Chapter 6 The Romantic Period

The Roots of Romanticism

Tintern Abbey and the River Wye in Tintern, Wales.

Often the term Romantic literature, particularly poetry, evokes the connotation of nature poetry. Although nature is an important component in much Romantic literature, Romanticism is much more than recording the beauties of the natural world. And Romanticism is certainly not what modern readers usually think of when we hear the words romance and romantic; Romanticism does not refer to romantic love.

Romanticism grew from a profound change in the way people in the Western world perceived their place and purpose in life. Events such as the American Revolution in 1776, the French Revolution in 1789, and the Industrial Revolution restructured society and the way individuals viewed themselves and their relationship to each other and to the social order.

Romanticism and Neoclassicism

Romanticism is a reaction against many facets of Neoclassicism. The following chart lists contrasting views of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.

Characteristics of Romantic Literature

• medievalism—Rather than looking for forms and subject matter from classical literature, Romantic-era writers prefer nostalgic views of the Middle Ages as a simple, less complicated time not troubled by the complexities and divisive issues of industrialization and urbanization. Often a Romantic medieval vision is not realistic, ignoring the violence and harshness of the Middle Ages with its religious persecution, political wars, poverty among the lower classes in favor of a fairy tale view of knights in shining armor rescuing beautiful damsels in distress. Or, from another perspective, the castles and mysterious aura of the so-called Dark Ages provide an ideal setting for Gothic literature.
• mysticismThe belief that the physical world of nature is a revelation of a spiritual or transcendental presence in the universe.—Romantic mysticism is the belief that the physical world of nature is a revelation of a spiritual or transcendental presence in the universe. Mysticism is not pantheism (worshipping nature). Romantic writers would worship not the tree, but the spiritual, sublime element manifested by the tree. Romantic literature, particularly poetry, is often characterized as nature poetry; mysticism explains the evident love of nature. Romantic writers love nature not only for its beauty but primarily because it is an expression of spirituality and the Imagination.
• sensibilityThe emotional enthusiasm that was a reaction, often an exaggerated reaction, to the reason and logic prized in neoclassicism.—When Jane Austen titled her novel Sense and Sensibility, she set up the dichotomy between rationalism and the emotional enthusiasm that was a reaction, often an exaggerated reaction, to the reason and logic prized in neoclassicism. In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth defined poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The overwhelming emotional reaction to nature seen in Wordsworth’s poetry, the emotional sensitivity to other individuals and their circumstances, particularly those from the lower socio-economic classes, and the supernatural evocation of terror in Gothic literature all are expressions of sensibility.
• primitivism and individualismInterest in the person who does not have the artificial manners of high society, the cultivated façade of the aristocracy.—Arising from two sources, philosophical theories that posit innocence is found in nature and the ideals of democracy, Romanticism values the primitive individual, the person who does not have the artificial manners of high society, the cultivated façade of the aristocracy. Individuals who are closer to nature are better able to recognize and exemplify goodness and spiritual discernment. Wordsworth espouses the common man and incidents from ordinary life as the appropriate subject for poetry. Romanticism places the individual in the center of life and experience.

Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical BalladsA collection of poems written and jointly published by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. is a collection of poems written and jointly published by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. The volume is of such importance that its 1798 publication date is often considered the beginning of the Romantic Period. The poetry in Lyrical Ballads marks a distinct change in both subject matter and style from the poetry of the 18th century.

William Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads

In the 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth includes a PrefaceAn introductory explanation., an introductory explanation, to Lyrical Ballads to explain his theory of how poetry should be written.

The following points from the Preface delineate the characteristics that make these poems markedly different from poetry of the preceding century:

• The language of poetry should be real language spoken by common people.

  During the 18th century, many poets used what Wordsworth called “poetic diction,” flowery or ornate words for ordinary things such as feathery flock instead of birds or finny tribe instead of fish. Wordsworth protests that people don’t use such expressions; therefore poetry shouldn’t either. Notice also that much of Wordsworth’s poetry rejects the uniform stanzas and line lengths that were popular in the 18th century. Much of his poetry is free in form—lines and stanzas of varying lengths in the same poem, more like the “selection of language really used by men.”

• The subject of poetry should be events from the real lives of common people.

  Wordsworth believes that common, ordinary situations are worthy topics for poems, events such as farmers plowing their fields. He further believes that through the Imagination he could make his audience more aware of the significance of common scenes that they might otherwise take for granted.

• “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Thus Wordsworth identifies sensibility rather than reason as the source of poetry.
• A poet is a “man speaking to men” but an individual who is extraordinarily perceptive. Wordsworth believes that the power of the Imagination enables poets to perceive the spiritual dimension found in the ordinary, in, as Coleridge says, all of animate nature. Sensibility allows the poet to understand and to convey the inner being of man and nature.

Forms of Literature

• Novel

  A novelAs famously defined in the Holman/Harmon Handbook to Literature, an “extended fictional prose narrative.”, as famously defined in the Holman/Harmon Handbook to Literature, is an “extended fictional prose narrative.” The novel flourished in the Romantic Period, encompassing novels previously listed by Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley, and Ann Radcliffe; Sir Walter Scott‘s historical novels, known as the Waverly Novels, set in medieval times and glorifying Scottish nationalism; and Jane Austen’s novels of manners, portraying the genteel country life of the Regency era.

• Lyric Poetry

  A lyricA brief poem, expressing emotion, imagination, and meditative thought, usually stanzaic in form. is a brief poem, expressing emotion, imagination, and meditative thought, usually stanzaic in form.

• Romantic Ode

  As used in the Romantic Period, the odeA lyric poem longer than usual lyrics, often on a more serious topic, usually meditative and philosophic in tone and subject. is a lyric poem longer than usual lyrics, often on a more serious topic, usually meditative and philosophic in tone and subject.

• Ballad

  A balladA narrative poem or song, usually simple and regular in rhythm and rhyme. The typical ballad stanza is 4 lines rhyming abab. is a narrative poem or song. Ballads originated as songs that were part of an oral culture, usually simple and regular in rhythm and rhyme. The typical ballad stanza is 4 lines rhyming abab. Because of their simplicity and their role as part of folk culture, ballads were popular with many Romantic writers.

Resources

Biography

Portrait of Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806, frontispiece to an 1827 publication of her Elegiac Sonnets).

Early in her childhood, Charlotte Turner Smith lived in the Sussex downs that figure prominently in her writing. Years after the death of her mother, Smith’s father remarried, promising his new wife that the teenaged Charlotte would not remain in the household. Her father arranged her marriage to a man who proved to be irresponsible, promiscuous, and abusive. While in debtor’s prison with her husband and children, Smith earned enough money from her writing to obtain their release. After leaving her husband, she turned to writing in an attempt to support herself and their children.

