Nov 18 2009
Task for Session 6
As I already told the remaining group of students last time, I decided to not give you a power point presentation on the authors and topics we’re working with right now (at least I will not give them to you now, maybe later). I think this takes too much out of the seminar and leaves nothing for you. So in order not to be that selfish I think that you can give us some info concerning authors and topics. Thus for our next session please inform us about one of the following names or terms. Take care that not more than two students work on one term/name. There is enough for everone. And especially when it comes to giving facts: Mind your sources!!
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lord Byron
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
the Gothic
Dark Romanticism
ode
first and second generation of Romantic writers
Prometheus
28 responses so far
stkruege
In the following I want to tell something about Lord Byron.
George Gordon Byron was born in London on 22 January 1788 and died in 1824. He was very famous for his Romantic and satiric poetry and is still the most read English author after Shakespeare.
Byron started to write poems when he was a teenager. His poems were short and written on specific occasions to particular people. He attempted to seduce women, argue with enemies or friends or set down his response to events of the day. But most of his poems were at first love poems, which changed into more melancholy lyrics after a while.
Byron’s poetry has traditionally been considered as part of the radical tradition. His verse inspired young revolutionaries throwing off oppressive regimes throughout nineteenth-century Europe.
Byron was not only a writer, but he also was active in politics. In January 1809 he intended to take an active part in opposition politics by taking his seat in the House of Lords.
There are several literary works written by Byron, e.g. Don Juan (1823), Beppo (1818), Manfred (1817) and Lara (1814).
For Byron his death in 1824 was the solution of an existential problem. He didn’t manage to reach from literature to real action. He couldn’t do his own thing in the time he lived, which was the main reason for his deep melancholy.
After his death Goethe and Heinrich Heine erected a memorial for Byron, Goethe in “Faust” and Heine in a poem he had written.
Sources:
Caroline Franklin, Byron, 2007
Drummond Bone, The Cambridge companion to Byron, 2004
I would like to give some information on “ode”.
An ode is a literary term for a lyric poem of a moderate length which is often used to praise people, the arts of music and poetry, natural scenes, or abstract concepts. The first great writer of odes was Pindar, but more simple were the lyrical odes of Horace. For this reason there are two different, classical types of odes known: in Greek, devoted to public praise of athletes (Pindar) and in Latin, Horace’s more privately reflective odes. Both differ in form, Horace wrote in regular stanzas whereas Pindar used a chorus, varied the length lines and had a more complex structure. These classical form has been taken up in the 19th century by authors like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. These authors are representatives of the more personal type of odes.
In our context of Romanticism I found a quote which says: “The Romantic poets used the ode to explore both personal or general problems; they often started with a meditation on something in nature”
Sources:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html, 19.11.2009
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Universitatsbibliothek Osnabrück. 19.11. 2009
World Encyclopedia. Philip’s, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Universitatsbibliothek Osnabrück. 19.11.2009
I would like to give some information about the poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
He was born at Cockermouth (England) in 1770. During his boyhood he lost both his mother and his father: His mother died when he was eight and his father died when he was 13. Despite the fact that his father , who prematurely cut off, left not much for the support of his family, William and his family were well educated, because their uncles helped them. Wordsworth graduated at St. John’s College (Cambridge) in 1791. In 1790 he took a walking tour on the continent where he visited France during the Revolution. Wordsworth can be seen as a sympathizer with the French Revolution.
His first publication “Descriptive Sketches of a Pedestrian Tour in the Alps” and “The Evening Walk” appeared in 1793, but they did not attract much attention.
His addiction to poetry is reasoned in his friendship to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Its beginning took place in 1795. Their friendship and Coleridge’s influence reasoned Wordsworth’s decision to devote himself to poetry. The result of this friendship is the joint work “Lyrical Ballads” which among others includes Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”. The first edition of “Lyrical Ballads” appeared in 1798 and enabled Wordsworth to travel to Germany on the profits of this work. He lived one year in Germany where he begun to write his work “Prelude” which was published after his death in 1850. In 1800 the second edition of “Lyrical Ballads”, containing only his works, appeared.
