Maymaynot: Romanticism-Notes - Poems PDF

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Romanticism-Notes--Poems.pdf
Lit. Inglesa: Romanticismo
4º Literatura Inglesa: Romanticismo y Época Victoriana
Grado en Estudios Ingleses
Facultad de Filología
Universidad de Salamanca
Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su
totalidad.
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Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Romanticism opposes to being pragmatic. Romantic literature deals with nature because it is
authentic, non-artificial, you go to nature to get in contact with a divine universal conscience.
There is also the uncanny, the supernatural. The problem with understanding the Romantic
Movement is that it was really entangled with its contemporary era, the 19th century
approximately. Ariosto (Orlando Furioso) and Tasso (Jerusalem Delivered) are already
considered the Romanticism even when they were from the Renaissance and they use it for
also a medieval age. Gothic and Romantic is exchangeable.
Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
The Schlegel brothers: There was a contrast between Classic and Romantic.
- Romantic: Emotional matters presented in an imagined form. Poetry had to be

universal and go beyond boundaries (being often more narrative than usual). Romanticism is
born in Germany with German philosophy (Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer).
- The difference between Classic and Romantic style is organic vs. mechanic. Neo-classic
art is based on rules and conventions. Romantic art goes against rules, it must generate its
own laws. Inspiration for romanticism: Cervantes, Dante, Arthurian legend, the Cid…
- The brothers’ ideas were popularized in France when they were translated and written
in a book about the differences between organic and mechanic, romantic and picturesque (in
German).
Stendhal, Racine and Boileau are rationalists.
Byron didn’t think to belong in the romanticism? Neither Keats nor Shelly. However, they were
against literature written by Dryden and Poe with neo-classical features.
Robert Southey presents the new poetry, followed? By Wordsworth and Blake. This new
poetry era is influenced by German literature opposed to Poe, Dryden etc. who were old-
school and to the presets of the Enlightenment.
In Germany, Goethe, Eta Hoffeman, Novalis, Hilderlem, Tieck were German romantics. In
music Beethoven, Schubert, Schiman in music. In France Debussy in music, Merimée, Nerval,
Victor Hugo as writers Skudhall, as painters Delacrois, Turner, Goya, Gaspar, David Friedrich.
Also, Wagner…
Romanticism is influenced by revolution. In the romantic period there is a lot of social change.
The American Revolution (independence) in the 1776 and the French Revolution in the 1789-
99, the latter which meant a change in social order and changed the system. Classes that had
no voice nor vote could now speak with the Jacobins in the 93 and the Girondins in the 95.
Napoleon led a war France vs. Britain and was defeated in Waterloo (1815). In the French
Revolution people are killed to frighten the enemy for the first time in modern history. In 1799
Napoleon leads a coup and takes over. One of the greatest defender of the British was Thomas
Paine and his book became a manifesto. The violent events in France spread fear through the
English Government.
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Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
The English writers (Blake etc.) become enthusiasts of the revolution and its ideals in the
beginning until violence and reign of terror. So, the British texts are a response or counter-
response to the revolution (the French one and later the industrial one). Britain establishes as
colony. In 1794 the English Government is worried about the revolutionary writers.
Wordsworth and Coleridge are spied on.
When it comes to the English romantic poets, only Blake was from London and working class,
he was an engraver/painter. His father was a solicitor (sort of lawyer). So, he was poor, living
off rich patrons and in contact with radical groups to discuss revolutionary ideas (just like
Wordsworth and Coleridge).
Shelly, Byron and Keats (the second generation). Keats was middle class but the other two
were aristocrats who lived in exile because of debts. They were revolutionaries, reactionary
character of English lifestyle and critics to the government.
War-time literature (1793-1815 war with France). French invasion was a real threat and
eventually, revolutionary ideas were considered treason. They even passed and act that
restricted public meetings and what it was discussed in those. The Prime Minister Pitt (enemy
of Byron) develops a domestic spy system. Blake was indicted.
When the second generation started publishing the situation was different. There were
attacks/riots against the machines (job problems) with the industrial revolution. Shelly talks
about anarchy as a critic against a restrictive government. Wordsworth and Coleridge stop
with the revolutionary thoughts given the brutality of the French. Wordsworth dedicates a
prelude to Edmund Burke, a critic of the French Revolution. Shelly and Byron feel betrayed by
WW (Wordsworth) and Coleridge for changing sides.
In 1815, the Europeans met in Vienna and established an alliance because of a possible French
invasion. It was critiqued by Byron since he thought of Napoleon as a hero. Shelly and Byron
had links with Italian groups against Austrian rule. They lived in exile, sacrificing their lives for
freedom. Shelly had utopian visions of a new world and Byron is a cynic that denounces the
hypocrisy of the world.
Romantic epistemology
Romantic theory makes apology of man, nature and art. Idealistic, neo-platonic concept of art,
difference between real and ideal. Nature is perceived through a sensual materialism and
intuition. Neo-platonic conception that believes in a visible world and an ideal world (the
curtain vs. behind the curtain, the matter vs. the supernatural/eternal) going back to Kant’s
distinction between understanding and reason. Our human knowledge comes through
understanding (senses) and through reason (intuition/imagination). Organized knowledge and
our imagination leads to spiritual reality to an eternal truth.
According to Locke, our mind is a tabula rasa: we learn things through our sense and our mind
synthesizes that data. Kant disagrees: our sense of time and space etc. are principles that are
preset in our mind (the idea of goodness, eternity…). He calls these categories transcendental
since they go beyond our experience. Before Kant, truth was defined as an external reality but
then he says that our mind has a structure: truth is obtained from the essential structure of
our own mind and in nature. Nature is a window towards the eternal, the spiritual. The mind
provides the structure of the knowability of reality (at least for Kant). The structure of our
mind corresponds to the essential world. Understanding provides categories.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
The poet
The poet is a seer since he uses intuition to understand the world. Nature is full of symbols,
symbolic for the divine text (the Bible) since it is like God’s other book.
For the romantic poet truth and reality is to be found by personal experience, experience
linked to feelings: ethics of feelings. Wordsworth gives up imagination to turn to nature.
Analytical/logical thinking plus feelings. There is a shift of sensibility, not as a reaction of
empiricism but a corrected empiricism. This adds moral/spiritual significance. The 18 th century
gave too much importance to intellect so no there is progress of self-realization through
experience. The poet sacrifices form for authenticity. Art is spontaneous/organic so the poet
should not impose form on it.
What is the relationship between poetry and its meaning? Modern literature has a tone of
disconnection, isolation…Gradually people lost faith in a divine power. Christ is a mediator
that joins a distant God to a fallen world and to fallen men. The words of the poet are the
connection, the mediation instrument. Symbols in modern literature denote an absence, not a
presence. God becomes a hidden/disappeared God. In the Baroque art, everything is broken,
twisted, revolted, intertwined and reality is an unsubstantial décor since in nature things
curve, intertwine, break… In the 18th century, God becomes a watch maker whose
watch/machine is so perfect that his presence is no longer needed. The symbols and words
that link man, nature and God go away and men discover isolation, self-consciousness.
The romantic poet still believes in the divine power, universal consciousness, he is aware of
the isolation and lack of meaning in an only logical reality. He becomes a creator of harmony
between man and God, creates their connection. He creates a world out of his individual
experience/vision. Being the mediator of the divine, the poet becomes a divine figure himself.
A motion that impels all thinking things and the object of all thoughts and rolls through all
things, meaning that he brings awareness of the spiritual in Earth.
William Blake (1757-1827)
Blake was a painter, illustrator, engraver and a poet. He was a visionary and refers to his
poems as if they were dictated at him. He saw God and angels when he was a kid. The world
considered him mad, but Blake thought that it was the world that was mad with selfishness,
bloodshed… Society lives on human sacrifice and the root cause for this was failure of
imagination to conceive society differently. Blake wanted to restore the Golden Age. He was
poor through his whole life and married Catherine Boucher. Became friends with other
painters (Henry Fuseli, Flaxman, Stothard, James Bonny? …) meaning that he became famous
being them his disciples later in life.
In 1787 his oldest brother died, and Blake saw his spirit ascend and talked to him a lot. Blake
believed that all institutionalized religions exiled -? Deities were spiritually in men. With the
French Revolution came the advent of a new millennia. He met many radical people (William
Godwin, Joseph Johnson) that had studied Thomas Paine. The protest is reflected on Songs of
Experience and Songs of Innocence. Blake also elaborates a mythology in Visions of the
daughters of… Why did the fall of men come about? Why did God accept the fall? Rewriting of
a new genesis. He thought that the biblical texts prevail a social control.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
On other matters, he did not do well financially as an engraver since he was recommended to
William Hayley who did engraving for books. Blake projects the biblical narrative mixed with
Celtic, Greek mythology and his own creations onto the creation of his own mythology. Blake
was enthusiastic of Dante, even made illustrations for his books and learnt Italian. The main
theme of Blake is salvation through human imagination and criticizing the exponents of
materialism. Imagination had the potential to change society, all reality was a mental
construction. Blake did not believe in innocence as a static concept. You fall from innocence to
recover it with more wisdom. Blake’s poems address problems of his current time. In 1788
someone wrote about Ascension Day (St. Paul Cathedral) doing charity for the poor orphan
children. Blake was upset by this because those children would later become of use to them
and those who did charity profited from it. He debunks this kind of propaganda.
Understanding is logical and rational faculties. Imagination is intuition and insight in essential
reality.
He died unknown, appreciated only at the end of 19th century/beginning of the 20th.
Many of Blake’s poems discuss issues of his time: death, problems addressed in the
newspapers… For example, in 1719 there was a man writing about charity for orphan children
and how, once they grow up, they will pay back serving their country as soldiers. Blake was
quite upset with this, he called it “user hands”. The upper classes used charity to obtain
something. It’s a contrast between reality and morality. For Blake, England was a country that
preferred to live rich while having kids in poverty: the two extremes of the same spectrum.
Prelude
Connection between real and ideal world. Transcendental categories in which the material
world is rooted versus normal. Imagination is a creative power by which the poet gets
knowledge.
“To Thomas Butts”
Identifies nature with men (seen from afar).
“Nature”
Our thoughts are types and symbols of eternity (transcendental categories). The natural
becomes the supernatural. Man becomes divine.
“The Echoing Green” (from Songs of Innocence)
Children are the protagonists/speakers. The poet sees the world while other people are blind.
The child becomes a wise man. The poem shows a pastoral image: echoing green means
grass-> nature->life->vitality->youth. Echoing as repetition, meaning that the meadow echoes
something back, echoes back identity. The meadow is like paradise so it echoes back paradise
to Adam and Eve. It is about man and nature.
The day means life/awake-ness and the night means rest and repose. Sport is activity->live.
There is also a contraposition of old versus young with harmony between them. The old man
remembers his childhood in a melancholic way but without resentment unlike the nurse from
Songs of Experience.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
“London” (from Songs of Innocence)
There is a contrast between the pastoral natural image of The Echoing Green and the urban
scenery in this one.
It is about sadness of society and lack of imagination in a city setting unlike the romantic
period. The different people he hears represent social classes (chimney sweeper, soldiers,
harlots…)
The church should be about compassion and love but instead it condones injustice. The system
is based on fear (soldiers fear monarchy’s power) where the oppressed people suffer (“cry”).
In the first line, with “chartered street” the author means to say that everything is owned by
companies (a charter is a document that establishes a corporation, giving rights and
privileges). In general Blake dislikes institutions like monarchy, church and even the institution
of marriage. Chartered can also mean rented, which adds the sensation that the less-favored
citizens are living on borrowed land, that they do not own even the street where they live on.
The repetition of “In every cry” which happens 5 or 6-ish times (“In every cry of every man”)
creates a suffocating obsessive feeling but also a certain musicality and a sense of urgency and
inclusivity.
The mention of “manacles” refers to how we ourselves create a structure in our mind that
keeps us in enslavement. The manacles are made of false ideas (probably what Blake thinks on
how we could imagine a better society, but we don’t).
“And the hapless soldier’s sigh”: the soldier is opposed to the monarchy that asks him to fight.
“…thro’ midnight streets…” because of whores. It was frowned upon to go to a harlot so they
went at night. This denotes a repressed desire and it’s another way Blake criticizes the
institution of marriage linking it to this repressed desire.
“…marriage hearse.” That is an oxymoron (terms that are opposed to each other, meaning that
they cannot happen at the same time: dry water) since marriage is love and hearse is related
to death.
“The Lamb” (from Songs of Innocence)
A child speaking to a lamb. He is teaching the lamb about its origin/creator. The poem is
written with simple sentences to imitate children language. It also builds a pastoral image but
drawing attention to the idea of the Maker. Innocence has a spiritual sense/connection:
children are still innocent and therefore still keep this connection with the spiritual/divine. In
fact, the lamb is an allusion to Jesus Christ, sometimes referred to the Lamb of God. The
answer to the first question of the poem is God, the second is Jesus.
In comparison with The Tiger, the lamb and the tiger are different states of the soul. The lamb
is destroyed by experience and the tiger is necessary to restore the world.
“The Tiger” (from Songs of Experience)

