Licence 2, Semestre 3: Nature and the Self CLASS ONE An Introduction to British Neoclassical, Pre-Romantic and Romantic poetry

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1 Licence 2, Semestre 3: Nature and the Self CLASS ONE 1- Pre-Romanticism: Break away from the neoclassicism of the 18th century A- INTRODUCING THE NEOCLASSICAL AGE a) Neoclassicism Georgian Era, Augustan Age, or Neoclassical period. John Dryden, ALEXANDER POPE, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison & Richard Steele (editors of The Spectator), Richard Sheridan, Samuel Johnson, John Boswell, Oliver Goldsmith, etc. b) The world / main beliefs of the neoclassicists: 1 London; 2 the norm and satire; 3 correctness and decorum (passion < pathos ); 4 perfection of the world: Isaac Newton ( ); importance of hierarchy (hierarchical structure). Cf. Pope's Essay on Man (1734): Vast chain of being! Which from God began Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee, From thee to nothing. c) The neoclassical poet is a reflection of such a world c1) MANNER (or form) Technique: technical skills, submission to rules Perfection: hierarchical, symmetrical Prosody: stanzas, rhyming couplets, the heroic couplet = 2 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter, Cf. Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714) Language: "poetic diction: abstractions & intellectualisations, personifications with capital letter, Latinised vocabulary, allegory, synecdoches, & periphrases (like the finny race, the scaly kind, the plumy race, the bleating kind, etc.) Severely criticised by Romantic poet William Wordsworth in his Preface to The Lyrical Ballads (1798). LYRICAL BALLADS, WITH A FEW OTHER POEMS (1798). ADVERTISEMENT. It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics, but in those of Poets themselves. The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness [ ]. It is desirable that such readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary word Poetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of their gratification; but that, while they are perusing this book, they should ask themselves if it contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents; and if the answer be favourable to the author's wishes, that they should consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own pre-established codes of decision. c2) MATTER (or subject-matter) 1 art/artifice; 2 urban & urbane; idyllic visions are preferred; pastoralism (shepherds & shepherdesses); 3 man = a social and moral animal by nature ( Romantic dissociation / loss of unity)

2 Licence 2, Semestre 3: Nature and the Self CLASS TWO B- BIRTH OF PRE-ROMANTICISM a) a different sensitivity, an intermediary position until end of 18 th century: Robert Burns, William Blake. Robert Burns William Blake b) 7 major characteristics of this new sensitivity b1- in praise of individual enterprise b2- genuine = authentic emotions b3- the self, sentimentality, self-pity b4- fancy vs. imagination (Coleridge) b5- contemplation of nature ambivalence (hostile) b6- reality; Crabbe s The Village (parish workhouse) b7- animals; Robert Burns To a Mouse; Coleridge s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and its albatross c) Characteristics of pre-romantic poems c1- manner: preferred poetic forms: blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter the Spenserian stanza: 9 lines, 8 in iambic pentameter + 1 iambic hexameter, rhymed abab / bcbc / c. c2- subject matter: Celtic or Teutonic folklore; Middle Ages (influence on the Gothic novel); Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the natural man, the noble savage ). C- FOCUS ON A FEW MAJOR PRE-ROMANTIC POETS a) the leading trio: James Thomson, Thomas Gray, & William Cowper a1- JAMES THOMSON ( ) * NATURE: Scottish border * INDOLENCE: anecdotal? Castle of Indolence (1748) * FAME: a 1740 masque, called Alfred: Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; / Britons never will be slaves. James Thomson and one of his Seasons

3 Licence 2, Semestre 3: Nature and the Self CLASSES THREE & FOUR [C- FOCUS ON A FEW MAJOR PRE-ROMANTIC POETS (continued)] a2- THOMAS GRAY ( ) * PARADOXICAL PERSONALITY: (1) a classicist (learning) Cf. Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1751) aesthetic emotions (2) Eton College in praise of ignorance: Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742) Portrait by John Giles Eccardt ( ) * HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT POEM: The Bard ( Written between 1755 and mid-june 1757 ) - Army of King Edward I (a Norman king, 13 th century) a Celtic bard - Pindaric odes [inspired by Pindar, a Greek poet, circa BCE] = groups of 3 stanzas: strophe, antistrophe, epode (differences in meter & rhyme scheme) * MOST FAMOUS POEM: Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1751). - Belongs to Graveyard school: Lady Winchelsea A nocturnal Reverie; Edward Young, Night thoughts on life, death and immortality, Robert Blair The Grave; Thomas Parnell A night piece on death, etc. - Morbid stress on death, the pain of bereavement, etc. a3- WILLIAM COWPER ( ) * Important poems: - Retirement (1782) - The Task (1785) I sing the Sofa. (opening line in Book I). Another famous line from that poem: God made the country, and man made the town (Book 1, line 749). * The most influential of pre-romantic poets?