Many of the hardships Smith faced in life—the death of her mother, her step-mother’s dislike of her, the death of several of her children, her husband’s abuse—found their way into her novels, poetry, and plays.

Romanticism

Now recognized as the first woman Romantic writer, perhaps even the first Romantic writer, Charlotte Smith’s work was recognized by and an influence on Romantic poets such as Southey, Wordsworth, and Austen.

Her attention to nature and nature’s association with the supernatural is one of the characteristics that her work shares with other Romantic writers.

Smith is also noted for her use of the sonnet and for initiating a new interest in the sonnet among later Romantic writers such as Wordsworth and Keats. The sonnet form, which had flourished during the Elizabethan Age, was little used during the Age of Enlightenment. Sonnet sequences such as Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella emphasize the emotional ups and downs of a love affair. During the Age of Reason, such blatant sentimentalism was abandoned in favor of reason and rational thought, but with Romanticism came a new interest in literature of sensibility.

Texts

• “Beachy Head with Other Poems.” British Women Romantic Poets, 1789–1832. An Electronic Collection of Texts from the University of California at Davis. Ophilia Yim.
• “Beachy Head: With Other Poems.” Google Books.
• “Charlotte Turner Smith.” The Works of Charlotte Smith—An Electronic Edition. Stephen C. Behrendt. Electronic Text Center, UNL Libraries. University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
• “Elegiac Sonnets.” British Women Romantic Poets, 1789–1832. An Electronic Collection of Texts from the University of California at Davis. Charlotte Payne.
• “Elegiac Sonnets: by Charlotte Smith With Additional Sonnets and Other Poems.” Google Books.

Like many of Smith’s sonnets, “Sonnet V. To the South Downs” begins with a description of nature intricately tied to memories of her childhood, a pattern later found in much of William Wordsworth’s poetry. The poem’s content soon turns from natural description and the joy of childhood it elicits to the current sense of the speaker’s pain. Lines 6–8 and lines 11 and 12 ask questions which serve as transition to the topic of the speaker’s heartbreak, asking if even the current beauty and the remembrance of past joy can mitigate the speaker’s emotional suffering in the present or the future. The couplet provides the answer: only death can provide the oblivion that will ease the speaker’s pain.

Smith’s volume of sonnets was first published in 1784. In the preface to the first edition, Smith notes that in these poems she records “melancholy moments” by “expressing in verse the sensations those moments brought,” an explanation echoed in Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

All along the southern coast of England, the chalk cliffs continuously erode into the sea. Famous for its South Down walks, the cliff area prominently displays frequent signs warning walkers not to approach the edges. Cliffs often collapse onto the beach far below, taking with them any objects or persons standing on the crumbling ground.

In the small village of Middleton-on-Sea, a church stood near the edge of the cliffs until centuries of erosion caused most of the building to tumble into the sea. As is common in English parish churches, the village graveyard surrounded the church building, allowing the dead to be buried in hallowed ground. During Smith’s lifetime, an unusually high tide swept away part of the ruins of the church as well as land containing graves. Exposed bones were found on the beaches afterwards.

In Sonnet 44, the speaker again describes the physical scene, the focus on the bones left exposed on the shore by the destructive tide. As frequently occurs in these sonnets, the final couplet turns to the speaker’s emotional state.

“Beachy Head”

The last poem written by Charlotte Smith, published posthumously, “Beachy Head” exemplifies many of the characteristics that have come to define Romantic poetry.

Perhaps most obvious is Smith’s focus on the natural world. However, as is typical of Romanticism, nature is valued not just for its beauty but because of mysticism: the sense of a divine presence in nature. Note words with religious connotations in the poem.

The speaker’s references to the hind (the rustic country-dweller) who makes an honest living and to the shepherd who is involved in smuggling both typify primitivism, the interest in the lower social classes, people who live close to nature.

Also, the poem reveals sensibility, the valuing of human emotion over reason.

At the same time, the poem exhibits traits of poetry from the Enlightenment. Note the personification of attributes such as Hope, Fancy, Luxury, and Memory.

Resources

Biography

William Blake‘s memorial plaque in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, identifies him as an “artist, poet, mystic.” Born in London, where he spent most of his life, Blake was educated largely at home. From his childhood he claimed to experience visions of and even conversations with angels and with the Virgin Mary. His visionary experiences appear in many of his poetic works, such as The Book of Urizen and The Book of Los.

For a short time, Blake attended art school and then was apprenticed to an engraver. He made his living primarily from his artwork. His poetry, such as Songs of Innocence and Experience, was written as an integral part of his engravings.

William Blake Memorial Plaque

William Blake’s memorial plaque in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London including the first stanza of Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.”

William Blake

1757–1827

Artist + Poet + Mystic

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.”

The British Library includes Blake’s Notebook in its Virtual Books collection. On pages 29 and 30, you can see a draft copy of “The Tyger” and on page 3, sketches of tigers. The William Blake Archive provides digital images of Songs of Innocence and Experience and of Blake’s other poetic works that allow you to read the works as Blake intended, with the accompanying engravings.

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Although Blake is considered a pre-Romantic poet, his poetry exhibits many of the characteristics of Romantic poetry.

Like many late 18th-century and 19th-century writers, Blake abhorred the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the physical environment and, more importantly, on the people caught in a time of radical change in the ways of living and making a living their families had pursued for generations. Child labor issues figure prominently in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. The Victorian Web’s section on child labor includes testimony from 1819 Parliamentary hearings on the Chimney Sweepers’ Regulation Bill. With his Romantic sensibility, Blake puts a human face on the debate, encouraging the reader to think of the situation in terms of individuals—Tom, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack—innocent children living lives of inhumane hardship.

Resources

Biography

The son of a Scottish farmer, Robert Burns was born in this farmhouse in Alloway, Scotland in 1759. One end of the building housed the animals; the other, the family.

Burns attended the local school, had occasional tutors, and read voraciously. Because he lacked formal education, he was viewed as a natural poet, the exemplification of a Romantic ideal: a primitive plowman, close to nature, as capable of writing perceptive poetry as the university-educated aristocrat. After the publication of his Kilmarnock volume of poetry, Burns’s fame soared, and he was in demand in the highest social circles in Scotland.

Known as the National Poet of Scotland, Robbie Burns celebrated the folk legends, the history, and the language of Scotland. His poetry also glorified nature, the common individual, and rural Scottish life.

A stained glass window in St. Giles Church in Edinburgh, Scotland honors Burns, as do numerous monuments in Edinburgh, Alloway, and Dumfries where Burns lived.

Audio

In addition to reading Burns’s poetry, listen to recordings in the Scottish dialect.