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
In this poem there are many questions but no answers. How could the same Maker create
creatures so different (the lamb and the tiger)? There are great forces hidden in men.
Transformation through experience is done through imagination as well?? Blake hopes for the
redemption of men through the elemental forces.
The rhythm is trochee, which is a pounding, compulsive rhythm full of energy and strength.
The poem ends where it begins in terms of the words used “Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright”.
In the poem, the speaker tries to guess the nature of the tiger, but they get no answers, no
progress. The tiger is described as fire, destructive, dangerous, and uncontrollable but also as
passion, life. Therefore, darkness that burns bright. The questions made about/to the tiger are
an enquiry to know better the Creator. The tiger is related to both the natural world and to
the divine, the supernatural and even to our imagination. We don’t understand the tiger as its
purpose is unfathomable, just as God’s purpose. The tiger is a powerful terrifying figure since
the more powerful the creation, the more powerful the Maker. The tiger represents the
created universe and also the violent forces in the individual man. The violence in him is
accentuated by the violence around him.
The tiger is real but supernatural at the same time. God creates the dangerous tiger, the
traitorous Lucifer and the innocent lamb so, what is His purpose? Christ is symbolized by the
lamb because Christ unites innocence and experience. The tiger is fashioned by this unknown,
supernatural experience???
“What the hand dare seize the fire?” Prometheus steals the fire for humans, which is a symbol
of defiance.
“Dread”: between admiration and fear.
The fourth paragraph is implying the creation of the tiger in the smith: “hammer”, “chain”,
“furnace” and “anvil”.
“When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears”: references
the rebellion of Lucifer (the most beautiful angel) against God. The rebel angels fall.
“Did he smile his work to see?” Is God content with his creation?
“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” A reference to The Lamb.
“Symmetry” Same word used at the first and last paragraph.
“Nurse’s Song” (from Songs of Innocence)
It is a dialogue. The nurse lets the children play because she is confident that nothing will
happen and also, in herself and her decisions (“My heart is at rest within my breast”). She is an
ideal authority figure: benevolent, benign and permissive. “And all the hills echoed”: even
nature supports the nurse’s decision. There is also a sort of pastoral image.
“Nurse’s Song” (from Songs of Experience)
It is an interior monologue opposed to the last one. Here the nurse is bitter and strict because
she wants to be an adolescent again. There is a feeling of anxiety for the age to come. Because
of all this, the nurse reacts with jealousy and fear.
“And whisperings are in the dale”: the whispering signify the adolescents flirting.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
“…green and pale.” Means envy and it comes from Macbeth. She remembers her youth in
bitterness because is gone.
“…your day are wasted in play”: She thinks that they have no idea of how much disillusion and
deceit awaits them when their youth is gone and there is no more play.
I think that the spring means youth and winter elderliness.
“Holy Thursday” (from Songs of Innocence)
It is Ascension Day (like Semana Santa here) and the children march to St. Paul Cathedral. The
poem is set in a mass. The children are compared to nature (the Thames) confined by borders.
“Red & blue & green” are the uniform colors.
“…beadles…” the authority figures for chastising/confining.
“lambs” referring to the children and to innocence.
“Holy Thursday” (from Songs of Experience)
In this poem, Blake talks about the injustice of a society divided into the rich and the poor.
Also about the lack of love.
Nature in this poem is missing or dangerous so as to say that the children, which are compared
to nature in the last poem, are mistreated. “And their sun does never shine, and their fields are
bleak and bare, and their ways are filled with thorns, it is eternal winter there.”
“Babe can never hunger there, nor poverty the mind appall” referring to the rich and the
church?
“The Chimney Sweeper” (From Songs of Innocence)
The speaker has been sold by his own father to an employer and he’s older than his friend
(Tom Dacre). The older kid consoles the little one as good as he can.
The poetic voice tells his friend not to worry about the shaved head, so it won’t be dirty.
The child isn’t aware of his exploitation. There’s an abuse of the child’s trust that could be
summed up in “do the core and you’ll be a good boy”.
First stanza about the poetic voice. He was barely a baby, couldn’t pronounce the ‘S’ sound of
“sweep” to offer his cleaning services but instead he says “weep”.
There is abuse not only from the exploitation of the children but abuse of the children’s trust.
Tom dreams about what they are not aware of, that they live in death, that they are
imprisoned, that they may die. Also, the dream shows how he wishes a free, carefree,
children-appropriate life. The dream expresses a desire of being free, of living like a kid. The
dream is an individual vision of their exploitation and the desire of being a kid. The dream
symbolizes the vision of eternal happiness. The religious teaching (if you’re good, you’ll go to
Heaven) is quite useful for the exploiters to justify the situation. Then, an Angels offers Tom
the consolation of the afterlife with God in Heaven so, if he behaves, in the future he will have
that reward. This way they can endure whatever that comes to them. The argument of God is

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
also a way to manipulate people (using religion as bait to keep people controlled). I think that
this encounter the child has with the Angel in his dream is also because Blake saw Angels.
What does innocence represent? State of naïve-ness, being ignorant to reality. Happy, in a
way, but ignorant. The goal is to recover innocence from a wiser position, not to never leave
innocence and remain ignorant forever. Wordsworth thinks that the child is innocent because
he has not broken the link with the spiritual world. Because of this, the child is still wiser than
adult men since they are no longer connected.
Six stanzas of four lines each. Each line divided into four feet. First and third groups contains
anapest and the second and fourth groups contain iambs.
(*) For Blake, this has a positive connotation. Innocence is limited, you can’t live being ignorant
forever and from this kind of experiences there’s personal growth.
“The Chimney Sweeper” (from Songs of Experience)
Here, evil comes from monarchy. They’re responsible of this situation of poverty. Both Church
and monarchy are guilty. In this one, the speaker is not innocent, and he blames his family, the
Church and monarchy for his situation (“clothed me in clothes of death”). We are presented
with the same image of living in death. The child knows the Church condone social injustice, as
opposite to what they advertise. [In real life, the Porter act for regulating the chimney
sweepers does not pass so Blake was upset and therefore wrote this.]
He’s not the same innocent narrator of the previous poem.
Church condemns social injustice, but here it is found to be the opposite.
The Porter Act tried to regulate this situation (a minimum age to work, maximum number of
hours…)
“The Blossom” (from Songs of Innocence)
The poetic voice is a little girl that loves birds and wants to introduce them in her bosom. All
this with a motherly feeling and a general sense of harmony and love.
The narrator just feels happy.
The landscape and the environment represent love, innocence, happiness…
Language is simple, just like children would talk. This simplicity is related to basic motions, like
love.
“The sick rose” (from Songs of Experience)
The worm destroys the rose’s beauty. Also, the worm is a phallic symbol.
From “of crimson joy…” to “… life destroys” might refer to a girl losing their virginity.
Here, the theme might be love like a social construct vs. a depressed sexuality.
Roses are full of thorns to protect themselves, but this one seems to not have, or at least, it
doesn’t matter if it has or nor. In Blake, many roses are sick or full of thorns.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
This poem is open to many interpretations.
“The Divine Image” (from Songs of Innocence)
Trying to define the concepts of mercy, pity, peace and love. Relationship of man and the
divine. The human is given qualities to the divine because of the limits of our imagination. Man
is made in the image of God, therefore, man’s true nature is divine. The concepts are not
abstract because they are incarnated in men.
“The human abstract” (from Songs of Experience)
Sometimes people tell you that you need to have mercy, take pity, make peace and love, but
they do not (even high-idealistic people who do not act like it). That is why this poem says that
in order for pity, peace etc. to exist, there needs to be a counterpart, people who are selfish,
who have no mercy, people who create war… (???)
“…fruit of Deceit” is imagination
“There grows one in the human brain” = the divine in our minds.
“A poison tree”
The message of this poem is to express your emotions because it is the healthier thing to do.
In the second paragraph there is a use of positive terms (water, sun, smiles), however, the tree
grows in deceit with lust for revenge.
In the third paragraph, the apple entices the friend to take it (as the snake in the Eden) but, in
reality it’s a poison.
In the last paragraph, the poem deepens into the myth of Adam and Eve of temptation. Blake
thinks that that is the current situation of society.
“My foe outstretched beneath the tree.” He dies (in case there was any doubt).