4 Licence 2, Semestre 3: Nature and the Self CLASS FIVE 2- Romanticism: the First Generation Robert SOUTHEY, Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, William WORDSWORTH (the 2 nd generation = Lord Byron, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley) A A FEW GENERALITIES a) Influences 1. Industrial Revolution. Mills = factories. Thomas Carlyle (the Condition of England Question, 1839); Benjamin Disraeli (Sybil, or The Two Nations, 1847); Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South, 1854). 2. French Revolutionary thought. Wordsworth: trips to France ( ). Southey and Coleridge: Pantisocracy. Details: near River Susquehanna (Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, USA), a utopian society, joint-stock farm. Problems: Robert Southey in Keswick (pronounced kezik), in Cumbria. Influence on some British thinkers: o Poets Robert BURNS and William BLAKE: Republicanism. o WILLIAM GODWIN ( ): an atheist. His major works: * The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) to show the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of the community against those who are less privileged than themselves * Cursory Strictures (also 1794), in defence of twelve Radicals (charged with high treason), like his friends John Horn Tooke ( ) and Thomas Holcroft ( ). o THOMAS PAINE ( ): Common Sense (1776); a series of pamphlets known as The Crisis (between 1776 and 1783); The Rights of Man (1791) in answer to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). 3. German philosophy replaced English philosophy. Blake: against John LOCKE s empiricism (tabula rasa or blank slate) [Locke = ] Coleridge: in favour of the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant ( ). Appearances (phenomenon, plural: phenomena) causes of those phenomena (= noumenon, plural: noumena). Limits of reason. Man responds to (and participates in) the stimuli of the world [stimulus = singular]. b) Characteristics Ideas: pre-romantic attitudes and preferences prolonged and expanded. Novelty: philosophy AND easy language: Cf. Coleridge's 1798 conversation poem Frost at Midnight. Geography: the 3 main Romantic poets + family + friends like Thomas de Quincey (next tenant at Dove Cottage after Wordsworth s death) lived together in England s Lake District in Cumbria (see map). Example of famous place names: Associated with Wordsworth: Cockermouth; Grasmere (Wordsworth at Dove Cottage, from 1799 to 1808, now a museum), Coleridge's son Hartley (St. Oswald's church); Rydal Mount. Associated with Southey and Coleridge: Keswick ( Greta Hall,, now an upscale hotel); St Kentigern's Gras Vegas! Nicknamed Lake Poets by Francis Jeffrey in Edinburgh Review (August 1807); yet not really a school Cf. Thomas de Quincey, Recollections of the Lake Poets (1834-9).

5 Licence 2, Semestre 3: Nature and the Self CLASS SIX 2- Romanticism: the First Generation (Robert Southey A A FEW GENERALITIES b) Characteristics (continued) Ambition and variety of form: manner suited to matter * Revival of the grand style: * ode (Pindar), followed strictly (strophe, antistrophe, epode) or freely. Cf. Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Coleridge's Dejection. 2 nd generation: Keats's six famous Odes (On Indolence, On a Grecian Urn, On Melancholy, To Psyche, To a Nightingale, To Autumn, all written in 1819). * epic Cf. Byron s Don Juan ( ), Keats s Hyperion (1818-9). * Revival of Italian poetry: * terza rima (tercets, aba bcb cdc ). Byron (The Prophecy of Dante), Shelley (Prince Athanese, Ode to the West Wind) * ottava rima (iambic, abababcc). Byron in Don Juan ( ), Beppo (1818) * Reinvented: * conversation poem or conversation piece : often a chatty poem. Cf. Coleridge (Frost at Midnight, This Lime Tree Bower My Prison); Wordsworth (Tintern Abbey) B- DETAILED STUDY OF THE POETS a) ROBERT SOUTHEY ( ) Three paradoxes: long heroic epics, like Thalaba (1801), Madoc (1805), and Roderick (1814). Became Poet Laureate in Popular poems today: (1) A Ballad, Shewing how an old woman rode double, and who rode before her ; (2) The Battle of Blenheim (pronounced blenim, victory of the Duke of Marlborough) The Old Man's Complaints. And How He Gained Them Lewis Carroll: You are Old, Father William A radical when young Tory (later called 'Conservative ) Cf. The Flagellant at Westminster School; Wat Tyler, 1794, Joan of Arc, 1796); pantisocratic society Quarterly Review (1809) b) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ( ) DISLIKED, yet just below William Shakespeare and John Milton (acc. to M. Arnold) (1) influence of Michel Beaupuy, a Rousseauist / William Godwin (2) Annette Vallon PARTNERSHIP of the Lyrical Ballads (September 1798) (Wm. Wordsworth Coleridge and The Arabian Nights (Les Mille et une nuits) *Poems on humble people: We are 7 *Poems on the power of nature: (1) The tables turned: One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can. (2) Expostulation and reply [= protestation, remontrance]: Nor less I deem there are powers / Which of themselves our minds impress; / That we can feed this mind of ours / In a wise passiveness. (3) Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey (the River Wye) SUCCESS: Preface to the 2 nd edition (1800) = a kind of manifesto c) SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ( ) (S. T. Coleridge Wasted genius. Poems (1796) (1) Kubla Khan. Opposition: pagan vision (the river Alph) Christian vision (the Abyssinian maiden playing the dulcimer [Fr. tympanon]) (2) Christabel: 1 st part = 1797, 2 nd part Geraldine, a witch (3) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (mariner = sailor) Albatross and crossbow (Fr. arbalète) The End