• “Kevin McFadden Reads ‘To a Mouse’ by Robert Burns.” Poets on Poets. Tilar Mazzeo, ed. Romantic Circles.
• “Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Collection.” LibriVox.

The Poetic Genius of my Country found me at the plough and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my native soil, in my native tongue; I tuned my wild, artless notes, as she inspired

…—quotation from a letter by Robert Burns.

“To a Mouse” and “To a Louse”

Both “To a Mouse” and “To a Louse” have a moral to the story.

In “To a Mouse,” a farmer plowing his field turns up a mouse’s nest, and the poem reports his speech to the mouse. Sympathetic, the farmer recognizes what was a popular idea among Romantic poets, the idea of man and nature in a “social union.” In Burns’s frequently quoted lines, the farmer states that even the most careful plans may “go astray” because of unforeseen circumstances:

In the final stanza, the farmer notes, despite this realization that neither man nor mouse can plan the future with any certainty, the mouse is still more blessed than the man. The present only affects the mouse; people, however, look back at the past and worry about the future.

Auld Kirk in Alloway, setting of Tam O’Shanter’s ghostly encounter.

In “To a Louse,” the moral is in lines 43–44 as Burns laments that people might behave differently if only we could see ourselves in the same way that others see us. The method he chooses to convey this message is by relating the story of Jeany, a young woman sitting in a church service, aware that people are staring at her. Thinking they are admiring her bonnet and her beauty, Jeany is unaware that they really are watching a louse making its way across her bonnet. The narrator believes that lice belong on poor beggars, not on fine ladies. The louse, however, by its presence on Jeany makes the point that nature is indifferent to social status.

“Tam O’Shanter”

Robert Burns sets his folktale “Tam O’Shanter” in his hometown of Alloway. The story tells of a foolish, drunken man who, to his detriment, ignores the good advice of his wife, stays out late drinking too much, and suffers, as does his brave horse Meg, a supernatural encounter.

Resources

Biography

Wollstonecraft’s personal experiences mirror the state of women’s rights in the late 18th/early 19th centuries. As the second child, Mary Wollstonecraft from early childhood resented her elder brother’s education and inheritance. Denied the formal education her brother enjoyed, Wollstonecraft, through her reading, obtained an education equal to or perhaps better than many women of her time period and social class. Because of her father’s declining financial situation, Wollstonecraft earned her own living, working in the only jobs available to women, such as a lady’s companion and a governess, which she found particularly distasteful. Later in her life she attempted to establish schools for girls.

In her personal life as well as her professional life, Wollstonecraft was unconventional and attracted the disdain of traditional society. She gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, allowing people to believe she was married to the child’s father.

Portrait by John Opie.

Wollstonecraft’s two suicide attempts testify to her dissatisfaction with life in a world which disagreed so adamantly with her ideas of radical freedom in moral and social behavior. Later when she became pregnant with William Godwin‘s child, they married, even though both advocated free love without marriage. The couple’s marriage revealed that Wollstonecraft’s first marriage was a pretense, and she again found herself publicly ostracized. Wollstonecraft died from complications of childbirth a month after her daughter with Godwin was born. Their daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, grew up to marry the poet Shelley and to write the novel Frankenstein.

Text of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

• 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft. Great Voyages: The History of Western Philosophy from 1492 to 1776. Bill Uzgalis, Oregon State University. searchable text.
• “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.” Bartleby.com. rpt. from Boston: Peter Edes, 1792.
• “Modern History Sourcebook: Mary Woolstonecraft [sic]: A Vindication of the Right of Women.” Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Paul Halsall, Fordham University.
• Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. Project Gutenberg.
• “Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759–1797 . A Vindication of the Rights of Woman / by Mary Wollstonecraft.” Electronic Text Center. University of Virginia Library.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Excerpt from the Introduction

After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy motions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization, which has hitherto taken place in the world, has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result? a profound conviction, that the neglected education of my fellow creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

In a treatise, therefore, on female rights and manners, the works which have been particularly written for their improvement must not be overlooked; especially when it is asserted, in direct terms, that the minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement; that the books of instruction, written by men of genius, have had the same tendency as more frivolous productions; and that, in the true style of Mahometanism, they are only considered as females, and not as a part of the human species, when improvable reason is allowed to be the dignified distinction, which raises men above the brute creation, and puts a natural sceptre in a feeble hand.

Yet, because I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to suppose, that I mean violently to agitate the contested question respecting the equality and inferiority of the sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and I cannot pass it over without subjecting the main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, I shall stop a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion. In the government of the physical world, it is observable that the female, in general, is inferior to the male. The male pursues, the female yields—this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. This physical superiority cannot be denied—and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society.

I am aware of an obvious inference: from every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If, by this appellation, men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be, against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raise females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind—all those who view them with a philosophical eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine.

This discussion naturally divides the subject. I shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties; and afterwards I shall more particularly point out their peculiar designation.

I wish also to steer clear of an error, which many respectable writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to LADIES, if the little indirect advice, that is scattered through Sandford and Merton, be excepted; but, addressing my sex in a firmer tone, I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural state. Perhaps the seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim to pity! the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford barren amusement.

But as I purpose taking a separate view of the different ranks of society, and of the moral character of women, in each, this hint is, for the present, sufficient; and I have only alluded to the subject, because it appears to me to be the very essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it introduces.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart,

delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

Dismissing then those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone.

This is a rough sketch of my plan; and should I express my conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel whenever I think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers. Animated by this important object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style—I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation.

These pretty nothings, these caricatures of the real beauty of sensibility, dropping glibly from the tongue, vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and over-stretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action.

The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry, they act as such children may be expected to act: they dress; they paint, and nickname God’s creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for the seraglio! Can they govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?

Title page from the first American edition 1792.

Key Takeaways

• Because of the strictures of her society, Mary Wollstonecraft was largely self-educated and forced to work in traditional women’s jobs which she disliked.
• Wollstonecraft evinces the Romantic characteristics of primitivism and individualism as well as exemplifying tenets from Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads such as the use of common language and writing for and about common people.

Exercises

1. In the first paragraph of A Vindication, Wollstonecraft uses an analogy to illustrate the thesis of her essay: she compares women as they are treated by society to flowers. What is the purpose of this analogy?
2. This analogy leads her to the thesis of her essay. Identify her thesis.
3. In paragraph six, Wollstonecraft specifies her audience. To what group of women is she writing? Why does she choose that group of women?
4. How, in paragraph 8, does Wollstonecraft say women usually are treated, and how does she plan to be different?
5. What type of language does Wollstonecraft intend to use in her essay? Compare her choice of language to that advocated by Wordsworth in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
6. Wollstonecraft argues that because women are not educated they have only one means to “rise in the world.” What is that means?

