual contexts, such as the charity-school controversy or the writings of Swedenborg. It also involves considering how the speakers of individual lyrics relate to the author and readership implied by the whole book, and how the speaker of each poem interacts with the other characters whom that poem invokes" (30). "Experience as a state of conflict and disintegration breeds a variety of moods and voices, from the self-centered to the prophetic; but the songs of Experience collectively map the postlapsarian realm which the songs of Innocence obliquely criticised. Lacking the harmony and integrity of Innocence, they stigmatise its idealism as gullibility; and the...hypocrisies which they expose include the encouragement of Innocence as an exploitable condition. As the pastoralism of Songs of Innocence implied knowledge of a state other than Innocence, so the satiric method of Songs of Experience assumes familiarity with Songs of Innocence as statement of an ideal; and in Songs of Innocence and of Experience the poems and designs of each part draw extra meaning from juxtaposition with those of the other" (43). In his equally useful and intelligent Notes on the Songs, David Punter writes: What did Blake mean by ‘innocence,' and how is it different from ignorance? To whom are the Songs of Innocence addressed—are they meant to be read by children, or perhaps as if we were children? If the state of innocence is some sense corresponds to childhood, do the Songs of Experience therefore represent an adult perspective? If they do, then are we to see this adult perspective as a corrective to the childhood view, or as a falling from grace? Is there implicit in the poems a ‘third view,'…which is beyond both innocence and experience? And where, behind all this, is the narrator of the poems, and how can we describe that narrator?” (9) |
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Wordsworth
In his Preface to the 1815 edition of his poems, Wordsworth speaks of the materials, diverse forms, and powers "requisite for the production of poetry." Halfway through his discussion, he writes of several stanzas from the poem "Resolution and Independence."
"I pass from the Imagination acting upon an individual image to a consideration of the same faculty employed upon images in a conjunction by which they modify each other....
'As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Such seemed this Man; not all alive or dead, |
"In these images [he continues], the conferring, the abstracting, and the modifying powers of the Imagination, immediately and mediately acting, are all brought into conjunction. The stone is endowed with something of the power of life to approximate it to the sea-beast; and the sea-beast stripped of some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure and condition of the aged Man; who is divested of so much of the indication of life and motion as to bring him to the point where the two objects unite and coalesce in just comparison."
Wordsworth
In a series of reviews for the Edinburgh Review from 1802 to 1816, the conservative critic Francis Jeffrey attacked what he called the "lake school of poetry"--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey--for writing as "dissenters from the established systems in poetry and criticism." In September of 1816, Jeffrey wrote:
"By far the most considerable change which has taken place in the world of letters, in our days, is that by which the wits of Queen Anne's time [1700-1714) have been gradually brought down from the supremacy which they had enjoyed, without competition, for the best part of a century. When we were at our studies, some twenty-five years ago, we can perfectly remember that every young man was set to read Pope, Swift and Addison, as regularly as Virgil, Cicero and Horace....All this, however...is now pretty well altered....[T]he revolution in our literature has been accelerated and confirmed by the concurrence of many causes. The agitations of the French Revolution...the impression of the new literature of Germany , evidently the original of our lake- school of poetry...the rise or revival of a general spirit of methodism in the lower orders--and the vast extent of our political and commerical relations...have brought knowledge and enterprise home." |
From a different (more radical) political perspective, William Hazlitt works off the sentiments of Jeffrey in his lecture "On the Living Poets," published in Lectures on the English Poets (1818). These lectures deeply influenced John Keats.
