romantic poetry john keats and percy bysshe shelley

Romantic PoetryRomantic Poetry

John Keats and Percy Bysshe John Keats and Percy Bysshe ShelleyShelley

OutlineOutline

• John Keats; the odes

• Ode on a Grecian Urn

• “Bright Star”

• “La Belle Dame san merci”

• “Ozymandias”

• Notes

• Lord Byron: “She Walks in Beauty” (for reference)

Romantic AgeRomantic AgeFirst Generation: The emphasis on • Idealism & Quest

– Wordsworth: Nature and correspondence between Nature and human nature (e.g. US – Whitman, Dickinson)

– Wordsworth: Common people (“London”)– “Natural Supernaturalism” –Coleridge and Blake: Art

(“Tiger”), Imagination & Vision (“Kubla Khan” “The Rime of Ancient Mariner”)

• Feeling (“spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” “emotion recollected in tranquility”)

• Individualism vs. (e.g. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and “Rose”)

Romantic AgeRomantic Age2nd Generation: The emphasis on

– Feeling – Art & Imagination (e.g. “Ode on a Grecian

Urn”) & Vision– Individualism & Quest for the remote (myth)– Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the

sensual, the moral); – against authority (“Ozymandias”)

John KeatsJohn Keats

• October 31, 1795-February 23, 1821; died at the age of 25 of tuberculosis . Published only 54 poems.

• Originally a surgeon (apothecary-surgeon) and changed his mind in 1813-1814.

• Literary Creation: 1816 – 1821 [love with Fanny Browne 1818- the odes 1819] poverty

• 1820 –symptoms of TB; • 1821 -- "Here lies one whose name

was writ in water." • Major Ideas: Life as “the Vale of

soul-making.” Shakespeare with “negative capability” (like a chameleon變色龍— imaginative identification with the other).

Keats’ Great OdesKeats’ Great Odes

1. “Ode to Psyche”--the goddess

Psyche in the arms of Cupid

2. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” – art

3. “Ode to a Nightingale” --art

5. “Ode on Indolence”

6. 'To Autumn‘ – a finale

• 4. “Ode on Melancholy”She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

• Journey to (or Quest) artistic eternity and transcendence and return to the mortal world

Ode on a Grecian UrnOde on a Grecian Urn1. Pay attention to a) the form of address

(apostrophe) and the object of address in different stanzas, which imply the speaker’s different relations with the urn;

2. Pay attention to the use of metaphors in calling/describing the urn;

3. The two sides of the urn: their differences and similarities

4. The closing lines—how to interpret them.

STANZA ISTANZA I

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? (1)

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Blue—metaphor;red– sound

Underline-- rhetoric skills: questions

Blue—metaphor;red– sound

Underline-- rhetoric skills: questions

STANZA IISTANZA II

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Blue—metaphor;Red – sound

Underline-- rhetoric skills:Imperative, concession,

repetition

Blue—metaphor;Red – sound

Underline-- rhetoric skills:Imperative, concession,

repetition

STANZA IIISTANZA III

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Blue—metaphor;Orange – sound

Underline-- rhetoric skills:Exclamation; repetition



STANZA IVSTANZA IV

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

Blue—subjects;Orange – sound


Blue—subjects;Orange – sound


STANZA VSTANZA V

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.





Ode on a Grecian UrnOde on a Grecian Urn

1. Using apostrophe to speak to the Urn in order to enter its realm (the realm of art and permanence);

2. The process: question empathy confirmation differentiation between the human and the artistic.

Ode on a Grecian UrnOde on a Grecian Urn1. Using apostrophe to address and speak to the

Urn in order to “enter” its realm (the realm of art and permanence);

• The Emphathic（神入﹚ /Ekphrastic (讀畫／藝術作品 ) Process:

1) approach: question understanding confirmation

2) differentiation between the human and the artistic – A Creative Process: * After all, the urn is just an ancient utensil; Keats

creates its “artistic” meanings by teasing out the dualities between time and timelessness/frozen moments, sound and silence, thinking and thoughtlessness, the static and the eternal.

Note (1)Note (1)• Tempe and Arcady: considered as heavenly

paradise in Greece, frequently mentioned in pastoral poems; symbol of artistic realm.