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
Colloquial language. The preface (Lyrical Ballads) is a romantic manifesto. Some of the poems
are central to romantic aesthetic. The Lyrical Ballads has interest in both narrative and action
and the expression of feelings. Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected
in tranquility. Poetry is the remembrance of an experience by a poet.
As the preface says, the rustic men, people who live in contact with nature, are protagonist.
The use of a high poetic language is rejected since spoken language is the most appropriate for
these protagonists. The poems are designed to reflect the new sensibility that wants to reveal
the essential passions of the heart. Speech is the language of common man. Wordsworth
presents a new poetic language as if it were more realistic but it is not all that realistic really.
Rustic life is more appropriate to feel the realest, purest spontaneous feelings since a simple
life is more genuine.
Passions of men are incorporated with beautiful nature. The rural is not corrupt out of fashion,
superficiality etc. Also there is a social change because he gives the rural marginalized people a
voice. For Wordsworth and Coleridge, the child is a wise man because he has not developed
his logical rationality but he has his imagination and a connection to the spiritual world. Poetry
is not a refined version of reality to show off eloquence. Wordsworth had to write about
natural ordinary life and Coleridge about the supernatural.
Wordsworth is fond of France after a trip there and returns. He frequented radical circles. In
France he became committed to the cause of revolution and had an affair with Annette Vallon
with whom he had a child. But they did not have money to marry. He returned to England for
money to support Annette, but war broke up and could not reunite with her and became even
more of a supporter of the revolution since England did not let him meet his lover. He writes a
letter in which he defends regicide. Wordsworth undergoes a spiritual crisis believing that
going to war with France was against human rights. Wordsworth was attracted to William
Godwin (gays) for his revolutionary ideas but without violence, which eventually bore him
(Godwin was too much of a rationalist for him). Wordsworth was close to his sister Dorothy, he
confided in her and they live together.
His early poems gain the admiration of Samuel Coleridge. Wordsworth moves around where
Coleridge lived, they even lived together (gays) and they even plan a trip together to Germany.
Wordsworth did not like cold so they returned to the Lake District to live in a cottage.
Wordsworth eventually meet Annette and their child and he returns and remarries. His
brother drowned, his 2 children died and he stopped being friends with Coleridge, who fell in
love with Wordsworth’s wife’s sister. In addition, they had a misunderstanding (thinking that
one had talked shit about the other). In his later years he became conservative. Love for
nature leads to love for mankind, through nature you get in touch with universal
consciousness. He defends the use of imagination to improve the world. Universal, unifying
divinity and brotherhood (?). World full of love through all people. Mind can progress through
self-awareness.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
“Prelude”
Infant boy who grows up. Story of men under constant threat. About poetic sensitivity.
Journey to maturity. Wordsworth is versed in introspection. Nature, subjectivity, still beauty
and realism?? Epiphanic moment??
“Anecdote for Fathers” (showing how the art of lying may be taught)
The father speaks with her child about where he would rather live: where they used to or in
the farm they are living at now. The kid rather be at the sea and the father wants to know why.
The child does not speak language of reason. He likes something but cannot explain why, so he
gives an absurd answer, improvising. The adult learns something from the child?
Lines 55-56: Absurd reason the kid gives to get rid of the father.
Weather-cock: veleta. It is human-built, so in Kilve is more natural, less human touch/artificial.
“We Are Seven”
Childhood as theme. Innocence of childhood. The adult wants to convince the girl of his point
of view. He thinks he knows better for being and adult and thinks he has to teach her.
She knows about death she is still connected to her brother since she is connected to the
spiritual world. The girl is sure (confident) of what she says. She sees beyond the physical
world and oozes somehow the uncanny.
The poem is the great power of child imagination to deconstruct adult thinking.
Paragraph 11: She still incorporates her siblings to her life.
Paragraph 13: Girl talking like and adult. She probably repeated it from and adult (what she
says). Adult euphemistic report on early death.
“Expostulation and Reply”
Nature draws you into the light of things. Nature is a creative principle in our hearts and
minds to bless. Duality of feeling and knowledge Nature teaches moral-> criticizing knowledge
as the only source of knowledge.
Paragraph 6: We can learn better by experiencing nature passively than in books.
“The Tables Turned”
There is more wisdom in nature than in the books they are reading. Books are the wisdom of
others, it is not first-hand experience. Nature will teach you directly since it is the primary
source.
“Up! Up!” Alluring friend to stop reading.
Paragraph 7: Analytical thinking/intellectual knowledge murders the beauty of nature, the

mystery.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Composed by the side of Grasmere Lake
It is a sonnet. The poem is about war and how it is reflected in the sky. The stars represent the
mythical gods, but they are in a convenient distance from Earth.
It has a neoclassical style.
In 1805 Napoleon was defeated at Trafalgar Square, but invaded Spain and Austria, that’s the
war that the poem refers to.
The first two lines have a material imagery: nature is described with objects that have to do
with war.
There are oppositions along the poem: high and low, stars and water, Gods and mortals…
The poetic voice asks himself if this is earth or heaven and if there really is heaven out there or
if it is a reflection of hell, which is the original and which is the reflection. In the line “opening
to… the abyss”, abyss refers to hell.
Pan is a god of nature and he offers consolation. The word “tranquility” is stressed, so it means
that tranquility is found in nature. Gods descend to offer consolation, mortals embrace
tranquility.
Composed upon Westminster Bridge
It is a sonnet. The poem describes London, which contrasts with Blake’s London poem.
Dorothy writes in her journal that that day, they were going to visit their child and the passed
by that bridge.
The poetic voice sees everything from above. He sees the city like a beauty, in an untypical
moment: it’s sunny and there’s no fog nor smoke.
There’s a personification and a comparison of the city: a city cannot wear garments and
doesn’t have a heart, while a person cannot be depopulated.
For a moment, London is the symbol of contained power: there are no social conflicts and the
city is presented in a romantic view, like if it were a natural landscape, not an urban image.
Composed in 1804. “I wandered…”
Dorothy wrote in her journal that they were giving a walk in a city of Spain.
The poem is settled in spring: the daffodils bloom in spring.
Again, we have the perspective from above: makes the poetic voice superior to the scene.
In the last paragraph, he remembers the daffodils moving with the wind. It is an epiphany:
years later, in an urban environment, he is alone, solitude invades him, and he remembers the
daffodils memory and wisdom consoles him. The spot of time saves him from his worries.
The comparision between the daffodils and the stars makes an opposition to the flowers: stars
are eternal, not change and they’re not on Earth (again the “from above” element).

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
The Lucy poems are a series of poems written between 1798 and 1799. Lucy is a maid,
although in some poems she dies at the age of 3. All these poems treat about love. The
narrator is an eternal writer. Lucy, also, is associated with the moon and the moon also
represents man’s destiny, mirrored, because the moon also dies when it disappears (new
moon).
Composed 1799, published in 1800 (She dwelt…)
This is a love poem turned into an elegy: the poet’s grieving because of her death. She is
described in natural terms (star, flower…). Here, violet is symbolizing virginity. Association of
Lucy with the moon “fair as a star, when only one is shining in the sky”. In the last line (line 12)
all of a sudden the speaker is the protagonist, becoming the main focus: “the difference to
me!”
Transfiguration of ordinary.
Composed in 1799 (A slumber…)
The first stanza talks about past: there’s no human fears, which makes her invincible, like she
wouldn’t die.
The second stanza talks about present: she is eternal, part of an endless curse, like nature and
humanity.
Verses 3-4: not affected by time, seems vital.
Again, a love poem turned into an elegy.
In the first paragraph, he thought she would be eternal, these are the speaker’s assumptions.
“She seemed […] could not feel the touch of earthly years”. These are from the past, when she
was alive.
In the second paragraph there is a synthesis between nature and humanity beyond death. In
this part we have the present, she is already dead and she has become eternal, one with
nature. This way, she is still related to nature.
In the Lines poems, blank verse is used along iambic pentameter. This is appropriate for
reflexion, meditate poems, very prosaic. We receive the poetic voice as in a conversational
experience, taking into account time, imitating conversation: changing your mind, talking to
yourself…
Tintern Abbey (Lines)
Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey attaches a specific time and place. He revisits the place after five
years. Tintern Abbey was a mined medieval abbey near the Welsh border that became famous
for painters who would go to paint/get inspired there. Wordsworth revisits that place to write.
The poem starts and ends with the description of the landscape. Wordsworth discovers a
presence in nature He sees nature from above, as if from the sky. Once he is no longer in
nature, it becomes a sweet memory.
The first part of the poem moves towards the sublime, there is spiritual forces in nature. In
the second part, he turns to his sister, making public/sharing his experience with nature, like a

