Byron, Shelley and

Keats
Portraits, Landscapes,
Manuscripts, Poetry
 George Gordon, Lord Byron:
1788-1824
 Acquires his title at
age 10 from his great-
uncle the “wicked Lord
Byron.”
 Sixth Baron Byron of
Rochdale
 Inherits Newstead Abbey
 1801: attends Harrow
 1805: Cambridge
 Meets his half sister
Augusta during this
period
 1807: First volume of
poetry Hours of
Idleness
 Byron: 1807-1815
 1807: Byron departs on his grand
tour—to Lisbon, Spain, Greece,
Turkey and Albania. Begins work
on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
 Excellent swimmer: Tajo,
Dardanelos, Gran Canal
 Mahmoud I, sultan of the Ottomane
Empire, thinks Byron is a woman
 1811: At 24, Byron returns to
London. Seat at the House of
Lords: too liberal a politician
 Famous speech in opposition to
religion
 1812: The first two cantos of
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
published: "I awoke and found
myself famous."
 1814: The Corsair
 1815: Hebrew Melodies
 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
 Byron’s first literary triumph
 Published 1812-1818

 Dedicated to Charlotte Harley

 Consists of 4 cantos

 The travels of a world-weary young man

 Childe – a young man who was a candidate for

knighthood
 Colorful descriptions of exotic nature, a lyrical
exaltation of freedom, lonely hero
 The “mad-bad- and dangerous” Lord
Byron
 His poetry translated to all
major European languages
 Liaisons with Lady Caroline
Lamb (very brief), but
already part of the Byronic
hero myth
 Then Lady Oxford
 Scandal and gossip about his
relationship with Augusta,
whose child is named Medora
(heroine of The Corsair)
 1815: Marries Annabella
Milbanke
 Annabella leaves a few weeks
after the birth of Augusta
Ada
The Countess of Oxford
and Caroline Lamb
 Byron: 1816-1819
 1816: Byron settles in
Geneva, near Percy and
Mary Shelley, and Claire
Clairmont.
 1817: begins work on
Manfred
 Leaves for Venice
Continues work on the
third and fourth cantos
of Childe Harold
 Sells Newstead Abbey for
£ 94,500
 1819: First two cantos
of Don Juan
 Byron: 1819-1824
 1819: Meets Countess Teresa
Guiccioli and her Carbonari
family
 1821: Publishes another
mystery play, Cain
 Robert Southey (Poet
Laurate) follows with his
comment on “the Satanic
School.”
 Byron publishes The Vision
of Judgment, a rebuttal to
Southey.
 1823: Joins the Greek war
of independence.
 Falls ill in 1824 and dies
in April at the age of 36.
 The Byronic Hero
 Goethe’s Faust Part one is
published in 1808.
 In Geneva, Byron meets M.G.
Lewis author of The Monk who
translates Faust.
 Part Two of Goethe’s Faust
is published posthumously in
1832.
 The figure of Goethe’s
Euphorion is based on Byron.
 Goethe: “Byron is not
antique and is not romantic,
but he is the present day
itself. Such a one I had to
have. Moreover, he was just
my man on account of his
unsatisfied nature and of
his warlike bent, which led
him to his doom at
Missolonghi.”
Annabella Milbanke
Byron and Annabella
were married on
January 2nd 1815.
On the wedding
night, Byron awoke,
saw a candle
burning on the other
side of the scarlet
bed-curtains, and
exclaimed, "Good
God! I am fairly in
Hades, with
Proserpina by my
side!"
Augusta Ada Byron (remembered as
the first computer programmer)
Countess Teresa Guccioli
Villa Diodati
 Don Juan
CANTO THE FIRST

I WANT a hero: an uncommon want,

When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I ‘ll therefore take our ancient friend Don JuanWe
all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