Resources

Biography

View the presentation on Wordsworth’s biography. Also view video mini-lectures Romanticism and Wordsworth and William Wordsworth.

“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”

With the passage of the 1534 Act of Supremacy, King Henry VIII ordered that selected monasteries and abbeys in England be closed and the occupants dispersed. Like many others, Tintern Abbey stood vacant and gradually fell into decay. Over two hundred years later, Wordsworth came upon the ruins of Tintern Abbey while on a hiking trip. In the opening lines of the poem, the speaker states that after five years he has returned to Tintern Abbey.

“Lines” is an example of a pattern found in much Romantic poetry: an observation of nature followed by a meditation inspired by that observation.

The following are excerpts from “Lines,” not the entire poem.

Stanza 1 (lines 1–22): the speaker describes the beautiful scene. Note the descriptive details. This stanza is the observation of nature.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,	5
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view	10
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines	15
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,	20
Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

Stanza 2 (lines 22–49): This stanza begins the meditation—a philosophical strain of thought inspired by the natural scene. The speaker realizes that although he hasn’t seen Tintern Abbey for five years, he has remembered the beautiful scene even when he’s back in the busy, noisy city enduring the stress of daily life. When he remembers the beauty of nature, he feels again the calmness, the “tranquil restoration,” of being in nature. This idea that nature, even the memory of nature, can cause us to feel tranquil is a central concept of Romanticism.

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration:—feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life,

His little, nameless, unremembered, acts

Of kindness and of love.

Stanza 4 (lines 58–111): The speaker reiterates the same concept in lines 64–67. He realizes that while he stands looking at the beauty of Tintern Abbey he is receiving two types of pleasure: first, the “present pleasure” of simply enjoying the beauty at the moment; and second, the pleasure of storing up mental “life and food for future years” when he returns to the city and calls up the scene in his memory.

While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts	65
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years.

Later in stanza 4, the speaker explains why remembering the beauties of nature can cause him to feel tranquil. First, in lines 90–93, he acknowledges that nature brings to mind “the still, sad music of humanity.” Nature is important because it turns his thoughts to humanity. Second, he informs the reader why nature draws his attention to the needs of humanity. In lines 107–111, he states that in nature he recognizes a divine presence, what he calls “the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being.” Nature is a means of perceiving a spiritual presence in the world. This passage encapsulates the concept of Romantic mysticism.

For I have learned	90
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt	95
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,	100
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,	105
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,	110
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Stanza 5: The speaker directly addresses his sister (presumably Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy), hoping that she also will recognize both the beauty and the spiritual presence in nature. The benefit of being close to nature is that we are also close to God, and therefore the trials of daily life will not “disturb our cheerful faith.” Note the evils that beset individuals the speaker lists in lines131–134. The speaker trusts his sister will find in nature the same tranquil restoration he has.

My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make
Knowing that Nature never did betray	125
The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed	130
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb	135
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.

“Michael”

“Michael” is a narrative poemA poem that tells a story., a poem that tells a story, about the misfortune of a simple common man and his family. Wordsworth subtitles the poem “A Pastoral Poem.” The term pastoralPoetry about shepherds, sheep, and the simple pleasures of rural life. refers to poetry about shepherds, sheep, and the simple pleasures of rural life. In this poem, Wordsworth not only writes about one individual’s tragedy but also about an entire class of people whose lives are disrupted by the Industrial Revolution. For centuries, many families like Michael’s had made their living from their land and their flocks of sheep. The men tended the sheep and the women spun wool and wove cloth to sell. With the coming of machinery, spinning and weaving could be accomplished much more quickly and cheaply in factories. Many young people, no longer able to make a living in the country, went to work in the cities.

The beginning of the trail which leads to Greenhead Gill[Ghyll], the pathway Wordsworth walked where he saw the “heap of unhewn stone” and was reminded of the story of Michael the shepherd.

A convention of the pastoral mode is the portrayal of life in the city, or in the court as in Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” as evil and corrupt—the view of the courtier caught up in and tired of the intrigue and subterfuge of the court, longing to escape into the beautiful, peaceful countryside, totally unaware of the realities of the hard lives of shepherds.

Wordsworth draws on this convention when he pictures the son Luke having to go to the city where he falls into evil and is unable to come home to the pure life of the countryside.

Note the beginning lines of the poem. Wordsworth describes the scene and then focuses our attention on a specific object: “a straggling heap of unhewn stones.” This specific object then, this stack of rough stones, prompts him to remember and to tell us the story of Michael, the shepherd.

The valley between these hills leads to Greenhead Ghyll.

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

This poem is a lyric poem. Like “Lines,” “I Wandered” follows the pattern of an observation of nature leading to a meditation.

In stanzas 1–3, note the descriptive details. Stanza 4 is the meditation, the part of the poem that is philosophical and thoughtful. In this last stanza, the speaker realizes that when he is at home, lying on his couch, he remembers the sight of the daffodils and he feels the same happy emotions he felt when he originally saw them, an example of “emotion recollected in tranquility” which Wordsworth describes in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

Resources

Biography

Dorothy Wordsworth was the middle child of five, with two older brothers including William Wordsworth and two younger brothers. Her mother died when she was six, her father when she was twelve. Separated from her brothers, Wordsworth lived in the care of relatives, then worked caring for their children when she was older. After years of seeing her brothers only on holidays, when in her early twenties Wordsworth moved to Alfoxden with William. Here she kept a journal of their activities, including their frequent meetings with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then living with his wife and child at nearby Nether Stowey.

As an unmarried woman, Wordsworth was dependent upon her brother and lived with him even after he married and had his own family. In later life, she became ill, both physically and mentally, and probably addicted to laudanum.

Texts

Journals

• “Dorothy’s Grasmere Journal.” Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum. The Wordsworth Trust. excerpts from the Grasmere journal including the daffodil passage.
• “The Falls of the Clyde.” About Scotland. Scottish Landscapes, Gardens and Waterfalls.
• Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Hathi Trust Digital Library. Ed. William Knight. London. Macmillan. 1897.
• “Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth Vol. I (1904). Internet Archive. Macmillan And Co. Limited. Universal Digital Library.
• Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland. A.D. 1803. Hathi Trust Digital Library. Ed. J.C. Shairp. Edinburgh. Edmonston and Douglas. 1874.
• Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 by Dorothy Wordsworth. Project Gutenberg.

Poetry

• “Dorothy Wordsworth, ‘Irregular Verses’ (begun c. 1827).” Historicizing Romantic Sexuality. A Praxis Volume edited by Richard C. Sha. Praxis Series. Ed. Orrin N.C. Wang. Romantic Circles. rpt. from Susan M. Levin. Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism. Rutgers. 1987. 201–204.
• Selected Poetry. The Poetry Foundation.
• “A Winter’s Ramble in Grasmere Vale.” Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum. The Wordsworth Trust.