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
legacy. They both have a link with the past and went through the same sensorial experience
of nature but he shares his new intellectual perception of nature, so that she can feel the
same love and joy. He sees in his sister what he once was.
The poem starts and ends with a landscape, same time and place. Wordsworth “re-discovers”
the place in his second visit. The place is treated as a place to think, which brings harmony to
the scene. Also, there’s presence in nature.
What’s nature for Wordsworth? Wordsworth looks at nature form above again. Nature is
composed by external elements (trees, rivers, valleys…) and “forms of beauty” that produce
“sweet sensations”, which produce a restorative effect. Nature makes you see the mystery of
mysteries.
The first time he didn’t perceive nature that way: appetite, perceived with senses, running
away from something instinctively.
“Unborrowed from the eye”: something that can’t be perceived with eyes or hands.
Loss has recompense.
Now nature leads to thoughts, something is beyond nature. A presence found in the mind of
man, in a sunset… He sees the world through the senses, there’s a “remoter charm” that had
nothing to do with the visible world, it’s implied by thought. “Animal movements” refers to
seeing through the senses, in an instinctive way.
He runs away from something he fears.
Nature makes him closer to humanity. He’s aware of the presence, it is a spirit found in the
mind of man and nature. All the natural elements lead him to the mind. It’s a movement
towards nature. The recompense is thought, and loss is transformed into gay. Finally, he
reaches a harmony that makes him able to see through the life of things. Perception of nature
becomes a response.
He addresses to his sister -his experience is no longer private-. Both have a link to the past and
have the same experience, he passes it on to her. He is identified with her: future memory of
this event, love for nature and love for each other.
The last three lines makes the memory timeless, connecting past, present and future.
Harmony makes us see into the life of things.
Lines 35-41: mean to be freed of the burden of life. “In which the burden of the mystery, in
which the heavy and the weary weight […] is lightened”.
Lines 46 to 48: The perception of nature is not only sensorial and emotional but an
intellectual/moral response. “While with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the
deep power of joy”: nature brings harmony. “We see into the life of things”: nature enables us
to see mystery.
Lines 66-67: he recalls how he used to be when he first went.
Lines 71-72: He dreaded the instinctive, sensual perception of nature.
Lines 75-80: recalls the pleasure of his boyish days in which he had this instinctive perception
of nature. Same perception that made him run away from himself?

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Lines 82-83: “unborrowed from the eye” meaning something different from what you can
perceive from sensorial senses.
Line 86: “for such loss” meaning the loss of the sensorial-only perception.
Line 86-91: perception of nature through intellect, thought. “abundant recompense” as in

thought and imagination. “Of thoughtless youth” when young, you still perceive nature
through your senses. “but hearing […] the still, sad music of humanity” nature brings us closer
to humanity.
The poem is portraying from sight to hearing, from sense to mind.
Lines 94-100: There is something beyond nature, the divine which can be found in a river, sky
or the mind of men.
Line 104-105: nature interfuses with the perceiver?
Line 114: Interaction between nature and self with religious terminology. “For thou art with
me” Bible reference (a song).
Lines 115-120: he addresses his sister. “May I behold in thee what I was once” he sees in her
what he used to be (sensorial perception).
Lines 134-141: After perceiving through your senses, you have to start perceiving through your
mind.
Line 156-159: “after many wandering, many years” timelessness, past-present-future.
Ode to intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood
The section VIII is based on the Platonic myth of incarnation (world of the essences). The child
is closer in time to the world of essences, he hasn’t spoiled his thought yet.
It is a version of Paradise Lost. It starts with a man: paradise is all about him, but he feels that
he doesn’t belong there anymore. The world seems like paradise; however, he feels something
is missing. Describes nature like something idyllic, but he realizes that’s not his life, he can’t
share that plenitude, the joy. The man sees his lost paradise in/beyond nature but knows he
does not belong anymore in paradise, so he is left with the sensorial nature. All living things
have a celestial light (lambs, children flowers…)
III, line 22: everybody is happy except for him.
IV, line 56-57: something is gone, the glory and the dream (this is not his life). He cannot share
the joy, the plenitude.
This first world we call home remains within us when we are kids but eventually forget his
origins. The more the youth connect with the material world the more we forget.
Lines 65-66: he is exiled from his home.
Lines 73-74: travel in order to know the life embodied in the material world. ->

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Lines 76-77: the divine light tosses splendor and mixes with ordinary life.
VI
Earth as a foster mom. Nature tries to make us forget about any former world-home we may
have been in.
VII
Platonic myth of incarnation, souls rest in an eternal realm and are incarnated and re-
incarnated but you lose memory of your previous existence. Children still keep some
knowledge from it, since it is closer to the spiritual world, working by intuition and
imagination, not rational thought.
Lines 94-95: where he travels (lines 73-74).
Line 103: The youth have to take on different roles in the stage of life.
Lines 116-117: A quest to find a truth which the child knows.
Lines 122-129: The state of Grace cannot be preserved, eventually it’s lost.
Line 123: inherit a heaven-born freedom.
Line 128: weight of customs and the ordinary, life will burden him.
IX
Lines 130-133: The remembering survives in the life of embers and we recreate it in our
memory, our imagination.
Childhood goes away but remains an eternal possibility since we have embers. The child
bequeaths? his wealth, that’s why the child is the father. The adult welcomes the falling and
the losing.
Composed in August, 1802. Published in 1807. “It is a beauteous evening…”
The poem is a sonnet. The child is in contact with the divine in nature and feels it instinctively
since she worships at the temple even though she does not know rationally. She is one with
nature unlike the adult that only sometimes has moments of awareness. She is closer to the
divine than the adult because of her child-like faith, she is connected to the world of ideas
and essences. While you are a child, you still know the truths of the essential world.
The poem is full of religious terms and analogies: “holy time”, “nun”, “adoration”, “heaven”,
“mighty Being” (the sun/sunset), “his eternal motion”… | “Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom”
means you are part of God’s community, you are still in contact with God in Paradise. Lines 1-
4 are appreciation of nature through religious imagery. Lines 6-8 refer to God as well. And
from 5-8 describes a storm approaching. In lines 10-11 the author is saying that if you do not
perceive nature in this religious way, as he experiences it, and are not aware of the divine, it
does not really matter because the Divine is with you, know it or not.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Coleridge (1772-1834)
Most of his writings were spontaneous, with eloquent writing. Like Wordsworth he was an
orphan. He was his father’s favorite and he transmitted his love for books. He was a very
precocious child, with no fear in talking to adults. Coleridge assisted to college in Cambridge
and there he studied the classics, but then the revolution starts. He was rescued by his brothers,
and he left Cambridge without a degree. He also becomes friend of Southey.
Coleridge believed in a pantisocracy -an equal society-. He lived in a community in Pennsylvania

and live from agriculture. He had an unfortunate marriage. Coleridge fell in love with the sister
of the patron’s wife, who was married. He also had a physical pain and was a doctor
recommended him to smoke opium, provoking cycles of pain and desperation.
He went to Malta to improve his health and condition, thinking that the weather would do
something. When he returned, he divorced from his wife and he was staying with Wordsworth,
that’s why he dedicated his essays to Sarah. He writes Biographia Literaria: it was not a
biography, it was just a collection of his ideas about literature. Coleridge made peace with
Wordsworth, but their friendship was never wat it was.
Conversational poems
Written in blank verse. Augusta reflective mode but more colloquial/natural. These ignore the
great events of their time. Domestic scenes. Descriptions of the landscape. The speaker faces a
tragic lost/resolves and emotional problem or moral resolution. Deeper understanding gained
from meditation. Romantic meditation usually starts with a (spiritual) crisis.
The Ancient Mariner
Narration in a wedding of a story with supernatural occurrences about a mariner. The sailors
are sailing when an Albatross comes. They think it is a good luck charm to later think the other
way around. The ancient mariner kills the Albatross. Theme of destruction and alienation.
Part I
In line 63: “At length did cross an Albatross” cross is used on purpose as a Christian symbol.
The albatross appearing means that there is land nearby.
Line 65-6: “it had been a Christian soul” the Albatross (it) is a Christian soul that later is killed.
Once the Albatross appears “the ice did split” (line 69) “and a good south wind sprung up
behind” (line 71). Because of that and because birds are usually near land, they think it is a
good omen.
Hybris (excess, pride, the need of being self-sufficient) is always the fall of man. Because of
this, the mariner kills the Albatross. This crime is absurd and gratuitous, there is no apparent
reason. The reason is hybris, his excess of pride leads him to wanting to be self-sufficient and,
therefore, he does not want the help of the bird to get to land. He, this way is killing what they
thought it was a good omen, against the law of hospitality which suggests the human
destructiveness and alienation. The crew thinks killing it is wrong at the beginning.
Part II

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
However, when the “sun rose upon the right” the men change their minds.
Lines 99-100: Opportunism, since suddenly the sun shines the sailors think that killing the
Albatross is what really brings luck.
Lines 141-142: instead of the cross in his neck he places the Albatross as a representation of
his sins-> Christian symbol.
Part III
Line 147: “When looking westward” west is where the sun goes down.
Line 169: “Without a breeze, without a tide” the fact that the ship is moving on its own implies
supernatural activity.
Lines 177 and 179: the sun behind bars which creates this image of imprisonment. This also is
seen in lines 185-6 “ribs” and “grate”.
Then appears the figure of two women that represent death and life-in-death
(mythological/religious implications).
Line 196: use of the dice to set fate. Life-in-death wins the old mariner and Death wins the
sailors. So the sailors drop dead (lines 216-219) and the mariner is alone with them. His
punishment is isolation, nature is alien.
Line 208: the supernatural ship leaves, the natural settles again.
Part IV
Lines 232-3: He is left alone with nature and the corpses.
Side-text from lines 263-271: The moon and stars belongs to the cosmos, he and the animals
that surround him (the water snakes) share the same sky: they belong to the same world. This
way a sense of community develops between him, the natural and the supernatural. There is
cosmic harmony since he will reconciles with nature. Line 268 is a reminder of spring.
Line 282-3: He now appreciates the nature and its creatures that he before despised.
Line 288: he can now pray, connect with the spiritual world.
Line 289: he feels relieved of guilt.
Line 290: his cross disappears, therefore, redemption.
Part V
The poem is about the state of isolation and shift from alienation to community. Also about
the fall of man and redemption/reconciliation through imagination (human mind). Marriage
between man and nature occurs in every individual mind.
Line 349: the spirits blest-> the supernatural is now good, the mariners bring him home.
Lines 400-401: the Albatross loved the mariner and was betrayed. “harmless” to emphasize
how gratuitous was its dead.
Part VI