• Sylvan – of the forest; shady

Note (2)Note (2)• Ekphrasis: poetic writing concerning itself with

the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly visual scenes (source)

• Examples: “Musee des beaux arts” “Ozymandias” “My Last Duchess”

• Issues: – art and life; – different languages of art (an inter-art approach):

temporal/kinetic arts (verbal, filmic) art vs. static (visual vs. plastic)

– Possibilities of re-creation with different messages.

Ode on a Grecian Urn as an Ode on a Grecian Urn as an Ekphrastic poem Ekphrastic poem

• Keats first appreciates the values of plastic art which eternalizes one (frozen) moment;

• With the reading of the funeral procession, he places it back to the temporal flow.

• There is then a contrast between the urn’s beauty and truth, and those of humans’ mortal world.

““Bright Star” Bright Star” Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moorsNo—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

hermit

cleansingCosmic, religious

““Bright Star” Bright Star” 1. Paradoxes?

Between steadfastness and mortality (unrest, fall and swell, death)

No, yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

2. Poetic Form?

abab, cdcd, efgfhh

Between Shakespearean (rhyme) and Italian sonnet (form)

““Bright Star” In Context (1)Bright Star” In Context (1)

• The poem was written by Keats in 1819 and revised it in 1820, perhaps on the (final) voyage to Italy (a common treatment for tuberculosis, a trip to Italy).

• Keats was aware that he was dying. Some critics have theorized that this poem was addressed to his fiance, Fanny Brawne, and connect the poem to his May 3, 1818 letter to her.

Ode on Melancholy (1819)Ode on Melancholy (1819)

She [Melancholy] dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

The Film The Film Bright Star Bright Star

Bright star 01:12, 1:52

La Belle Dame Sans Merci 01:22

01:40:22,216 --Let's pretend I will return in spring.

La Belle Dame Sans Mercy La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 1819)1819)

Sir Frank Dicksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci, based upon John Keats’ poem (source)

La Belle Dame Sans Mercy La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 1819)1819)

1) How does the speaker present the knight? And the knight, the lady?

2) Why are the last lines repetitions of the first stanza? "though the sedge is wither'd from the lake / And no birds sing." Note that they are spoken first by the narrator, and at the end, by the knight.

3) What role does “dream” play in this poem?

4) Pay attention to the effects of alliteration

5) In what ways is this poem (as a literary ballad) different fold ballad?

1-3: Speaker to a pale knight 1-3: Speaker to a pale knight I

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has wither’d from the lake,

And no birds sing.

II

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

And the harvest’s done.

III

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

narrator

Lily = pale white

4-9: The knight about4-9: The knight aboutIV

I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful—a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

V.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look’d at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

VI.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A faery’s song.

The knight’s narration

the beautiful fairy-like Lady: images of fairy, flower, sweet root, moan and song, wildness

The knight left aloneThe knight left aloneVII.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew,

And sure in language strange she said— “I love thee true.”

VIII.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

IX.

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dream’d

On the cold hill’s side.

Dream cold hill

精靈洞穴

The knight aloneThe knight aloneX

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

XI.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke and found me here,

On the cold hill’s side.

XII.

And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,

And no birds sing.

黃昏

Dream cold hill, knights

Awake on the cold hill’s side

cold hill bot h in the dream and

awake/

Interpretations Interpretations

1. The knight – ill, fatigued and/or diseased

-- The lady – in foreign tongue, beautiful but unreal (like a fairy)

2. Image – late autumn, withered plants,

-- the ambience of a dream: he wakes to find himself in the dreamscape.

3. Sound and sense – sadness, obsession (e.g. the use of alliteration and nasal sounds-- woebegone, gloam.)

a. Unrequited love – 衣帶漸寬終不悔，為伊消得人憔悴b. Impossible love – with Fanny Browne

c. Impossible quest for some ideal (in illness)

Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley

• eloped with the 16-year old Harriet Westbrook; disinherited because of this marriage.

• In 1814, Shelley traveled abroad with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the philosopher and anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836). Harriet committed suicide, and then Shelley married Mary.

• Shelley was Drowned in 1822.

Ozymandias Ozymandias

• The use of frames: the traveler’s story

• Contradictions used to present the ironies of human ambition: – shatter visage frown and sneer; – Passion on “these lifeless things” survives

“the hand” and “the heart” (whose heart?) – “colossal” wreck –boundless sand.

