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Romanticism

Romanticism can be divided in two generations the first of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and the
second of Shelley, Keats, and Byron.
Differences
The first generation didn't find a place for an industrialized English society and tried to escape in order to
find relief in nature. The second generation was more politically committed and they had some aspects in
common like the fact that they died all young, and left England for good (for ever), and went to Italy,
Switzerland, and Greece. Keats died in Rome of consumption (tuberculosis). Shelley died in a sea storm
near Lerici and was burnt on the shore. Whereas Byron was the most politically committed, he supported
Carbonari movement in Italy, and supported the fight of Greeks against the Turcs, and died of fever in
Missolunghi. His heart and his lungs were buried in Greece.
Keats
Poets of the first generation tried to escape from the ugliness of industrialization: Keats took refuge in art,
for instance he may be considered as an aesthete, even if he didn't considered art for art's sake, but he
attributed a moral value to art.
Ode on a Grecian urn: "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty"-> he attributes to beauty a moral value in this
sense.
Shelley
This poet was an anarchist influenced by Mary Shelley father, a philosopher William Godwin.
He considered Nature in its strongest aspect like Blake was against any kind of institution, wanted to be
free spirit, this aspect ca be seen in his "Prometheus unbound" (unchained).
In "Ode to the West Wind" written near the Arno, which a storm is approached the wind it's seen as
strength which brings new life: Shelley is in a moment of distress (in moral and physical terms) and asks
the wind to make him a new man, to give him a new strength.
Coleridge suffered from pain and soothed it with oppium.
Lake District: place for inspiration, surrounded by lakes and woods, where Coleridge was brought by
Wordsworth.
Lyrical Ballade: -Wordsworth contributed with poem of Nature.
-Coleridge instead contributed with poem of super-nature.
This division of the tasks were written in Coleridge's "Biografia literaria", a collection of literal criticism.
First edition in 1798 and second in 1800 with two additions.
1800: Wordsworth preface
This preface has became a manifesto of English Romanticism, here he states the principles of
Romanticism:
- According to Wordsworth and Coleridge poetry had to be simple and written with every day language
so that every body could understand poem and the message.
- The poem should talk about every day life, incidents, the desire for mainly poetry, accessible for
everybody, derived from principles of French Revolution (fraternity, equality, and freedom).
What poetry should be:
- Emotions recollected in tranquility, Wordsworth said that we must not wright under the influence of
emotions, but in the end of that emotional moment, after it. We have to enjoy the emotion and later on
the back of the emotion after write about it.
- An other point is the role of the poet, seen as a prophet because he is the only one with the child able
to understand the message of Nature, but he believed is not able to transmit the message. The poet
has the message to transmit the message that's why he becomes a prophet.

- Nature: is the start up point for a new life, in nature there is the real eye through it we can establish a

contact with God. Nature give us the possibility to reach the message left is to preserve Nature, if we
want o preserve our life. According to Wordsworth we have a universe vision because of pantheistic
vision and only when we are innocent and we are able to be part of the universal soul.

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