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Lines 597-600: Marriage is a sacrament. He tells the story in a wedding because of this
‘marriage’ of man and nature.
The albatross is a good symbol because it means that land is near. The sailors offered him
food, so when the mariner kills the bird, the rest of the sailors are angry with him. When the
bird is killed, the fog disappears, so the sailors are not angry anymore with the mariner: they
become partners in crime. Killing the bird with no motivation is something gratuitous, cruel, it
becomes a crime. The dead albatross replaces the cross around the mariner’s neck, a symbol
of excessive pride.
They are stuck in the sea. The west in Greek mythology is a place of death. Also, another ship
comes towards them: a supernatural element.
Verse 171: the sunset has them imprisoned but, Death (man) and Life-in-death (woman)
comes from the supernatural ship. These two play dices -alea iacta est- and the woman wins,
cursing the mariner, and the rest of the crew is dead.
Then, the mariner is alone with nature. The killing of the albatross is an allegory of human’s
destructiveness. By admiring and blessing the sea-creatures (water-snakes), the dead albatross
falls from the mariner’s neck into the water, redeeming the mariner. This means that the
mariner accepts the living world and that he feels he belongs to it, the water-snakes bring the
feeling of community. Also, by this act, the crew resurrects.
Verse 400 The spirits ask if he is the man that killed the albatross.
The poem is a cycle of isolation and alienation, then it turns into redemption and
reconciliation. There’s unity between body, mind achieved (?) and nature.
The final destination is symbolized by ¿?
The Eolian Harp
A conversational poem. These poems influence other poets -like Frost-. They’re more flexible
and natural. The poems have a domestic scene, the poet talks to himself or addresses someone.
All these poems begin with a description a landscape. They’re a gate of meditation, mind
confronts nature.
Transaction of subject: object. Poet looking to nature, both become one.
Spiritual crisis. Romantic lyrics: interlocuter with nature.
The Eolian harp: string instrument with a boxy sound. If the wind blows, it will produce music.
It represents the “activation” of imagination. The harp transforms into inspiration.
The first stanza happens at dusk, in the garden. The notes of the harp become elves and
fairies, creating an imaginary world of paradise.
Verse 31 “A world so filled”. It refers to be filled the beauty of his imagination.
Verse 45. Universe is animated by universal consciousness. Creative universe is animated by

imagination.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Sara, his wife, is a school teacher. At the end, she teaches him about God.
In the second paragraph, lines 14-15 the harp is compared to a lover caressed by the wind. In
line 18, “the long sequacious notes” are the melody of an imaginary world, the song of the
harp. Lines 21-22 are an imaginary fairyland. In line 31 the author talks about a “world so
filled” with beauty of his own imagination.
In the third paragraph, lines 39-40 say that the harp fills his fantasies. Lines 44-48 talk about
the harp as a symbol of unity, the universe is animated by a universal conscience animated by
the plastic shaping nature of imagination.
This Lime-tree Bower my Prison
The rook symbolizes a link between him and his friends,
The tree becomes a place to develop his imagination.
The speaker goes to some friend’s house and stays under the lime tree. There, he imagines the
trip he couldn’t go to and enjoys more than the ones who went to the trip. Hence, he gains
more from “imprisonment”. His friend is a bureaucrat who lives in the city.
Lines 40-43: Universal consciousness-> we are not a passive instrument.
Lines 61-67: In imagination he can follow his friend’s physical world, this world inspires
imagination.
Frost at Midnight
At home in front of the fireplace with a cradled infant in his room. The speaker compares
himself to this child. He focuses on his son which leads him to childhood memories.
The mind searches images of itself and the universal consciousness.
Line 24: “how oft, at school…” childhood memories.
In the third paragraph the speaker compares himself to the child how he grew up “in the great
city” (line 52) “but thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze” (line 54) the child will live in the
country. Thanks to living in the country he will be in nature in contact with God (lines 58-60).
In the last paragraph he mentions a “secret ministry” that he had mentioned in the first line,
which suggests undertones of arcane divine/supernatural existence that begins spiritual
communication through nature (lines 70-74).
Kubla Kahn
Coleridge wrote this out of a dream after consuming opium and reading a book of pilgrimage
and travels. However, he could not remember everything so he only wrote this fragment for
psychological curiosity. Coleridge says that the poem (fragment) came to him spontaneously.
Kubla Khan was grandson of Ghengis Khan and a Mongolian emperor who conquered China.
Interested in European culture, he invited Marco Polo, a merchant. Xanadu became his
summer village, Marco Polo wrote about his travels. Knowledge of the supernatural was
important in court. KK did not read Marco Polo’s book. The romantic writers, painters…

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
discovered the orient’s magic, beauty, exoticism (Oriental Nights). The orient begins to be
considered as the ancestor of men with places of wonder and magic.
The first dome/palace is built by a tyrant by decree. The other one is recreated by imagination
of the poet in a song. Tyrant vs. poet.
Lines 1-2: built by decree.
Line 3: Alpheus is a classical underground river (in lines 3-4 there is an underground scenery
“caverns”). Arethusa (a nymph) bathed in Alpheus not knowing it was a river God and he fell in
love with her. But she was not interested and ran away and was turned into a stream. Alph can
also stand for the alpha Greek letter.
Lines 5-10: Paradise-like surroundings but man-made/earthly: “incense-bearing tree” a tree

from paradise. Some demonic forces (“demon-lover” line 15) with Kubla want to decree
Heaven on Earth, artificially shaped, confined-> locus amoenus.
Lines 11-15: Cursed place, setting of forbidden longing. Forbidden love between humans and
demons “demon-lover”. “Cover” as in secret. Mystical atmosphere with words like “enchanted”
“waning moon” “haunted”.
Lines 16-23: A phantom or an entity of the sort (maybe the sacred river?) irrupts this romantic
setting and destroys the dome. This represents nature destroying what is man-made. The
irruption and destruction is described in sexual ways: “ceaseless turmoil seething” “mighty
fountain forced” “half-intermittent burst”. Earth as a suffering being (goddess?)
Lines 24-29: The dome/palace is destroyed.
Lines 32-35: he hears the song with which he could rebuilt the palace, if he only he could
remember it.
Mentions of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Mount Abora, which is a mountain in Ethiopia where
supposedly Paradise is in (lines 38 and 40), since Africa is also considered a magical place.
Lines 45-47: the poet is the speaker.
Lines 49-53: he becomes a kind of Demigod who inspires “holy dread”. He is so powerful that
he becomes dangerous. Also “honey-dew” is what the Gods eat.
Keats (1795 – 1821)
He was the youngest. Died at 25. Used different styles, humor with sympathetic
understanding. He had many brothers and sisters, both of his parents died while he was alive
and was left to their grandmother. She died and a man who was in charge of them later used
their money and took them away from school. Shakespeare and Milton were his model writers
with their Shakespearean drama and Miltonic epic. Also admired Wordsworth. His brother got
sick with tuberculosis and he also caught it. Joseph Severn was his friend with whom he goes
to Italy. He was aware he was going to die since he had been trained in medicine. The Great
Odes are his masterpieces which he writes the year he dies. Protestant cemetery. Keats had a
dialectal and speculative mind and did essays on aesthetics.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
La belle dame sans merci
The title means “beautiful woman without mercy”. It is based on a poem from the 14th century
by Alain Chartier and translated by Chaucer. Keats wrote this poem to his brother and sister-in-
law, but there’s another version published by The Indicator.
The narrator is the speaker. He meets a knight near a lake. We know it’s autumn because of
the sedge, the birds no singing and the squirrel’s granary is full.
The rose represents life, vitality and in the poem, it is fading, so he’s dying.
In the 5th stanza, he offers the lady objects made with flowers. In the 8 th, they kiss. To be “in
thrall” means to be captive. In the 9th stanza, those men were captive before.
The description makes her seem to be kind of supernatural. He is so obsessed with her that
reality disappears. In lines 19-20, he’s convincing himself, then he’s dreaming of the warning
(dream as a supernatural element).
(*)The Indicator version.
In the 8th stanza, she puts him to sleep (magic element). In the 4th, he refers to her as “faery’s
child”, which could mean that he have imagined the woman.
The whole poem deals with love and our relationship with idealizations, making us lose contact
with reality, which leads to destructiveness. Also, there’s a contrast between the material
world and the spiritual world. The speaker explores our relationship with true, consciousness.
When idealism becomes utopian, it delivers alienation and desperation.
Shelley (1792 – 1822)
Shelley’s life was intrinsic with Byron’s. Shelley was born on 14 th August in Sussex, and he’s the
oldest of seven siblings and the only boy. He printed his stories locally. Shelley attended to
Oxford in 1810 and wrote a pamphlet, his father was quite upset about this, because someone
could take charges against him. So, Shelley asked to be disinherited, putting him in a self-exile.
He married a woman called Harriet Westmore, but her parents didn’t approve the marriage.
They left for Edinburgh before they settled in Castlewick. There he was attacked by a stranger,
a common event in his life. He wrote another pamphlet addressed to the Irish people,
exposing the emancipation of Catholicism: “are you people or are you slaves?”, during the
early years of the Irish Revolution. He admires Williams Goodwin -a writer that writes about a
utopian government-. Shelley publishes his poem “Queen Map(?)”. Then he meets Godwin’s
and Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Mary.
Mary is daughter to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Wollstonecraft had a brief
career and she died giving birth to her daughter. She’s known for revendicate women’s rights.
She was in love with the painter Fuseli, and she wrote a letter to him, telling that she was
enrapture by his genius, but he was married. Disappointed by his rejection, Wollstonecraft
went to France when the revolution was starting. There she met Gilbert Imlay and fell in love
with him, they had a daughter: Fanny Imlay. Imlay declared that they were married to avoid
being killed, but they never were. He was more and more unhappy with her. He left for
Scandinavia and she returned to London. There he rejected her, and she tried to kill herself,
but failed. She travelled to Scandinavia to help Imlay with business, but he rejects her. She