Journals

In 1798, while William Wordsworth and Coleridge prepared to publish Lyrical Ballads, the volume that would herald the Romantic age in British literature, Dorothy Wordsworth began her Alfoxden journal. Although many of her entries contain only simple notes about daily activities—having dinner, hanging linen—some passages include vivid natural description and commentary on the essence of nature that mirrors Romantic philosophy. Her entry for April 15, for example, voices the anti-neoclassical idea that organic nature is superior to nature transformed by human hands. This April passage was written months before Lyrical Ballads was published, probably in the fall of 1798.

These two passages evince Wordsworth’s descriptive powers. Note the passage in which she describes gazing at nature until it dissolves into a scene of “more than natural loveliness,” a beauty that she describes as beyond naturalness, a view that is supernatural. Also note her use of the word “feed” to characterize her absorption of the view, an image that her brother William would use five months later in “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” to convey the experience of storing a natural image to recall in moments of “tranquil restoration.”

Wordsworth began writing her Grasmere Journals when she and William moved to Grasmere to live in Dove Cottage. This passage from the 1802 journal is undoubtedly one of the most well known as critics delight in pointing out that William Wordsworth’s famous description of daffodils in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” probably composed in 1804, owes much to Dorothy Wordsworth’s earlier description.

Wordsworth’s Journals were not published until long after her death. With the late 20th century interest in women’s writing, her work began to receive the attention it deserves.

Resources

Biography

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in a small village in southwestern England. The son of a clergyman/school teacher, Coleridge attended his father’s school. He learned to read very early and remained a voracious reader. After his father’s death, Coleridge was sent to school in London where he met Charles Lamb, the friend to whom he wrote “This Lime-tree Bower My Prison.” An excellent scholar, Coleridge attended Cambridge University but never finished a degree. He did, however, become enthralled with radical ideas such as communal living and with fellow poet Robert Southey planned to move to America to establish a utopian community called Pantisocracy, literally meaning equal government by all. The scheme required the participants to be married couples, so Coleridge married Sara Fricker, the sister of Southey’s fiancée. Having married more for convenience than love, Coleridge was unhappy in his marriage, as presumably was his wife, and the two eventually separated.

Coleridge and his wife Sara lived for a short time in Nether Stowey, a village near the Bristol Channel. Coleridge had met William Wordsworth who lived nearby at Alfoxden with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. While living here, Coleridge produced some of his finest poetry, including “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “This Lime-tree Bower My Prison.”

Throughout his life Coleridge suffered from poor health and probably from poor mental health as well. By the early 1800’s he had become addicted to opium. His addiction became so severe that he moved in with a doctor in London who helped him keep his drug use under control.

In his later years, Coleridge delivered a highly successful series of lectures on Shakespeare, wrote respected works of literary theory and criticism, and developed a reputation as an intellectual.

“The Eolian Harp”

This poem follows the pattern of observation of nature leading to a meditation. Notice the descriptive details of the cot [cottage] and its peaceful natural surroundings. Coleridge uses images of sound and smell as well as sight to help his audience imagine the scene he describes.

At the beginning of stanza 2 (line 13), Coleridge focuses attention on the lute (another word for the eolian harp—also sometimes spelled “aeolian”) that sits in the window.

In stanza 2 Coleridge writes a fundamental statement of Romantic mysticism. The speaker exclaims, “O! the one Life within us and abroad.” Here he recognizes, as Wordsworth did in “Tintern Abbey,” the spiritual presence (the “one Life”) that is “within us” (inside human beings) and “abroad” (in the things around us—in nature).

In stanza 4 Coleridge creates one of the central images of Romantic poetry. His speaker asks, “What if all of animated [living] nature be but organic Harps.…” All of living nature, including people, is compared to harps. He notes that the harps are “diversely framed”; people don’t look alike just as all harps do not look alike. As the wind blows over the harp and enlivens the strings to create music, the spiritual presence that is in the world moves over people and enlivens their Imaginations. See lines 47 and 48.

Rather than ending the poem with the meditation section of stanzas 2–4, Coleridge adds a concluding stanza that takes the audience back to the cottage setting, thus framing the poem. After indulging in his intellectual, philosophical musings, his wife Sara brings him back down to earth. The last stanza specifically refers to God and to Christ, revealing of Christian religious beliefs. In this poem, Coleridge identifies the spiritual presence of Romantic mysticism as God.

Coleridge’s cottage at Nether Stowey.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Coleridge’s long narrative poem in ballad style, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” proved to be one of the more popular works in Lyrical Ballads. In this poem Coleridge takes an idea he proposes in theoretical form in “The Eolian Harp” and plays out the idea in a story. Having described the world of nature infused with a spiritual presence, the “one Life within us and abroad,” Coleridge states in “The Eolian Harp” lines 31 and 32:

In the story of the Ancient Mariner we learn what happens to a person, the Mariner, who does not “love all things in a world” filled with a divine presence.

Modern statue of the Ancient Mariner with the albatross around his neck.

From one perspective, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is an adventure story with gothic elements: supernatural events, the spirits, reanimated bodies, the Mariner’s mystical abilities. From another perspective, it’s the story of a man who had to learn to respect the spiritual presence in nature, the “one Life within us and abroad.”

“This Lime-tree Bower My Prison”

In the autobiographical and intimate “This Lime-tree Bower My Prison,” Coleridge writes about the experience of sitting, unwillingly, beneath a tree’s overspreading branches, feeling as if the branches form a room, a bower. Because he didn’t want to be there, he characterizes the bower as a prison. Coleridge’s wife had accidently spilled boiling milk on his foot, and because of his injury he was unable to accompany his friends, including Charles Lamb, on a hike. Coleridge particularly wanted his friend Lamb, who lived in London, to experience nature. The complaining, grumbling tone comes through in the first two lines of the poem:

In lines 2–5, Coleridge explains why he is so upset about missing the hike:

This idea is very similar to Wordsworth’s explanation of gathering “life and food for future years” in “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.”

Although Coleridge complains about missing the walk, in stanza 3 he finds a consolation: he’s found nature in his “bower.” He realizes he can see the beauty of nature where he sits. He learns that “nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure.” Again he echoes a line from Wordsworth’s “Lines”: “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her.”

Resources

Biography

Jane Austen spent her childhood in the village of Steventon, where her father was the rector and her family active in village social life. The seventh of eight children, Jane was particularly close to her only sister Cassandra throughout her life. Although she began writing in childhood, her first novel was not published until 1811. Austen apparently fell in love with a young man, Tom LeFroy, who visited the neighborhood for a time, but whose family sent for him to return home to Ireland when they became aware of his interest in Austen, the daughter of a poor, low-ranking clergyman. Her sister Cassandra was engaged to a man who died while on business in the Caribbean, and neither sister ever married.