| "Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been denominated the Lake school of poetry....This school of poetry had its origin in the French revolution, or rather in those sentiments and opinions which produced that revolution....Our poetical literature had, toward the close of the last century, degenerated into the most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all things, in the hands of the followers of Pope and the Old French School of poetry. It wanted something to stir it up, and it found that something in the principles and events of the French revolution." |
And in his important book The Spirit of the Age (1825), Hazlitt describes Wordsworth's "genius" in terms that connect imaginative and political change:
| "It partakes of, and is carried along with, the revolutionary movement of our age: the political changes of the day were the model on which he formed and conducted his poetical experiments. His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we cannot explain its character at all) is a levelling one." |
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S.T. Coleridge
During the period when he wrote his three most famous poems--"Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," "Kubla Khan" (1795-98)-- Coleridge originated a poetic form of a different strain: what he called the personal, descriptive, quietly meditative "conversation poem." Coleridge's best biographer Richard Holmes describes the conversation poem as written in "an intimate, low-key, blank-verse style very close to his most personal letters" (Coleridge: Early Visions, 85). David Perkins writes:
| "As a form, the "conversation poem" derives from the descriptive meditative verse of the eighteenth century, from such poems as Goldsmith's " Deserted Village " or Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." These present the speaker reflecting upon a particular scene, and passages of description alternate with passages of meditation touched with feeling. They are organized as argument and hence, however pensive, still convey something of the impressions of public discourse, an impression to which their relatively generalized imagery, balanced syntax, and regular patterns of versification are altogether suitable. Coleridge transformed this species of poem in ways that will be found generally typical of verse in the Romantic period. The "scene" has become a moment in domestic life and thus establishes at once an intimate relation between ourselves and the speaker. Images are more particularized and realistic.... Sentences have the spontaneous, unpredictable structure of conversation.... To put it another way, in exhibiting the casual flow of consciousness Coleridge takes advantage of the basic convention of Romantic poetry, namely that poetry is spontaneous utterance. The convention exerts a far-reaching control over the way poetry will be read. It means that the poem enacts the process of its creation, and its beauty of form lies in the natural movement and growth" (English Romantic Writers, 389-90). |
Perkins draws on M.H. Abrams's influential essay "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric" (included in the packet), which regards Coleridge's conversation poems as paradigmatic of the genre:
| "They present a determinate speaker in a particularized, and usually localized, outdoor setting, whom we overhear as he carries on in a fluent vernacular which rises easily to a more formal speech, a sustained colloquy, sometimes with himself or with the outer scene, but more frequently with a silent human auditor, present or absent. The speaker begins a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or solves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation" (in Bloom Romanticism and Consciousness, 201). |
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Questions for Coleridge "Dejection: An Ode"
Look for connections between Coleridge's poem and Wordsworth's "Ode. Intimations of Immortality" and "Resolution and Independence ." Focus on general points and themes before comparing specific passages. Consider also the biographical context of 1802.
2. What is the function of the epigraph from the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spense? Read over the ballad and determine what role the stanza that Coleridge quotes plays in the ballad; then relate it to the ode. Think about the role of "weather" in both poems. See especially stanza one.
Look closely at the first verse sentence of stanza one. What exactly does the speaker prophesy? And why does he say it would be better if the Aeolian lute were mute?
In stanza two, why can't the speaker find relief from grief? What effect does such a mood have on his perceptions of nature? What do you make of the imagery of the stanza?
In stanzas three to five, carefully analyze the speaker's perspective on imagination and nature. Here you may want to compare the speaker's view with Wordsworth's speaker in the Intimations Ode. What are their respective viewpoints about the soul, the light, and joy in relation to nature?
In stanzas six and seven, what struggle does the speaker describe? What in particular induces the speaker to turn and listen to the wind?
The shift from stanzas six to seven forms the crux of the poem. Examine closely the aeolian harp image: how has it shifted from stanza one? Who is the "Mad Lutanist"?
Stanza seven concludes with two tragic scenes. In tragedy, as Aristotle put it centuries ago, the emotions of fear and pity are raised so that they can be purged or worked through. Does such a process occur in this stanza? Why does the speaker say the second tale is "tempered with delight"?
Stanza seven is the most difficult part of the poem. No one really knows for sure exactly what is going on. What do you think is the role of the "tale" of the lost child? How does it help make sense of the stanza and of the poem as a whole?
What resolution does the speaker, or the poem, achieve in the final stanza? What is his relation to Joy? To the Lady?
Finally, compare and contrast this poem with "The Eolian Harp." Look at question 7 above and basic differences in Coleridge's use of the harp symbol.