Necesito un héroe, necesidad poco común en estos tiempos,

en que, a cada año, a cada mes, surge uno nuevo
hasta que, llena de alabanzas suyas las gacetas,
el siglo averigua que no es áquel un héroe de verdad.
Ninguno de estos me conviene.
But now at thirty years my hair is
grey
(I wonder what it will be like at
forty?
I thought of a peruke the other
day)—
My heart is not much greener; and,
in short, I
Have squander'd my whole summer
while 't was
May,
And feel no more the spirit to
retort
She walks in beauty
Ella camina en la belleza, como la noche
De cimas despejadas y noches estrelladas
Y lo mejor de lo oscuro y lo brillante
Se encuentran en sus rasgos y en sus ojos
Asi, suavizados bajo la tierna luz
Que el cielo al llamativo día niega

Una sombra más, un rayo de luz menos

Tenían la mitad de la mermada e innombrable
elegancia
que las olas con las que todos los cuervos
trenzan de suaves haces de luz, oh, su rostro
Donde los pensamientos sueve y dulcemente se
expresan.
Qué pura, qué querida para ellos su morada

Y en su mejilla y en su ceja,
Tan suave, tan calma y aún elocuente
La sonrisa que gana, los tonos que
resplandecen,
Pero dile de los días de bondad pasados
Una mente en paz con todo por debajo,
¡Un corazón cuyo amor es inocente!
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Joseph Severn,
Shelley in the baths of Caracalla, 1845,
Rome, Keats-Shelley Memorial House
• Born in Sussex in 1792.
• Studied at Oxford University
from which he was expelled
because of a radical pamphlet,
The Necessity of Atheism.
• Married to 16-year-old Harriet
Westbrook. Some years later he
ran away with Mary Godwin,
daughter of William Godwin.
• In 1818 Shelley and Mary left
England and settled in Italy.
• Died in 1822 while sailing in the
Bay of Spezia, near Lerici.
 University College
(Shelley’s College at Oxford)
Louis Edouard Fournier, The Cremation of Shelley, 1889
 Shelley and Faith
 Shelley sought the Divine in nature
 Expelled from Oxford for
distributing pamphlet on necessity
of atheism
 He studied other religions,
worshipped the intellect as the
Divine capability in individual
men, and saw in nature and in each
act of human emotion an expression
of the sublimity he sought.
Shelley’s works reveal:

• his restless spirit;

• his refusal of social conventions

and political oppression;

• his faith in a better future.

He believed in freedom and love: the

remedies for the faults and evils of
society.

Through love man could overcome any

political, moral and social conventions.
Main works
1917 The Revolt of Islam,
a revolutionary poem about
the power of love.

1918 Ode to the West Wind

1919 The Cenci, a verse tragedy

1920 Prometheus Unbound,

a lyrical drama dealing with
the theme of intellectual
rebellion

1921 A Defence of Poetry, an

unfinished essay concerning
the importance of poetry
 Shelley’s poetry

Poetry

the expression of understood as revolutionary

imagination creativity, seriously meant to
change the reality of an
increasingly material world
 Intellectual Beauty
 His "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"
showcases this search for divinity
in the "Spirit of beauty”.
 He recollects his days as a boy
listening for ghosts and seeking
terrors as a preliminary seeking
for what he desires, and talks
about his devotion to "Awful
loveliness” as a source of
inspiration.
 Shelley and Nature

Unlike Wordsworth, it is not the real

Nature
world.

It is a beautiful veil that hides the

eternal truth of the Divine Spirit.

It provides the poet with beautiful

images, such as the wind.

The favourite refuge from the The interlocutor of the poet’s

disappointment and injustice of melancholy dreams and of his
the ordinary world. hopes for a better future.
Shelley the Reviser
 The poet’s task

The poet is

• a prophet;

• a Titan challenging the

cosmos.

His task is to help mankind to

reach an ideal world where
freedom, love and beauty are
delivered from tyranny,
destruction and alienation.
Conocí a un viajero de una tierra antigua
que dijo: «Dos enormes piernas pétreas, sin su
tronco
se yerguen en el desierto. A su lado, en la
arena,
semihundido, yace un rostro hecho pedazos, cuyo
ceño
y mueca en la boca, y desdén de frío dominio,
cuentan que su escultor comprendió bien esas
pasiones
las cuales aún sobreviven, grabadas en estos
inertes objetos,
a las manos que las tallaron y al corazón que
las alimentó.
Y en el pedestal se leen estas palabras:
“Mi nombre es Ozymandias, rey de reyes:
¡Contemplad mis obras, poderosos, y
desesperad!”
Nada queda a su lado. Alrededor de la
decadencia
de estas colosales ruinas, infinitas y desnudas
se extienden, a lo lejos, las solitarias y
llanas arenas.»
 Ozymandias and the ruins that
inspired it