Jane Austen’s home in Chawton.

After her father’s retirement, Austen moved with her family to Bath, a setting used in her novels. When her father died, the Austen sisters and their mother were financially dependent on Austen’s brothers. They lived for a time in Southampton with her brother Frank, a naval officer, and his wife and spent a good bit of their time traveling from relative to relative, a situation not uncommon for widows and spinsters in the early 19th century. Finally another brother, Edward, offered his mother and sisters the use of a house on his estate in Chawton. While living here Austen published four novels:

• Sense and Sensibility 1811
• Pride and Prejudice 1813
• Mansfield Park 1814
• Emma 1816

Two novels were published posthumously:

• Northanger Abbey 1818
• Persuasion 1818

When Austen’s health began to fail, Cassandra moved with her to nearby Winchester, a larger city where medical help would be available. Austen died soon after the move and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen’s works are novels of mannersNovels that portray and assess the values, customs, and behavior of a particular social stratum at a specific time in history., novels that portray and assess the values, customs, and behavior of a particular social stratum at a specific time in history. Indeed, one of the typical criticisms of Austen’s work is that her focus is an especially small segment of Regency society, the lower rung of landed gentry to which her own family belonged.

Resources

Biography

“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is the infamous assessment of Lord Byron by Lady Caroline Lamb, herself a scandalous figure among the elite circles of early 19th-century aristocratic society.

Portrait of Byron at Newstead Abbey.

Byron inherited the rank of Baron after his father and his uncle died. Unfortunately, they had squandered the family fortune. Byron enjoyed noble rank but lacked the wealth necessary to maintain the lifestyle he believed should accompany it. He also inherited Newstead Abbey, the family estate, in disrepair, and could not afford to repair or even heat it.

Newstead Abbey, Byron’s ancestral home.

The ruins of the original abbey granted to Byron’s ancestors by Henry VIII.

Byron suffered from a malformed foot which caused him to limp badly, a source of embarrassment and indignity to him both in his childhood and as an adult. He formed close friendships with other young noblemen at Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, Byron began to accumulate the gambling debts that would plague him all his life, eventually causing him to sell Newstead Abbey, the estate granted to his family six generations earlier by King Henry VIII. He also cultivated the reputation for perverted sexual promiscuity that characterized his public persona for the rest of his life, deserved according to some biographers, undeserved according to others. While at Cambridge, Byron published his first books of poetry.

Traditionally young men of Byron’s station undertook a Grand Tour of Europe after their graduation from college. Accompanied by a friend, Byron borrowed money to travel to Portugal, Albania, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. During this trip, Byron wrote the first two Cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Their publication brought him overnight fame, the kind of adulation that has been compared to that of a modern rock star.

Childe Harold was a character closely identified with Byron himself, the Byronic heroA dark, brooding figure, jaded and cynical, bored with and contemptuous of conventional society., a dark, brooding figure, jaded and cynical, bored with and contemptuous of conventional society. Byron continued to write long narrative poems featuring this type of character (The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Manfred) and at the same time continued to cultivate his own public anti-hero persona.

One of his most notorious escapades involved a love affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb, a prominent member of the aristocracy who continued to pursue Byron publicly even after he tried to end the affair.

As an adult, Byron met and became close to his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Some biographers believe that he had an incestuous affair with her and that her daughter was Byron’s child.

Byron married Annabella Milbanke, a conventional young woman from a wealthy family. She lived with Byron until their daughter was born and then left him, unable to contend with his increasingly bizarre behavior. Some of Byron’s associates feared that he was insane when he fired his pistols in his house, abused his wife, and continued his scandalous sexual escapades. His wife left him, taking their daughter, obtained a divorce (virtually unheard of at that time), and returned to her family.

Memorial outside Byron’s burial place in Hucknall Church.

Realizing that the public was no longer fascinated but revolted by his behavior, Byron left England, never to return. Traveling first to Switzerland, Byron lived for a time near the poet Shelley and his then-companion, later wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her sister Claire Clairmont with whom Byron had another daughter. Moving to Italy, Byron had a long-standing affair with a married Italian noblewoman. During these travels he wrote Cantos 3 and 4 of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and began what would be considered his greatest work, the satiric Don Juan.

Moving to Greece, Byron, even though he had no military expertise, became involved in the Greek fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. While with the Greek forces, Byron contracted a fever and died. His body was returned to England but refused burial in Westminster Abbey because of his reputed immorality. He eventually was buried in a small church near his family’s former estate Newstead Abbey. Not until 1969 was a plaque honoring Byron placed in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

After the publication of the first two Cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron declared that he awoke one morning to find himself famous.

First edition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in the library of Newstead Abbey.

The term childeA medieval expression referring to a young man in training to become a knight. is a medieval expression referring to a young man in training to become a knight. Canto 1 begins with a description of a young man, Childe Harold, in England (“Albion’s isle”) who is living a riotous, shameful life. He discovers he is satiated with his dissipated ways and sets out on a pilgrimage to discover some meaning in life.

The poem, and Childe Harold, reach a pivotal moment in the Canto 3 stanzas about Lake Leman in Switzerland. Although Byron writes about nature in this section, his poetry generally displays little of the preoccupation with nature seen in other Romantic writers.

His focus instead is man’s aspiring spirit. Nature is beautiful and peaceful compared with a world inhabited by humans driven by their aspiring spirits and indomitable wills.

Following a description of an overnight storm in which the speaker’s spirit soars and longs to express its “Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings” (Stanza 97) as strongly and vividly as nature expresses itself in the storm, morning arrives with suggestions of the human spirit calm and refreshed after the storm of struggle.

Although line 8 of stanza 98 seems to echo Wordsworth’s claim that nature provides “life and food for future years,” Byron provides no hints of Wordsworth’s view of nature as divine revelation or a veil discreetly disclosing a spiritual presence. Nonetheless, nature is a source of wisdom and meditation.

“She Walks in Beauty Like the Night” and “When We Two Parted”

This simple, eloquent lyric is said to have been written when Byron met a cousin who was wearing a black mourning dress covered in spangles. The speaker describes the woman in tender phrases which combine images of darkness and light.

Like “She Walks in Beauty,” this lyric expresses deep emotion in simple and eloquent terms.

“The Prisoner of Chillon”

While staying with Shelley in Switzerland, Byron toured the Castle of Chillon on Lake Geneva (Lake Leman), including the dungeon he describes in this narrative poem. Byron’s name can still be seen carved on one of the pillars in the dungeon.

Portrait of Byron and his favorite dog in the library of Newstead Abbey.