His work “Poems in Volumes” which contains much of his best work appeared in 1807 after he had made a tour in Scotland in 1804. In 1813 he migrated to Rydal Mount and worked as a Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland. After his publication “The Excursion” Wordsworth was respected by most of the lovers of poetry, because he was considered as a great and original poet. In the following years several other poems of Wordsworth were published. He died in 1850.
The choice of trivial subjects and a childish language are characteristics for some of his works. These characteristic features long delayed the general recognition of his genius.
Nevertheless, Wordsworth’s greatest distinguishing characteristic is his sense of mystic relations between man and nature. Furthermore, he has an amazing felicity of phrase and he has no equal in describing natural appearances and effects. His views of life and duty are very elevating. These facts reason that he is considered as one of “the master[s] of a noble and expressive prose”.
Sources:
H.D.S. Nayyar (ed.). Biographical Encyclopaedia of English Literature: Writers and Authors in English Literature. Arise Publishers & Distributors, 2008.
In the following I want to give some information about Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, was an English poet, critic and philosopher. He was the youngest of 10 children. After his father had died when he was only 8, he was sent to a border school in London, called Christ’s Hospital in 1782. During his stay at Christ’s Hospital, philosophy and theology became the two topics of his main interest and became central of his intellectual development. After those years he studied at Jesus College, Cambridge. There he attended meetings of literary discussions and became interested in the great social upheaval of the French Revolution and its consequences for the development of Britain and France. This was the time, when he developed a very critical, radical view. He was drawn to the ideas and aims of the French Revolution. After giving up his Cambridge career, he tried to develop a career as a radical lecturer. Later on, this view changed: he adopted a patriotistic, anti-Napoleonic view. In 1795, he married Sara Fricker, but the marriage was to turn out as a disaster, although they had 3 children: Hartley, Berkeley and Sara. With regard to being a father, Coleridge totally failed.
In 1795, he first met William Wordsworth, whom he developed a deep friendship with. This friendship is of particular importance because under Wordsworth, Coleridge made great progress as a poet and together they published the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. In the same year, Coleridge and Wordsworth sailed to Germany to get to know German philosophers, their ideas and German literature. In February 1799, his second son died, but he did not return until July. In the following years, he lived here and there. But finally, in 1816, he moved in with the household of James Gillman, a surgeon, where he stayed up to his death on 25 July 1834.
His whole life and his personality are characterised periods of depression and illness, but also by periods of health and great productivity, such as the period he spent with W. Wordsworth. He was a person of regular collapse, addicted to Laudanum and alcohol. He had a constant lack of self-confidence and self-belief and a neurotic mind.
Some important works of Coleridge are: Biographia Literaria, Kubla Khan, Zapolya, The Statesman’s Manual, Lyrical Ballads, The Watchmen and The Friend.
Source:
Newlyn, Lucy (ed.): The Cambridge Companion To Coleridge, Cambridge University Press 2002.
In the following, I would like to give some information on the English poet, critic and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Coleridge was born in October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, England. As his father, Reverend John Coleridge, was the vicar of Ottery St Mary, Samuel was also destined to do so. He was said to be “a temperamental, dreamy child”. But his father died early and Samuel was sent away from home to attend Christ’s Hospital school in London where he spent his further childhood. He was very interested in classical reading and writing poetry. Later he attended Jesus College in Cambridge but due to some distractions, like the French revolutionary politics and some personal problems, he never finished his studies and therefore forfeited the chance of a career in classics.
In 1795 he married Sara Fricker and settled in Clevedon where his first son was born. In this rural area he tried to establish a radical Christian journal called ‘The Watchman’ which included essays, poems and reports on Parliamentary debates. The journal ran for ten issues. His work “Poems on various Subjects” was published in 1796.