• Majorconcern of later Romantics is Mutability--the

Mutability--the inevitability of
change, the knowledge that nothing can be constant, the eroding of belief
that anything man-made (whether physical or cultural) can be eternal, and
the very human need to believe in something immortal anyway.
 I

Salvaje viento del oeste, aliento del otoñal ente,

tú, que invisible arrastras las hojas secas

que huyen cual fantasmas de un hechicero silente

Amarillas, negras, pálidas y rojas coléricas;

por multitudes enfermas. Oh, tú, suave viento,

que llevaste a su oscuro lecho de invierno

las aladas semillas, humildes y frías

que yacen en sus tumbas, cual cuerpos muertos, hasta

que la primavera azul, hermana tuya, hace oír

su clarín sobre la soñolienta tierra y llena

(trayendo dulces brotes que del aire se alimentan)

llanuras y colinas de colores y aromas:

Espíritu salvaje que viajas por la tierra,

Muerte y Vida, ¡escucha, escucha!

 Shelley’s Grave
in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome
 Shelley’s Memorial at Univ.--
(tucked into a niche next to the college laundry); or
“How do we honor an embarrassing graduate? ”
 Drunk History
 https://www.yout
ube.com/watch?v=
_rawk6jsILQ
 https
://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=
KNcwpHw_Oa0
John Keats, c. 1816
John Keats
Main works
Keats’ poetry
Keats and imagination
Keats and beauty
The poet according to
Keats
Manuscript of “Chapman’s Homer”
Mucho he viajado por los dominios del
oro,
y muchos reinos y estados hermosos he
visto;
alrededor de muchas islas occidentales
estuve
que poetas en lealtad defienden para
Apolo.

A menudo me han hablado de un vasto

espacio
que el profundo Homero gobernó como
heredad;
pero nunca respiré su pura serenidad
hasta que escuché a Chapman hablar
recio y osado:

entonces me sentí como un observador de

los cielos
cuando un nuevo astro deslízase en su
visión;
como el fornido Cortés cuando con ojos
aquilinos

miró al Pacífico; y todos sus hombres

miráronse entre sí con desenfrenada
conjetura:
Imagery in Keats
Elgin Marbles
 “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
(in brother George’s handwriting)
 Ode to a Grecian Urn
 Defiant challenge to mutability in a
celebration of the art that preserves
human culture and emotion--"Heard
melodies are sweet, but those unheard /
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes,
play on”
 One of the most perplexing statements
of Romantic aesthetic criticism ever
written: "Beauty is truth, truth
beauty;--that is all Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know”
“Ode to Autumn”
 Romantic melancholy
 In “To Autumn” there is a deepening
sense that Keats had accepted
mutability as a dominant
force----"she dwells with Beauty--
Beauty that must die" (442)
 The beautiful ubi sunt passage that
makes up the last stanza of To
Autumn.
Keats and Fanny Brawne
 Keats’ Literary Criticism
 The poet's negative capability--the ability to live
"in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any
irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
 The poet to be able to take himself out of the
poem, to refuse the temptation to impose his
personality on it to gain closure, to "remain
content with half knowledge”.
 Keats contrasts this with Wordsworth's
"egotistical sublime," the need for the poet to put
his own experience at the center of everything.
 The poet is able to project himself into various
personalities and situations; this is what Keats
described as the ‘camelion [chameleon] poet’.
 Keats' letter to Percy Shelley is both a
masterpiece of appreciation and also a carefully
nuanced statement of the differences between
the two poets.
 Keats tells Shelley to "load every rift of your
subject with ore” --an exhortation for Shelley to
focus his genius and artistry.
Severn’s Last Sketch
Keats-Shelley House (Rome)
& his death mask
Keats’ Tomb in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome