Robert

Southey (1774-1843)

Robert Southey (/sai/ or /si/;[1] August 12, 1774 in Bristol March 21, 1843 in London)
was an English poet of the Romanticschool, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet
Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has long been eclipsed
by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Southey's verse still enjoys some popularity.
Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer.
His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William
Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The last has rarely been out of print since its
publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film, Nelson. He was also
a renowned scholar of Portuguese and Spanish literature and history, translating a number of
works from those two languages into English and writing a History of Brazil(part of his
planned History of Portugal, which he never completed) and a History of the Peninsular War.
Perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the children's classic The Story of
the Three Bears, the original Goldilocks story, first published in Southey's prose collection The
Doctor.

His life
Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, England, to Robert Southey and Margaret Hill.
He was educated at Westminster School, London, (where he was expelled for writing an article
in The Flagellant condemning flogging) and Balliol College, Oxford.[2] Southey later said of
Oxford, "All I learnt was a little swimming ... and a little boating."
Experimenting with a writing partnership with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most notably in their
joint composition of The Fall of Robespierre, Southey published his first collection of poems in
1794. The same year, Southey, Coleridge, Robert Lovell and several others discussed creating an
idealistic community ("pantisocracy") on the banks of the Susquehanna River in America:[2]
"Their wants would be simple and natural; their toil need not be such as the slaves of
luxury endure; where possessions were held in common, each would work for all; in their
cottages the best books would have a place; literature and science, bathed anew in the
invigorating stream of life and nature, could not but rise reanimated and purified. Each

young man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for his wife; it would be her
part to prepare their innocent food, and tend their hardy and beautiful race.

List of works

The Fall of Robespierre (1794)

Joan of Arc (1796)

Icelandic Poetry, or The Edda of Smund (1797)

Poems (17971799)

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1797)

St. Patrick's Purgatory (1798)

After Blenheim (1798)

The Devil's Thoughts (1799). Revised ed. pub. in 1827 as "The Devil's Walk".

English Eclogues (1799)

The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them (1799)

Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)

The Inchcape Rock (1802)

Madoc (1805)

Letters from England: By Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (1807), the observations of a
fictitious Spaniard.

Chronicle of the Cid, from the Spanish (1808)

The Curse of Kehama (1810)

History of Brazil (3 vols.) (18101819)

The Life of Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson (1813)

Roderick the Last of the Goths (1814)

Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (1817)

Wat Tyler: A Dramatic Poem (1817)

Cataract of Lodore (1820)

The Life of Wesley; and Rise and Progress of Methodism (2 vols.) (1820)

What Are Little Boys Made Of? (1820)

The Vision of Judgement (1821)

History of the Peninsular War, 1807-1814 (3 vols.) (1823-1832)

Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829)

The Works of William Cowper (15 vols.) (ed.) (1833-1837)

Lives of the British Admirals, with an Introductory View of the Naval History of
England (5 vols.) (1833-40); republished as "English Seamen" in 1895.

The Doctor (7 vols.) (1834-1847). Includes The Story of the Three Bears (1837).

The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, Collected by Himself (1837)

Themes of Thalaba

the

destroyer

The story depicts how suffering is essential to completing one's destiny. Southey's purpose
in Thalaba, however, is to describe as many of the various myths and superstitions that he can,
and this interferes with the resolving of moral problems within the story. Instead, the moral
lessons are formulaic and the events focus on awards given to those who are obedient. Southey's
emphasis on the actual mythic incidents over the moral events are backed up with more than 80
pages of his own notes that describe the various references to traditional myths or mythic
creatures that are incorporated into the story. In terms of structure, the unilateral plot
keeps Thalaba does not allow for an easy flow into various mythic incidents. Instances of the
plot being supplanted by the myths can be found during the descriptions of the story of Irem,
Haruth and Maruth, or others.[11]

There is reliance on repetition of themes within the plot of Thalaba. Three times he attained a
paradise that turns out to be false, and this is followed by the death of a woman who are gone
until the very end when Thalaba is awarded entrance into a true paradise. The seeking out of
mythic figures to guide him onto the next part of the tale is equally repetitive and has little result
for the plot. Various instances of the sorcerers and sorceresses are added to the story to
emphasise the evil of magic along with tempting Thalaba with power. However, the emphasis on
magic hides the moral within Thalaba's temptations. Although Thalaba does achieve his goal
through moral submission, many of the quests and actions are arbitrary and repetitive. As such,
they take away from any Islamic truth that could be found within the actions.

Concept of Thalaba the destroyer