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
returned to England and again, she tries to commit suicide. But Godwin falls in love with her
due to her book.
After the death of Wollstonecraft, he marries Mary Jane Clairmont. She gives birth to Claire
and Charles, and the three sisters grow up together. They were very close and had a good
relationship. Godwin publishes a book of memories about Wollstonecraft in a very sincere
style, that it got to destroy her reputation -not on purpose-: several sexual affairs, an
illegitimate daughter… Godwin didn’t like the meetings between Mary, Claire and Shelley.
Shelley was in love with Mary and he proposed to live the three of them together, but she
declined. Claire was having an affair with Byron and they had a child, Allegra.
Years later, Claire, Mary and Shelley traveled to Switzerland, where Shelley meets Byron for
the first time and he writes “Montblanc” there. It argues that the poet is not inspired by the
same violent forces of the landscape. Shelley has a very complex idea of God, he believes in
God as a power, in Wordsworth’s sense.
During this summer, Byron, Shelley and Mary took the ghost stories competition, winning
Mary with Frankenstein. Fanny commits suicide because she discovers that her parents never
got married and she was kind in love with Byron. Also, Harriet Westmore kills herself too.
Shelley tries to gain the custody of his children, but Harriet’s parents find him unfit to be a
father due to being a revolutionary, so he marries Mary to gain the custody. His daughter dies
in part of Shelley’s negligence. “Prometheus Unbound” becomes one of Marx’s favorite
poems: it treats about political power, and Prometheus is a figure that will redeem the world.
For Shelley, it is his most perfect creation. In Rome, Byron and Shelley are in contact with
revolutionary activities. He writes “The Mask of Anarchy” and it is the greatest poem about
political protest. It is a satire about ministers and warns of future anarchy.
In 1821 Keats dies, so Shelley writes “Adonais”, a quite neoclassical poem. Shelley admired
Keats so it’s kind of an elegy.
In 1822, Shelley had a boat and sails to Lavorno, but he drowns and years later his body is
found, quite eaten, by he’s recognized by the Keats poems book.
“Ode to the West Wind”
In this poem there is described a phenomenon of the wind and nature. It is written in terza
rima, the way Dante wrote the Divine Comedy (his clear inspiration). Each section is 14 lines.
The poem is about the change of seasons making analogies to the human world and feelings.
A romantic poet/prophet who feels frustration and defeat. He wants to surrender to the
power of the wind since it is more powerful than the human being.
Part I
Talks about how change can be violent and disruptive. It comes after summer. But the wind is
also a cleansing force that prepares the way for spring.
“Pestilance-stricken multitude” mean leafs from Dante.
“Destroyer and preserver” is the wind both praised and prayed.
Part II
The Maenad were the female followers of Dionysus (fierce, who have drank?).

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
“O, hear” you will hear and then deliver his prayer in the end?
Part III
Lines 29-37: Look at the land under the sea, which is the land of imagination? The external
land is an echo of this imagined land.
Part IV
His prayer begins.
Lines 52-54: humans are weak.
Part V
Men and nature alike as a kind of art. He wants to be subjected by nature like a force to be like
an instrument. Human nature requires a source of transformation like nature, whose
transforming power is the west wind. Human’s is our imagination.
He thinks of himself as a lyrical poet (lyre). He wants to be subjected to its face as nature/the
forest is. He wants to be played like an instrument with the sound of leaves falling… He
contrasts the power of the wind to human weakness. There is a switch of the relationships of
the wind and the human/poet. The human becomes divine and enables the products of
imagination to revive. The poem is a prayer (a secularized version) where instead of God, there
is the wind. A prayer is close to a mystical experience but in this case, it is a resurrection
through the poetic word.
Line 62: The autumn wind is the instrument of an awakening. The poet wants to have a
voice/speak unlike before.
Line 64: “new birth” like spring (just like the wind brings seeds in line 6-7).
Lines 66-7: The wind scatters seeds and the words of the poet.
Lines 69-70: Winter is coming but the winter is followed by spring (consolation). Cycle of
seasons. “The trumpet of a prophecy” of the wind. Shelley, as a revolutionary, wonders in the
poem about the role of the poet.
“Ozymandias”
Three voices: narrator, traveler and the King Ozymandias. The poem is structured in a sonnet.
After Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, most of its treasures, art, etc. ended in France or England.
Shelley wanted to write poems on Asian sculptures as a challenge from a friend.
The statue is representative f the airs of grandeur the tyrant (King) had, at the same time it
mocks them and him. Art is the only thing that remains over life. The historical period in which
it was written can be noticed through the fallen tyrant whom, in Shelley’s days, was Napoleon.
Usually, the role of the sextet (in the structure of a sonnet) is to sum up what the octet states,
but in this case it adds information.
On the other hand, one art is described in terms of the other (sculpture is described by
poetry). Painting and sculpture are spatial arts (you see it all at once) while poetry is temporal
(it unfolds in time). Sculpture was destroyed however the sonnet endures, therefore, poetry is
more durable, even eternal compared to paintings and sculptures.

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2018-2019 L.G.D.
Line 6: Whose passions and whose hand? The tyrant’s passion and the statue that is broken.
Lines 7-8: Survive is a transitive verb whose objects are hand and heart. The statue more or
less survives while the tyrant does not. The hand of the sculpture mocked the tyrant. The
statue understood his passions in heart.
Lines 10-11: This claim is empty since there is nothing but him. No kingdom, no work of him.
The only thing we know of him is that one sculpture of art as in Kubla Khan with the broken
palace.
Lines 12-14: Deserted space/desert. Playing with space-time?
“England in 1819”
It is a sonnet (rhyme A-B-A-B-A-B-C-D-C-D-C-C-D-D) with no real division between the octet
and the sextet. The poem is actually one sentence long and it is a list of grievances, a long
enunciation of what the speaker says that are graves. The main verb is to be: “are graves from
which…”
A mass of people gathered in Manchester to protest that they should get to work the unused
land because they had no job nor money. It was a peaceful demonstration but it was handled
poorly so people got injured and even died.
Shelley positions himself against institutions like Church, religion, monarchy, army… He is
criticizing and exposing corruption. He is ‘specific about the decease but vague about the cure’.
The poem does not unfold an argument, it is an indictment.
Lines 1-12: are the first part of the sentence before the verb.
Lines 1-2: The King and princes are described with monosyllabic words. The king is George III
(who was declared mad in 1810) and the oldest of the princes only reigned with a regency act.
Line 6-7: Exploitation and violence are linked.
Line 10: “Golden and sanguine laws” meaning paid in gold, executed in blood. The laws talked
about forbade catholic practices and they were forced to live in poverty.
Line 11: “a book sealed” the Bible or a book of revelation of the sort.
Lines 13-14: The main verb appears. “Phantom may burst” The phantom brings hope, light,
maybe justice for the future after being pessimistic and critical. It is not specified who or what
this phantom is. That line about the phantom refers to death from the graves possibly being
followed by a new beginning/order.
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Byron became a best seller, in spite of his scandalous life, since he was a hero who fought for
freedom. However, he was publicly and generally considered immoral. Goethe considered that
Byron had a spirit of the age with demonic, revolutionary force but that he lacked depth. He
had the allure of a fallen Lucifer, was described as mad, bad and dangerous to know.

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2018-2019 L.G.D.
His poems were vivid about travel. Byron was idolized by high society (more specifically
women). His poems about fatal heroes, his alarming opinions in politics and his scandalous
love affairs (adding the rumors of incest with a half-sister) translated into everyone talking
about him.
Byron lived with his mother until he was ten and inherited from a dead uncle. His caretaker
abused him (physically and sexually). His mother was prone to rages. Byron went to Trinity
College (he was an extravagant). Eventually, he accumulated a debt of 5000 pounds since he
lived extravagantly. He published something (?) the reviewers criticized and, because of this,
he published a satire of reviewers. Byron believed there were poets who wrote in the true
Augustan tradition like Dryden (since he rejected the moderns like Wordsworth). He became
a supporter of Napoleon. His debt gradually grew to 12000 pounds and he ran away to tour
Portugal, Spain, Greece… “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” talks about this.
He had a short but intense love affair with a married woman who fell in love with him for
“Childe Harold…”’s poem. Then he fell in love with Lady Oxford. Byron consolidated writing
Oriental romances (dark, brooding hero in an exotic location), which were poems of fantastic
escapism.
Augusta Leigh was his half-sister who he was close with once he met her. He was going to
elope with her but decided it was better marrying and settling with Annabella Milbanke.
Augusta wished that marriage for him, too. Annabella was a mathematician (the founder of
the computer system) and was prude, strict and naïve. They had a daughter who they named
Ada. Byron was violent sometimes and prone to rages as was his mother. The couple
separated after he confessed being drawn to his half-sister. And so he left England, fleeing his
creditors, and went to Switzerland and met Shelley, who influenced him to read Wordsworth.
While Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, he wrote Canto III, in Canto IV, he exercises ottava
rima. He became a loner to a married woman. Byron got involved with Italian politics and was
harassed by the police.
At some point of his life (Viorica said this at the end because she forgot to tell it before, so I
don’t know where this fits in the chronology), he had a daughter with a Claire, Allegra, who he
took care of. He sent her to school but she died of sickness. He refused to see Claire, who was
believed to have had another girl with Shelley.
Shelley died. Byron worked on “Don Juan”. He became famous around Europe. In Greece, a
revolution broke out. Byron supported it and was in charge of a private army. He later fell ill of
fever and, while treating him, they bled him to death. There was a publication of his letters
and remaining journals. In Greece he became a national hero who lived life to the fullest.
Byron defined himself against Wordsworth and Coleridge. He had a profound impact on
Europe for his image of ‘hero’ he wrote in his poems. In fact, emerges the figure of the Byronic
hero: a man greater than others (Wuthering Heights) who only among the wild forces of
nature can he find a counterpart. A hero with a demon within but who produces a fascination
in him. He has committed a sin and that only makes him the more interesting. With
superhuman pride, he feels the horror of his fate, but has self-mastery and defies the power
or even the creator who has doomed him. He will not settle with that, however, he has
courage of the ultimate refusal. This hero embodies a form of nihilism. A satanic, wicked hero
who discovers new (but own) morals and values besides those society teaches.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
It was written intermittently for 18 years and has four cantos. The readers identify Byron as
the protagonists (which is yet another sign of how famous he was). Harold becomes a figure of
self-exile, which Byron imposed on himself. Harold is a nobleman who is still not satisfied with
life so he wonders around the world (he seeks solace in traveling).
In Canto I and II he focuses on Spain, Portugal, the Greek Islands…He describes a bullfight as a
drama, a sport with bloodshed. In Canto III, he talks about Belgium, Waterloo, Germany,
Switzerland…He describes Waterloo at some point. He describes very vividly the places and
that caught people’s attention because not everyone could afford traveling. He also covers
Rome and Venice, in general places where historical events took place. The Byronic hero
travels to escape mental anguish, to forget. Nature addresses the great spirit of the great
hero.
Canto III
(1)
Use of Spenserian stanza, in which the last line is longer: all are iambic pentameters except for
the last line which is an iambic hexameter.
Byron is talking about Annabella, Ada’s mother, who he separated from.
(6)
He travels thinking of his daughter.
(39)
Feature of the Byronic hero: he will not admit somebody else’s criteria since he has his own.
(113)
“I have not […] bowed to its idolatries a patient knew”, “I stood amongst them, but not of
them” He does not bow to the laws of society.
(117)
He is concerned that his wife would instill his daughter with hate for her father.
Canto IV
(1)
“A palace and a prison on each hand”: romantics’ extremes of romance and misery. Gladiator
separated from her wife. In the “Bridge of Sighs” is a bridge in which both the palace and the
prison can be seen.
(3)
What remains is nature, the rest crumbles/fades away.
(178-179)
A claim alike to Wordsworth’s claim of superiority in nature. Direct contact with nature as an
escape from social world and mingling with the universe. Byron’s ocean is like Wordsworth’s
river. “Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain” he celebrates the sea because it is stronger
than humanity. The ten thousand fleets refer to the Spanish Armada.
(181)
“Oak leviathans” refers to warships.