One year later, Coleridge met William Wordsworth with whom he shared his love of poetry as well as an “impassioned response” to political and social problems of that time. The deep friendship between him and Wordsworth resulted in “the most creative partnerships in English Romanticism”. Together they worked on the revolutionary ‘Lyrical Ballads’ which was published in 1798. One of his best known poems is ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ which was also part of the first edition of ‘Lyrical Ballads’. Accompanied by Wordsworth he also spent some time in Germany in order to study Kant, Schiller and Schelling. As Coleridge suffered from depression, he sometimes took opium but later became addicted to it. His poem ‘Kubla Khan’ is said to be a result of an opium dream. He also had a drinking problem and sometimes lived on the verge of suicide.
In the following years he published a series of blank verse poems, the so called ‘conversation poems’ like ‘The Nightingale’ or ‘Frost at Midnight’ with which he intended to imitate everyday language to describe personal experiences concerning nature and morality.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the most important writers in England and also influenced other writers. During the French Revolution he was known as a political radical. But he also often treated themes like nature and emotions but also bizarre imagination and mystical themes. His later works, published after 1800 “developed Coleridge’s leading critical ideas, concerning Imagination and Fancy; Reason and Understanding; Symbolism and Allegory; Organic and Mechanical Form; Culture and Civilization”. But he was also said to be “a political turncoat, a drug addict, a plagiarist, and a mystic humbug, whose wrecked career left nothing but a handful of magical early poems”.
Coleridge died in 1834.
Source:
“Coleridge, Samuel Taylor” The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Universitatsbibliothek Osnabrück. 19 November 2009
Prometheus, literally „forethought“, is one of the Titans in Greek mythology. He is said to have made the first man and woman out of clay and is therefore the creator of mankind. Furthermore, he taught them arts and survival techniques and defended them against the hostility of the gods. According to myth, he stole fire from Zeus, who refused to give it to the people, and was then punished by being chained to a cliff (presumably in the Caucasus) where his liver was eaten by an eagle and renewed every day. Since he was a Titan, Prometheus was immortal. In some versions, it is claimed that he was saved either by Heracles or Hercules.
The Promethean myth gained popularity among writers in the 18th and 19th century. The first was Goethe in the 1770s, who interpreted Prometheus as “a symbol of man’s creative striving“ and as a rebel against the restrictions of society. These were central ideas of Enlightenment, as we have discussed in the seminar. P.B. Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound” referred to “Prometheus Bound”(1820) by the Greek writer Aeschylus and can be seen as a sequel to the story with the central topic of liberation from tyranny. Other writers engaged in the myth were Mary Shelley (“Frankenstein – The Modern Prometheus”), Coleridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Bridges.
Sources:
“Prometheus” The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford university Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Bournemouth Libraries. 20 November 2009
“Prometheus Unbound” The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Bournemouth Libraries. 20 November 2009
In the following, I would like to concentrate on the “ode”,also.
One definition says that an ode is “a poem expressing the writer’s thoughts and feelings about a particular person or subject, usually written to that person or subject.”
Throughout this explanation, it becomes clear that an ode is a specific poetic form, in which personal emotion plays an important role. Furthermore this emotion and general mediation are united.
“The Greek word ōdē, which has been accepted in most modern European languages, meant a choric song, usually accompanied by a dance.”
On the other hand, this definition illustrates the ode´s rhythmical features. It consists of a strophic arrangement, which is a “rhythmic system composed of two or more lines repeated as a unit.” The odes should be sung and therefore had a representative character.
Sources:
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Universitatsbibliothek Osnabrück. 20.11. 2009
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/425020/ode# 20.11.2009
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=54944&dict=CALD 20.11.2009
I would like to give some information about the Gothic.
The Gothic is a cultural movement which started in the first half of the eighteenth century.
“Gothic” was used as a term to describe native traditions and architecture in a positive way, since it was synonymous to the term “barbaric”. “The Gothic” was an expression of aesthetic reactivation, it later came to be called “The Gothic Revival”.