The Romantics: The Big SixThe Romantics: The Big Six

• William Blake (1757-1827)

• Willliam Wordsworth (1770-1850)

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

• John Keats (1795-1821) -- died at the age of 25

• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) -- died at the age of 29

• Lord Byron (1788-1824) –age 36

Mary Shelley 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851)

Art in the Romantic AgeArt in the Romantic Age

The First Generation: The emphasis on 1. Inspired by French Revolution2. Nature and the Natural:

1. correspondence between Nature and human nature (e.g. US – Whitman, Dickinson)

2. Democracy: Common and Rustic (鄉下的 ) people

3. Feelings (“spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling”)

4. Imagination and Vision (e.g. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”) & Vision

– Individualism & Quest –so called “Natural Supernaturalism”

Art in the Romantic AgeArt in the Romantic Age

The 2nd Generation: The emphasis on 1. Feelings – Free Love 2. Art & Imagination (e.g. “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) &

Vision– Individualism & Quest for the remote (myth)

3. More Radical– Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the sensual, the

moral); – against authority (“Ozymandias”) – Romantic or Satanic Hero ( Frankenstein)

4. (Lyrics) narrative poems

Victorian Poetry Victorian Poetry

More dramatic, less visionary—sometimes sadder

• Influenced by the Romantics, but there is usually a conflict between their need for conveying personal emotions and their sense of social responsibility (educational) —esp in Tennyson.

• Influenced by the popularity of novels at the time dramatic monologue and narrative poems (e.g. Idylls of the Kings—Arthurian legends)

• Late Victorians – the Pre-Raphaelites, Thomas Hardy and Matthew Arnold

Ozymandias –Starting Ozymandias –Starting Questions Questions

• Main Idea and Ironies? – How is Ozymandias described?

• The poem’s form? – an Italian sonnet (octave + sestet).– Narrative frame: the use of the narrator

Ozymandias Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert....Near them, on the sand,Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal, these words appear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away."

image

(Rhyme: ABAB ACDC EDEFEF).

I the Poem –the one that survives

The narrative framesThe narrative framesthe effect of the effect of distantiationdistantiation

• “Survival” and death:

traveler

• “Survival” and death:

traveler

Lives: the other kingsOzymandias

his heart and the sculptor’s hand

passions on the sculpture + lifeless sculpture

sand

Ozymandias: Historical Context Ozymandias: Historical Context (1)(1)

• Its title: Ramesses the Great (i.e., Ramesses II), Pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. Ozymandias –the Greek version of his throne name.

• The inscription on the pedestal of his statue: "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works." (image and info source)

• Shelley’s reading: wrinkled lip …

Ramesses II

Front view of the temple of Ramesses II in Abu Simbel, Egypt

Ozymandias: Historical Context Ozymandias: Historical Context (2)(2)

• The poem: Written in 1817, three years after the Waterloo in 1815 (which brought Napoleon's conquest to a stop). (source)

• Shelley’s other poem: “Ode to the West Wind”

• What inspired the poem: The 'Younger Memnon' statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum an example of British colonialism

Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley • A radical thinker and pronounced atheist

• Supporter of free love • Eloped first with Harriet, and then with

Mary Godwin Shelley (as well as her step-sister, when both were 16).

• Set up a “radical community of friends” who shared everything with one another.

• Two family suicides (one of Harriet, the other Mary’s half sister)

• 1816-- the completion of Frankenstein.

• 1821-- Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned at sea, aged 29.

Lord Byron Lord Byron • See the video• Born with a clubfoot • Child Harold – the

disparity between Romantic ideals and reality

• Involved in affairs with a married woman and his half sister.

portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian dress by Thomas Phillips, c1835 (source)

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTYSHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

1. How is “she” described? With what images (of contradictions)? What does beauty means? And “walk”?

2. How do the sound effects help convey the meanings of the poem?


SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZvgp14MFc (Vanity Fair: opening ) Reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8kwvhsT850


One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impair'd the nameless grace,

Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.


And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace at all below, A heart whose love is innocent !


she – sheds ‘tender’ light (combines darkness and

light//aspect and eyes//appearance, heart and thought.)

-- grace in motion on her dress and her face, and expressive of her pure mind and thought.

-- cheeks and smile glow to reveal her goodness, mind and heart.

rhythm: iambs with one trochee Sounds: [m] [s] [o] [e]

romantic poetry john keats and percy bysshe shelley

Documents

grecian urn art

rose slide

reference slide

odesthe odes ode

authority ozymandias

mortal world slide

grecian urn bright star

romantic age