One of the characteristics of Romanticism is an interest in the medieval past, and Byron loosely bases his story on the life of Francois Bonivard from the early 16th century. He imbues his story with one of his recurrent themes—the indomitable will of the human spirit.

Resources

Biography

Percy Bysshe Shelley, the son of a Member of Parliament, enjoyed a happy childhood in the countryside of southern England. The rest of his life, however, proved to be less happy.

Portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Curran, 1819.

While a student at Oxford, Shelley published his first poetry. He also published a pamphlet titled “The Necessity of Atheism“ which resulted in his expulsion from Oxford University. Shelley’s refusal to recant his objectionable religious views, a condition for his re-admittance to Oxford, caused a rift with his family.

On his own with no income and no employment, Shelley married 16-year-old Harriet Westbrooke, who would commit suicide only five years later after Shelley abandoned her and their children. Shelley and Westbrooke lived for a short time in the Lake District where Shelley met and was influenced by Wordsworth. Shelley soon fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and moved to Switzerland with her and her step-sister Claire Clairmont (who would later have a child with Byron). Shelley invited his wife Harriet to live with the trio in the role of a sister, an invitation she declined. When he received the news that Harriet, abandoned and pregnant by another man, had drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, Shelley married Mary Godwin. During this turbulent period of his life, Shelley was poor and in debt. However, he continued to write, encouraged by his meeting and developing friendships with Byron and John Keats. One of Shelly’s major works, Adonais, is an elegy to Keats.

Shelley’s financial situation eventually improved on receipt of an inheritance from his grandfather; his personal life, in contrast, worsened. He lost custody of his children with Harriet on the grounds of his immoral lifestyle and his atheism. He, Mary, and Claire Clairmont then moved to Italy where his two young children with Mary Shelley died. The couple had a third son who survived his father. While sailing off the coast of Italy, Shelley was caught in a sudden storm and drowned. He was not yet thirty years old. His body was cremated on the beach after washing up on the shore and his ashes buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. A story claims that Edward Trelawny, a friend of both Shelley and Byron present when the body was cremated, reached into the fire to preserve Shelley’s heart.

Shelley’s ashes are buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. His grave marker bears the inscription “Cor Cordium,” meaning “heart of hearts.” It’s said that Mary Shelley kept Shelley’s heart, pulled from the cremation flames by Trelawny, and that it eventually was buried with their only surviving child.

After Shelley’s death, his friend Edward Trelawny returned to England and lived to age 88. As Shelley’s work became more popular in the later 19th century, Trelawny was considered an expert on Shelley. When he died, he was buried next to Shelley in Rome.

Although Shelley’s poetry was not well received or widely read during his lifetime (his radical views, particularly his professed atheism, and his unconventional lifestyle were distasteful to many early 19th-century readers), it became an important influence on later 19th- and early 20th-century writers.

“Mont Blanc”

Although more abstract in its construction, Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” follows the typical Romantic pattern of an observation of nature leading to a meditation. While observing Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, Shelley considers the relation between the physical universe—the world of nature—and the individual mind. This relationship is Shelley’s expression of Romantic mysticism.

Section 1: In the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, mysticism is the perception of a spiritual presence in nature. Shelley, who professed to be an atheist, pictures the “spiritual” presence not as a divine presence, but as an intellectual power. Note the first two lines of “Mont Blanc”: “The everlasting universe of things / Flows through the mind.…” It is the power of the mind—the intellect—that is the force evident in nature.

Section 2: Shelley compares this intellectual force to the River Arve that flows down the mountain. In lines 15–16, the speaker says that, like the source of the Arve, the “Power”—the presence in nature—is “secret,” unknown to humans. We can’t see the source of the river, but that certainly doesn’t mean we doubt the river’s existence; likewise, we don’t know the source, but we should not doubt the existence of the intellectual power in nature. When he gazes on the ravine, he feels compelled to “muse” upon his own human mind which both passively receives the information the senses provides and communicates with the “clear universe of things around.”

Section 3: Shelley claims that the “wilderness” [nature] can teach one either “doubt” or “faith.” Perception of the Power may result in faith (like that of Wordsworth and Coleridge) which comes from the peaceful acceptance of God’s presence in nature. An equally possible reaction is to develop “doubt” of any orthodox religious view that sees nature as God’s handiwork. The mountain, though, has a voice to “repeal / Large codes of fraud and woe.” Not all, however, can understand that voice. In an idea reminiscent of Wordsworth’s claim that a poet is a “man speaking to men” but a man of greater sensibility, Shelley points out that the “wise, and great, and good” can interpret the mountain’s voice.

Section 4: While some people (perhaps like Wordsworth and Coleridge) believe that the spiritual presence in nature interacts with humankind, Shelley suggests that the Power of nature is remote from human affairs. It exists but is inaccessible to us. “Power dwells apart in its tranquility, / Remote, serene, and inaccessible.” This “Power” may be destructive as well as beneficial.

Section 5: The poem concludes with the assertion that the Power is there, like Mont Blanc, remote and inaccessible.

“To a Skylark”

The European skylark is noted for singing while hovering in the air, sometimes at great heights. Shelley writes, then, of a bird whose song he can hear although the bird itself is not visible.

The speaker hails the bird, referring to it as a spirit, not a bird, already intimating Romantic mysticism. In an example of anthropomorphismAttributing human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects., attributing human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects, the speaker depicts the bird having a heart so full of emotion that it spills forth in song, in “unpremeditated art,” a description that evokes Wordsworth’s definition of poetry as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.” As we cannot see stars in the daylight but know they’re there, the speaker cannot see the bird but is aware, through its song, of its presence. This explanation sets up a series of comparisons in response to the question “what is most like the bird?”

In a series of four stanzas parallel in structure the speaker presents four comparisons to the skylark—two human, two from nature.

In these stanzas, the speaker notes one reason that humans cannot produce the beauty that the skylark creates in its song. Yet tears are necessary in order to know joy.

In the last two stanzas, the speaker acknowledges that, if the skylark could teach him “half the gladness” that it knows, he could write poetry that would make the world listen to him as he is listening to the skylark.

“Song—To the Men of England”

Following England’s involvement in the Napoleonic wars, from the time of the French Revolution to about 1815, England suffered an economic depression. The Industrial Revolution forced many people, like Wordsworth’s Michael the shepherd, out of their traditional livelihood and into the cities to look for work in factories. Wealthy landowners were able to buy abandoned farm and pasture land. One result was a population shift. Large tracts of land now largely de-populated still had the same representation in Parliament while cities that had grown exponentially in population had little representation. England was in dire need of what we now call re-districting. The few wealthy landowners, however, were quite content with their control of the government.