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2018-2019 L.G.D.
(182)
“Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest
now”: the Byronic hero cannot be marked by time, he only moves forward. “azure brow” refers
to the ocean.
Don Juan
It is unfinished. Over 7 years in 6 volumes. Advisors told him to tone down his political critique.
He writes in the style of Italian Renaissance poets. Stanza written in ottava rima. Eight
pentameters.
Don Juan produced a scandal. Byron claimed that the poem was all real life (his or others).
Unpredictability of life. The dedication is an attack to Coleridge and Southey. Byron takes
pleasure in undermining religious, primitive behavior of society… There are two main figures:
Don Juan and the narrator. Don Juan has courage, kindness, generosity, idealism but he seems
average, not heroic. He scarcely remembers his past, he faces obstacles fearlessly. The
narrator (Byron but as literary narrator) is older and more wise/experienced, he is
disillusioned, metaphysical. The sexual element in Don Juan meant to outrage the
conservatives and to get liken of radicals. Don Juan is an escapist, the narrative voice is
conversational in an urban cynical aristocrat way.
Dedication to Southey, defamatory and satirical.
Dedication
(1-3)
Bob, because they used to call the police Bobbies because of a man called Robert who started
the police force. In the (3) stanza “quite a-dry” is a pun referring to ejaculation.
(4)
He mocks Wordsworth’s long poems.
(5)
“Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean” referring to the born in the lake
region who thought better of themselves and did not write about real things.
(6)
He mocks how Wordsworth accepted a governmental position in the post-office.
“immortal hill” as in the Olympus for poets?
(7)
Scott, Rogers, Campbell…were minor poets which were great poets in Byron’s opinion.
(10)
He appreciates in Milton how he has constant beliefs, he is faithful to his beliefs. The Sire is
Charles I and the Son is Charles II.
(11)
“the blind Old Man” as in Milton. “Castlereagh” was the intellectual that put down the Irish
rebellion and also a bad speaker?
(12)
“To lengthen fetter…” he prolonged the fetters of other people?

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Canto the First
(205)
Milton, Dryden and Pope are superior to the romantics Wordsworth and Coleridge. Sarcastic
style.
Byron’s modernity links to skepticism, he is witty.
Canto the Second

About a shipwreck.
Pedrillo was religious and is the first one to be eaten. People go insane because religion is
madness. In Don Juan, nothing is sacred, he is very nihilistic. Don Juan ends up in an island.
Mary Wollstonecraft: Mary, a Fiction
The narrator is a fictional identity, while the author is the real one. The thoughts are presented
in 3rd person, meaning that the narrator gives a step back to present them.
There are examples of sentimental a lyrical style -dashes, exclamations, rhetorical questions,
disrupted phrases…- to achieve an effect of immediacy, to suggest strong feelings.
The importance of silence (and syntax)
Which is not said is the deeper truth, so powerful to just put in words. Broken syntax and/or
structure represent the inner self, desires, wishes, thoughts, etc. Subversion in silence.
In page 16 [1st quote highlighted, check notes], Mary doesn’t want to be married. The narrator
gives the explanation: she just wants to be her inner-self. In p. 22 [1st quote], there’s a spiritual
rapture by being surrounded by thoughts, nature, etc.
In Emma Courtney (60), the protagonist is being sexually aroused, but in the quote, what’s
being expressed is that sexual feeling that she feels reading the book, but it’s not explicitly said
because it’s forbidden.
Meaning: marriage as a symbol of the entire system of oppression
The novel puts marriage as a way of oppression: we see that Mary is forced to be married by
her parents. The novel’s conclusion is given in the last page: is possible a return from the
husband? Is there any possibility of a “happy” marriage? She’s not happy with her husband,
she kind of rejects him, but in the end, she accepts the situation.
The quote of the Bible appearing in the end plays an important role about the conclusion:
Mary hasn’t consummated the marriage, and she thinks that it would be better to die, there’s
a wish for death: this wish is the way to reject the system in the sentimental novels.
Drawn from nature: one woman and every woman
It is an autobiographical novel -an important feature in sentimental novel-. But it not just tells
the story of Mary. Mary, as later named Maria, is a representation of Wollstonecraft herself,
but also of everywoman. In The Wrongs of Woman, insets stories of other women.

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Wollstonecraft puts a clear conclusion: all women are slaves to the system, Mary (as Maria),
are trapped.
In 18th century, women are identified to be slaves. Woman belonged to her husband or father.
For example, as wife, she could be forced to prostitute by her husband to pay debts. There’s
even a real court case. There was a lack of freedom, even with women’s bodies.
Mary as a sentimental heroine
Positive Traits Negative Traits

Active sensibility: (missing notes)
• Reading to others (12)
• Care for others (12):
benevolence, doing good…
• Strong conception of friendship:
beyond marriage
She’s a thinking woman:
• Studies ‘physic’ to cure her friend
(18)
• She thinks about eternal (12)
• Studies religion (24)
• Rejects society and shallowness
The sentient and intellectual female self
“She is a romantic creature” / “she is a foolish creature” (26)
She is described as a creator (13), which reminds us of St. Theresa. “Genius” was a word used
in sentimental fiction used to describe someone, a unique individual. Mary is independent,
able to think and feel by herself. She doesn’t want to be a slave by herself.
Why are we studying this text?
What Wollstonecraft exposes keeps being applied to the 20 th century narratives.
The Gothic novel

The Gothic novel has many elements, it is usually settled in ancient/medieval buildings, in a
gloomy atmosphere, full of passages, the heroine has to remain innocent to survive…
It’s a genre in the 18th – 19th century, but in the 19th century it starts to turn into a mode. The
word “gothic” originally referred to the Goths, an early Germanic tribe, then came to signify
“Germanic”, and then “medieval”. The main important thing that we should have in mind to
understand the word “gothic” is the connection that it has to the words other and past.
What do we understand by “Gothic”?
The early definition given by Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story” (1746). His aim
was to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former was all
imagination and improbability, in the latter (…) Invention has not been wanting but the great
resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict (¿?)

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
When we think about gothic novel, we think of stock characters and formulated plots, but it
intends to bring realistic features (¿?). The Gothic novel explores the mind and the
psychological stages, how the mind reacts to some stimulus.
Characteristics of Gothic
Setting Plot Aim

• In the medieval • The suffering • To evoke chilling
period imposed on an terror by exploiting
• In a Catholic country innocent heroine by mystery and a variety
• Gloomy atmospheres a cruel and lustful of horrors. Fear and
(dungeons, castles…) villain suspense for terror,
• Use of ghosts, gruesome brutality
mysterious for horror.
disappearances, and
other sensation and
supernatural
occurrences (which
in a few novels
turned to have a
natural explanation)
In 1799, Mary Alcock wrote a poem: “A receipt for writing a novel”, satirizing the conception of
writing Gothic novels. Why? The reason is that because of the characteristics mentioned
before, many “writers” that weren’t good at writing, wrote Gothic because it was easy to
follow the recipe.
Ideas of terror and horror, of awe, related to the concepts of the sublime.
“Authors of Gothic novels exploited the sublimity of delightful horror both in the natural and
architectural settings of their narratives and in the actions and events that they narrated” –
Abrams
The Gothic always responds to the philosophy and science of its time. For the Gothic is
especially interested in the minds of readers, and the psychological powers at auto-
hallucination on which the reading act depends.
The best of these early fictions opened up to fiction the realm of the irrational and of the
perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the orderly surface of the civilized
mind. Also, the recurrent idea of the doppelganger -the “evil twin”-, in folklore, when you
meet this person it was supposed you’re going to die. The idea of two-sides is also a reflection
of the Victorian society: it was the time of being very moral and Catholic, but at the same time
it was the age of more vice.
Key concept: the uncanny. In origin -German-, it means that should belong to you, but it
doesn’t. The familiar seeming strange.
In 1790, the genre changes; with the political situation at its peak. Characters start to be more
developed. After Mary Shelley, the Gothic novel turns into ghost stories, vampire tales,
detective fiction…

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Key concept: female or feminist Gothic
• Many women wrote Gothic fiction.