“Gothic” was also synonymous to “Germanic”. So the term ought to refer to a describtion of the Roman general Cornelius Tacticus who described the Germanic people as freedom-loving and stated that their Chief was elected and always subject to a “parliament”. Therefore the “aristocratic powers represented themselves as the mere agents of the Gothic constitution, safeguarding the ancient liberties of a Protestant nation as they unseated the Catholic James II in 1688, replacing him with the Protestant William of Orange.”
It is important not to mix up “The Gothic” with “The Gothic Novel”.
Different to “The Gothic”, “The Gothic Novel” describes a literary genre which got its name by critical animosity:
“[...] Walpole subtitled the second edition of Otranto: A Gothic Story, the phrase did not really catch on as a descriptive term until the end of the nineteenth century, when critics arbitrarily picked out only one strand of a widespread literary Gothicism: the novel.”.
Additionally the difficult topics of “The Gothic Novel” contributed to more ctritique, topics for instance as “a haunted castle, a wicked tyrant, a heroine pursued through subterranean passages, an ineffective hero, wicked priests, guttering candles, incest (symbolic), murder (by a ghost), and forcible seduction (narrowly avoided)”.
ALthough the prose Gothic had respected and popular authors as Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, Charlotte Smith, Harriet Lee, and Sophia Lee, there were as well “innumerable, undistinguished imitators”. These anonymous literature was published “for the burgeoning mass market”. This circumstance created the prejudice that “The Gothic Novel” was “low or popular literature”.
Sources:
Blackwell reference:
http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=1030/tocnode?query=gothic+novel&widen=1&result_number=1&from=search&id=g9781405101189_chunk_g97814051011899&type=std&fuzzy=0&slop=1
Oxford reference:
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t198.e0194&srn=1&ssid=1069114625&authstatuscode=202#FIRSTHIT
Some facts about Lord George Gordon Byron:
Lord Byron lived from 1788 – 1824 and was famous for his poetry as well as for his personality cult. Lord Byron also invented the “Byronic hero”. It is a melancholy young man longing for something mysterious.
He was the son of Captain John Byron and Catherine Byron. Lord Byron spent his childhood in Aberdeen where he was educated until he was ten years old. After that he went to Dulwich, Harrow and Cambridge were he made depts. In addition he attracted attention because of his bisexual love affairs.
Byron’s first collection of poetry, Hours Of Idleness appeared in 1807 and it received bad reviews. His answering to this critique was the satire English Bards And Scotch Reviewers in 1808. But he first became successful in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
After his success he was welcome in the House of Lords where he spoke effectively on liberal themes He also had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline Lamb but in 1815 he married Anne Isabella Milbanke. Their daughter Ada was born in the same year. The marriage was unhappy and so they obtained legal separation the year after their marriage.
When the rumours started because of his depts, Byron left England in 1816. He never returned. Byron settled in Geneva where Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Claire Clairmont became his mistress.
During his time in Geneva and his travels through Italy he wrote lots of poems inspired by the things he saw in this time.
After a long period of time, Byron had come to feel that action was more important than poetry. He decided to go to Greek to see any military action but before he saw anything like that, Byron contracted a fever from which he died in Missolonghi on 19 April 1824.
Soucres:
http://www.online-literature.com/byron/
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born 30 August 1797 in London as the daughter of the feminist radical Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792) and the philosopher radical William Godwin who were both prominent in revolutionary movements that peaked in the eighteenth century. Living during a period of rapid changes in England, these changes are mirrored in Mary Shelley’s ideologies of gender ad politics. However, she never became as radical as her parents. For example, she believed that every woman had a desire to find a “manly spirit” to lean on. She herself stated that her own literary ambitions depended on her husband’s support.
The best known work of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is Frankenstein which she started writing in 1816 when she was only eighteen years old. In the myth of a scientist who creates a monster he cannot control, she turns a sceptical eye on the early modern scientific revolution celebrated during Enlightenment.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was not only – as many people believe- the author of Frankenstein but also of many other works such as Matilda, Valperga or The Last Man. She also worked as editor, biographer and travel writer. Furthermore, more than 1,000 of her letters written between 1814 and 1851 have been published. The subjects of these letters include family, friends and issues of daily life as well as politics, travel, literature, culture, publishing and finances.