In addition to the discontent caused by lack of representation, food prices soared as a result of the Corn Laws, a series of laws that placed import tariffs on grains (at that time in England the term corn was used as a general term for wheat and other grains).

Lack of jobs, lack of food, and lack of Members of Parliament to represent their interests led the working class to protests and demonstrations. The Peterloo Massacre occurred when mounted troops, with sabers drawn, rode down protestors, including women and children.

Already a strong proponent of reform, Shelley wrote “The Masque of Anarchy” and “Song to the Men of England” to protest the violent government reaction against the protestors and to encourage the working class to revolt against intolerable conditions. Shelley contrasts the lives of the working class and the lives of the nobility.

Resources

Biography

Unlike Byron and Shelley, John Keats came from a working class background. His father, a stable keeper, died when Keats was eight years old; his mother died of tuberculosis, then called consumption, when he was 14. Keats left school to become an apothecary’s apprentice. He left the apprenticeship to study medicine but soon decided to abandon his studies to pursue writing poetry. Keats cared for his brother Tom during his illness and death from tuberculosis, so it is not surprising that Keats also contracted the illness. Because of his medical knowledge, he recognized that he had a fatal illness.

Portrait by Joseph Severn from Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends.

ed. Sidney Colvin. Macmillan and Co., Limited. St. Martin’s Street, London, 1925

Keats became acquainted with other writers such as Shelley and literary figures such as Leigh Hunt, in whose journal Keats published his first poem. Keats’s early work was not well received. Several of Keats’s friends, in fact, blamed discouragement caused by the harsh criticism for hastening the poet’s death.

After his brother’s death and with his own health deteriorating, Keats moved into a house in Hampstead with his friend Brown. Through Brown, Keats met Fanny Brawne, the love of his life. The Brawne family rented the attached house next door to Brown’s house.

During the year he lived here, Keats produced his greatest poetry including “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Ode to Psyche,” “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “Lamia,” The Fall of Hyperion, and “To Autumn.” Many critics have noted that Keats produced more great poetry in a year than many poets produce in a lifetime.

Views of the interior of Keats’s house in Hampstead, London, now a museum.

Realizing that his health was failing, Keats decided to move to Rome, hoping that the warmer, drier climate would improve his condition. He traveled to Rome with his friend, artist Joseph Severn. They moved into rooms next to the Spanish Steps, rooms which now house the Keats-Shelley House museum.

Only a few months after his arrival in Rome, Keats died with his friend Severn in attendance and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. At his request, his name was not carved into his grave stone. Keats requested that his marker read, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Severn, who was later buried next to Keats, and Brown decided to add the following inscription to the memorial:

Severn’s drawing of Keats on his death bed.

These words fueled stories that Keats’s death was hastened by his despair over the brutal critical reviews of his poetry. Shelley’s elegy Adonais includes verses attributing Keats’s death to his agitation over the reviews, also adding substance to the stories. A post-mortem, however, revealed that Keats’s lungs had been almost entirely destroyed by tuberculosis.

The graves of Keats and Severn in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”

Even as a very young man, Keats seemed tragically aware of death and of his own mortality, as might be expected in one who had suffered loss of immediate family members. Although the subject of this sonnet is the Elgin Marbles, the focus in the first line is on approaching death. In line 5, the poet compares himself to a sick eagle, looking at the sky, longing to fly, yet unable to do so. In contrast to his own brief life span, the marbles are centuries old, yet even they are marked and worn by time.

“When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be”

“When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” is an English sonnet; Keats was more interested in form than many of the Romantic poets, which in turn made him interesting to many Victorian poets who experimented with form. The sonnet consists of three quatrains, each beginning with “when,” and a final couplet, which begins with “then.”

“The Eve of St. Agnes”

“The Eve of St. Agnes” is a narrative poemA poem that tells a story., a poem that tells a story. It is also an example of the medieval revivalThe renewed interest in the Middle Ages evident in some Romantic literature., the renewed interest in the Middle Ages evident in some Romantic literature. During the 19th century, many writers idealized the Middle Ages; it seemed romantic and less complicated than the modern world. However, they often had a fairy tale view of medieval times, thinking only of knights in shining armor rescuing fair damsels in distress rather than recognizing the harsh, violent time period that it really was.

This story is set in the Middle Ages and is a type of Romeo and Juliet story of two feuding families and the children who love each other in spite of their families’ enmity. Ambiguity at the end of the story leaves readers to decide whether Madeline and Porphyro “live happily ever after” or whether they freeze in the winter night.

Central to the story is a medieval superstition concerning St. Agnes Eve. This type of superstition—a ritual that allows young girls to find out who their future husband will be—is common in many cultures. In America’s past there have been superstitions and folklore involving sleeping with a piece of wedding cake under your pillow, or peeling an apple and throwing the peel over your shoulder. In the Middle Ages, superstition specified a ritual which, if followed on St. Agnes Eve, would allow a girl to dream of her future husband. Note the specifics of the ritual in Stanza 6. Porphyro, aided by Madeline’s nurse, decides to take advantage of his knowledge that his beloved Madeline will be expecting to see a vision of her true love. Note in Stanza 35, however, how Madeline reacts to the real Porphyro compared with her dream.

“The Eve of St. Agnes” presents the reader with two contrasting worlds, separated by symbolic doors. The poem begins with a description of a harsh, cold landscape in which even nature suffers, focusing on the beadsman, near freezing to death, who prays for the family. A door opens, and the reader is ushered into a warm, colorful world inside the house where the main action takes place. Then in Stanza 41, a door opens again and the lovers leave the castle, taking with them any hint of love and warmth. The poem ends in images of death and cold.

“To Autumn”

“Ode to a Nightingale”

While Keats lived in Brown’s Hampstead house, a plum tree grew next to the front door. One evening, Keats was sitting under the tree when he heard a nightingale singing from the tree.

The poem begins by focusing on the speaker, sick at heart and in spirit, envious of the bird’s happiness. The speaker searches for a way to escape the pain of living. In Stanza 2 he considers wine as a means of escape but rejects that possibility.

In Stanza 3, the speaker recognizes that wine will not make him forget the “weariness, the fever, and the fret” of living, hardships that the nightingale has never known. Even in poetry, the speaker does not find an escape from the cares of living. So burdened by the pain of life, the speaker confesses that he has at times been “half in love with easeful death.” He adds that this moment, enraptured by the beauty of the bird’s song, seems an even more tempting time to die. He realizes, however, that in death he would miss the small consolation of this beauty.

In Stanza 7, the speaker exclaims, “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!” He recognizes that since ancient times people have been enchanted by this same song.

Finally, he imagines the bird flying across the meadow and river, leaving the speaker wondering if he had imagined or dreamed the entire experience.

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