• The features of the mode as a result of the suppression of female sexuality or women’s
agency.
• Read as a challenge to gender hierarchy and the values of a patriarchal society.
• The “Mad Woman in the Attic” (Gilbert & Cuban, 1979)
The queen of the Gothic: Ann Radcliffe
Her first novels were anonymous. The great success came with The Mysteries of Udolpho
(1794). The characters, Emily and Montoni, became models. Her next success, The Italian
(1797) presents a monk. She combines novel of sensibility and the Gothic. Hers are tales of
terror.
The darker side of Gothic: Matthew “Monk” Lewis
He was a diplomat and politician. He published The Monk (1796). It has less romance and
sensibility, and more violence and eroticism. Universally condemned.
When we talk about the Victorian period (1832-1901), we should have in mind that we come
from the age of Revolution: the French and American revolutions, the Industrial revolution…
Also, the Victorian Age is a long period, divided in three parts:
Early Victorian period Characterized by trouble + reform

Mid Victorian period Characterized by improvement + optimism
Late Victorian period ¿?
When talking of Victorian, we talk about the Queen Victoria: the period starts when she is
crowned, not with her birth. It was an age of many changes and advances, but not of
revolution. We can describe it as an age of paradox: during the Victorian age, we could say that
moral standards guided every movement in society, morals were given a lot of importance, but
we could say that this was in a “public” sense, because at the same time, the Victorian age was
one of the most corrupt periods of British story (political scandals, growth of prostitution…).
It’s also an age of debate with three particular areas: the condition of the England question,
the question of religious belief and the woman question.
A) The condition of the England Question
As a resume, we could say that the rich becomes richer and the poor, poorer. There are
two very important elements that take part in this question: industrialization and
colonization. New fortunes are being made and there’s a lot of territorial expansion.
Obviously, at present day we can see the consequences and the remains of this colonial
phase.
The direct consequence is that society becomes polarized. Also, there’s a flow of
population from the countryside to city. This makes of England two nations: the gap
between the rich and the poor brings tensions and conflicts. The Victorian age is an age of

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2018-2019 L.G.D.
satisfaction and anxiety, an age of progress but of nostalgia too, tending to look back to
the past. Also, there are social movements advocating children’s rights.
B) The question of religious belief
Another paradox takes place at the same time: the paradox of having faith, but of being
skeptic. They’re not only skeptical to the religious institution but of the faith. There’s a
reawakening of religious piety -protestant evangelism-. There were social movements that
tried to rescue people from the streets: homeless people, prostitutes… also there are
developments in science and philosophy, a raise in free thinking and agnosticism. The main
name in science is Darwin (The Origin of the Species).
C) The woman question
There’s tension with the patriarchal society. There’s unequal education and employment
opportunities. There’s no access to University: they could assist -mainly with the excuse of
finding a good husband, which was a very interiorized belief-, but they couldn’t get a
degree. But there were reforms that palliated women’s oppression.
The nature of women during this period tries to be explained in The Angel in the House
(1854), by C. Patmore. This literary work tries to assure the belonging of the women to the
house and her efficiency with the household chores -I personally think that this work is
quite similar of that manual published by the Spanish party Falange on how to be the
perfect wife-.
We have lots of periodicals, influenced by all kinds of rides of different issues. They’re serial
publications (¿?)
It’s the age of the essay because…
Natural medium of ideas and debate
Wide range of matters
Well-known essayists: Mill, Ruskin, Arnold…
The novel is the perfect format to reflect the changes of the époque because…
All perspectives and Inclusiveness Topicality Responsiveness
classes could be
included
Entertainment and ideas (“dulce et utile” (*) There’s a peak of children’s literature
The dominant form at the time was the novel, in fact, it influences even poetry: during this
period, we have long narrative poems. Novels responded to their time, all the issues will take
part in the novels.
Aesthetics
Topic: conflict between self and society
Realism: compliance, conformity
Increasingly fractures and impressionistic: dialogism, heteroglossia
Gothic fiction + Romanticism are resilient presences
The forerunners of the Victorian novel

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Miriam Borham
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The realistic Non-realistic
Jane Austen Walter Scott
Novels of manners (Missing notes)
Coming-of-age
Subtle irony + rhythm
3rd p. point of view
Omniscient narrator
Free indirect speech
Formal realism / verisimilitude

A. Complex characters
B. Plausible events → external coherence
C. The-matter-of-fact description of the commonplace and everyday life
Society is well represented, lots of details are included in the representation of a social world
with its variety of classes and the exploration of all kinds of social issues. Sometimes we find
ironic descriptions of society’s focus on status, money and appearance.
There was “industrial” novel in which the writers addressed the working conditions of women
and children. The protagonist who tries to define his/her place IN society. A good example is G.
Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.
What kind of plot do we have? Bildungsroman. Development of the characters (…¿?) there’s
no standard ending, it could be tragic regression. Women’s bildungsroman exists as subgenre.
The multiplot novel offers a wide range of social comment.
Both realistic + non-realistic
Banned “dirty” matters and sex
Covert ways of meaning or merely elision
Moral judgments (fallen women)
Morality through authorial comment or the endings
Vehicle for moral teaching and moral values
Seen in Dickens, Eliot, Thackerey, C. Brontë…
Narration
Identification between author-narrator
His morals + ideology are supported by action + word
Omniscient narrator. Two types: Quite and unobtrusive / Obtrusive
• This genre is influenced by a less realistic fiction (Walter Scott, Gothic fiction…).
• It has a more picturesque, fantastic or heroic presentation of reality.
• It presents complexities of human experience and romance, which leads to romantic
realism/impulse.
• Also, it shows a romantic side of urban daily life, as seen in Dickens.
• There are Gothic and Romantic elements.
• Realistic romances, escapist literature.
The Gothic represents what’s hidden

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Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
• Paradox: represents elements of the social and political world, but also hidden
realities.
• Parasite: the Gothic remains in literary forms, it puts past and present in
communication
Romantic novels
• Romance blended with realism, not romances but romantic novels.

• It survives in popular genres and escapist literature.
• Sensation or mystery novels (Wilkie Collins)
• Adventure novels (Robert L. Stevenson)
• Fantasies (Lewis Carroll)
• Victorian Gothic (Bram Stoker)
Jane Eyre as example
• Isolation in the characters, they’re outcast imprisoned. Isolation as imprisonment.
• Characters as castles.
• Gothic character: Rochester’s mad wife Bertha.
• Intensity and strangeness: “lesser known realities”.
• Psychological interiority.
• New form of psychology.
(*) Jane herself tells the tale of Rebellion against her outcast (¿?)
Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Jane Eyre’s events, told from the perspective of
Bertha and we see how both Jane and Bertha share the same oppression. New Victorian
novels focus on the hidden voices -homosexuals, ghosts…-
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

We see Pip’s development through his life. It’s a story of moral redemption, Pip matures and
improves. The money marks his decay, he doesn’t achieve the integration in society. He’s
nowhere: he’s below the aristocrats and old fortunes, but over his family. His expectations
have dissolved, but he grows. He learns that the easy money comes at a price, he mistakes his
own worth. Pip feels superior, entitled to receive the money. He has to earn the money to be a
useful member of society, so he changes and admits his distorted perceptions -like his opinion
of Herbert-. The change in Pip is symbolized in Magwitch, he rejects his hands, but during the
trial he holds them.
Narrator: like Moll Flanders. Narrating eye, protagonist later in life justifies himself.
Themes:
1. Critic of society: shows what’s hidden behind the fantasies of love and wealth, greed,
desperation for power… and how manners indicate the direction of the soul of man and his
morals.
2. Expectations: Pip lives as a parasite. London symbolizes the ultimate expectation. He gets so
close to losing all dignity, but the nearer he gets to his dreams.
3. Money: Money without work corrupts the soul. Pip is so obsessed to earn it without working
that he turns into a horrible man.
Identity: Pip’s fear and shame, and sense of inadequacy at any patron, because for most of the
novel he is useless for work and doesn’t form part of the society.

Viorica Patea
Miriam Borham
2018-2019 L.G.D.
Doubles: dichotomies between characters.
Condition of England question:
• Trade
• Justice
• Class and immobility: Mrs. Pocket obsession with titles, gentlemen and society.
• Magwitch (?): what makes someone a criminal
• Miss Havisham: she represents immobility and lack of change. She turns into a mad
woman. She represents Gothic elements, with the language of haunted associated
with her, embodying the past that haunts Pip.
• Estella: her role is dismantling Pip’s illusions. Dulcinea of Pip’s mind. She’s a paradox:
Pip is ashamed that she would know his connections to Newgate when her parents are
both criminals. She entraps men, but she is entrapped and a victim of abuse. Is she a
femme fatale? There are references to Frankenstein related to her, she’s described as
Miss Havisham’s “creation”.

Maymaynot: Romanticism-Notes - Poems PDF

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4º Literatura Inglesa: Romanticismo y Época Victoriana

Grado en Estudios Ingleses

- Romantic: Emotional matters presented in an imagined form. Poetry had to be

Stendhal, Racine and Boileau are rationalists.

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William Blake (1757-1827)

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“To Thomas Butts”

Identifies nature with men (seen from afar).

“The Echoing Green” (from Songs of Innocence)

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“London” (from Songs of Innocence)

“The Lamb” (from Songs of Innocence)

“The Tiger” (from Songs of Experience)

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“Dread”: between admiration and fear.

“Symmetry” Same word used at the first and last paragraph.

“Nurse’s Song” (from Songs of Innocence)

“Nurse’s Song” (from Songs of Experience)

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I think that the spring means youth and winter elderliness.

“Holy Thursday” (from Songs of Innocence)

“Red & blue & green” are the uniform colors.

“…beadles…” the authority figures for chastising/confining.

“Holy Thursday” (from Songs of Experience)

“The Chimney Sweeper” (From Songs of Innocence)

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He’s not the same innocent narrator of the previous poem.

Church condemns social injustice, but here it is found to be the opposite.

“The Blossom” (from Songs of Innocence)

The narrator just feels happy.

The landscape and the environment represent love, innocence, happiness…

“The sick rose” (from Songs of Experience)

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“The Divine Image” (from Songs of Innocence)

“The human abstract” (from Songs of Experience)

“…fruit of Deceit” is imagination

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William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

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“We Are Seven”

Paragraph 11: She still incorporates her siblings to her life.

“Expostulation and Reply”

Paragraph 6: We can learn better by experiencing nature passively than in books.

“The Tables Turned”

“Up! Up!” Alluring friend to stop reading.

Paragraph 7: Analytical thinking/intellectual knowledge murders the beauty of nature, the

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Composed by the side of Grasmere Lake

It has a neoclassical style.

Composed upon Westminster Bridge

Composed in 1804. “I wandered…”

The poem is settled in spring: the daffodils bloom in spring.

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Composed 1799, published in 1800 (She dwelt…)

Composed in 1799 (A slumber…)

Verses 3-4: not affected by time, seems vital.

Again, a love poem turned into an elegy.

Tintern Abbey (Lines)

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Loss has recompense.