"Peterloo" or the "Manchester Massacre" at St. Peter's Field on August 16, 1819 profoundly affected Shelley's poetry and politics. On September 6, Shelley responded in a letter: "The same day that your letter came, came news of the Manchester work, & the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I await anxiously to hear how the Country will express its sense of this bloody murderous oppression of its destroyers. 'Something must be done...What I know not.'" On the 9th, he wrote to Thomas Love Peacock, referring to the "terrible and important news" from Manchester: "These are, as it were, the distant thunders of the terrible storm which is approaching. The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood. May their execrable lessons not be learnt with equal docility! I still think there will be no coming to close quarters until financial affairs decidedly bring the oppressors and the oppressed together. Pray let me have the earliest possible news which you consider of importance at this crisis." |
Richard Holmes in Shelley: The Pursuit argues that the Manchester massacre triggered "the most intensely creative eight weeks of his [Shelley's] life" and that in the first twelve days, he wrote "the greatest poem of political protest ever written in English," the Mask of Anarchy. Here are the final stanzas of that poem:
And that slaughter to the Nation And these words shall then become Rise like lions after slumber |
Frankenstein
Questions for Discussion
1. In "The Author's Introduction," how does Mary Shelley describe the creation of her horror story?
2. What is Walton's "enterprise"? Why does his sister have "evil forebodings" about it? What does Walton mean when he refers to his sister Margaret Saville's "feminine fosterage"? Describe Walton's upbringing and education.
3. How does Walton describe Victor and the Monster? Why does he admire Victor? How are Victor and Walton alike?
4. What key events in Victor's upbringing turn him toward his "fatal impulse" to create"a human being"? Describe his family background.
5. How does Victor differ from Elizabeth and Henry Clerval?
6. How do alchemy and natural philosophy affect the development of Victor's "fatal impulse"? How does M. Waldman influence him?
7. Describe Victor's feelings during his creation of the monster.
8. What does the dream of his mother and Elizabeth signify?
9 How does the monster persuade Victor to listen to his tale when they meet in the Alps? Does Victor owe him a hearing?
10. What endowments make the monster "human"? Examine his history up through the De Lacey family. How does what he reads affect him?
11. Examine the Felix-Safie relationship. Why does the monster tell this tale within a tale? What does he learn from it?
12. What does the monster learn from Volney's Ruins of Empires? How does its explanation of human society affect the monster?
13. What is paradoxical about the monster's request for a female? Consider the arguments on either side.
14. Why does Victor go to northern Scotland to create the female? How does his response to the Lake District differ from Clerval's?
15. Under what conditions and feelings does Victor create a female?
16. Why does he destroy the female in front of the monster? What happens between this event and the death of his father?
17. After the monster kills Elizabeth, how do Victor and monster come more and more to resemble each other? Examine their language.
18. When late in the book Walton comes back into the narrative, how does he respond to Victor's tale?
19. Look closely over Walton's final letters: what new issue arises for Walton that differs from Victor's situation? How does he respond to this new dilemma? How do the sailors respond?
20. Examine closely Walton's account of Victor's final speech.
21. What do you make of the monster's final exchange with Walton?
22. How would you summarize the affect of Victor's tale on Walton?
Frankenstein
In his Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796), liberal turned conservative statesman Edmund Burke writes of the French Revolution in terms that bear importantly on Mary's Wollstonecraft Shelley's conception of the Monster in Frankenstein:
| "...out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist." |
One of Burke's political enemies, the French philosopher Constantin Francois Volney, author of the widely influential The Ruins, or, A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (which the monster reads) argues:
| "Paternal tyranny laid the foundation of political despotism...In every savage and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the family, is a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot. The wife is his slave, the children his servants....It is remarkable that parental authority is great accordingly as the government is despotic." |
Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, used the same language and arguments in her feminist writings and in writings on the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft, Volney, and William Godwin (Mary's father) formed part of the radical intellegentsia, as did Mary's husband Percy in the later years of the Revolution, during the Napoleonic wars. On the other side, Burke and his conservative allies often deployed the metaphor of a monster for the revolution and for Godwin himself. But while the Gothic monster can be read as a metaphor for both the industrial and democratic revolutions, Mary's disinclination to share her mother, father, or husband's radical political views complicates the monster's figurative meaning.