Sources:
Schor, Esther(ed.),The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, Cambridge University Press 2003.
Smith, Johanna M., Mary Shelley, Twayne Publishers, NY, 1996.
In the following I would like to concentrate on „The Gothic“
One has to differentiate between ‚The Gothic’ and the ‚Gothic Novel’.
The Gothic is a style of architecture and art. This style first arose in Northern Europe from mid- 12th century to the 16th century. Italian artists used the term ‘Gothic’ in the Renaissance to downgrade architectures of the medieval time, which destroyed the Roman architecture. In the first half of the 18th century the Gothic takes shapes as an expression of a larger aesthetic revolution. This involved the reintroduction of Gothic forms in architecture and art. The movement took place during the 18th and 19th century in Europe and the USA. From then on the term was used as a positive term for native traditions. Features of the Gothic style in architecture are pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses.
One of the most significant buildings was the Temple of Liberty built by James Gibbs in 1747 at Stowe. Worth mention is that this building is one of a series of building, which all had a political statement. Moreover at the Temple of Liberty there was an inscription stating, “I thank the Gods that I am not a Roman”. This can be interpreted as a rejection towards the Roman Church and Rome, which weren’t as important and respected as the decades before.
To round things up, the Gothic novel is a literary form with feature elements of horror, the supernatural, gloom, and violence as well as clanking chains, terror, charnel houses, ghosts, medieval castles, and mysteriously slamming doors.
It is popular since the 1760s. The term “gothic novel” is also applied to novels that have lack in elements of the traditional Gothic setting but that create a similar atmosphere of terror or dread. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is perhaps the best-known English work of this kind.
Sources:
“Gothic” The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Ed Ian Chilvers. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. 20 November 2009 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t3.e1021
Robert Miles “The Gothic” The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press 2005. 20 November 2009
“Gothic novel” The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. 20 November 2009
As I asked not more than two students to work on one term or name I will start commenting on those entries which already complete that requirement, namely which were already commented upon by two people.
Let’s start with the info on Lord Byron by Nina and Ina. Both of you already concentrate on the very interesting personality cult which Byron tried to establish himself while he was still alive and which certainly reached its peak shortly after his death in Greece. His tendency to express strong emotions in his poetry and his creation of the Byronic hero almost predestine him for Gothic and at the same time Romantic literature. Still, if Byron is still the most widely read British author after Shakespeare is questionable, even though Nina’s very good source gives us that info.
Sandra and Kathrin focused on the term “ode”. I particluarly like Sandra’s observation that the ode, which is a classical form and which the two of you explained very well, was taken up by Romantic writers who used it to express general, but maybe more importantly, personal concerns like their relation to nature. Maybe have another look at Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and keep in mind that it also carries some features of an ode.
Josephine and Anja concentrate on Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I think when we look at personalities like Byron or Coleridge it becomes clear that they were all very colourful characters who were still educated in classical literatures and the likes. Coleridge adopted the idea of the fragment like no other Romantic writer which was also due to his personality and which shows in almost all his works which remained unfinished, like Kubla Khan.
Martin and Ada explained the term the Gothic. Martin, thanks a lot for the very good explanation of the origins of the Gothic. It will be important to consider the different influeneces on Gothic writing when we will analyse the examples by Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, and Wollstonecraft. Ada is also aware of the distinction between the terms Gothic and Gothic novel which we will also try to work with in our seminar.
I want to talk about a major contributor to English Romantic poetry named Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was born August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England. The eldest son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley, with one brother and four sisters, he stood in line to inherit not only his grandfather’s considerable estate but also a seat in Parliament. He attended Eton College for six years beginning in 1804, and then went on to Oxford University. He began writing poetry while at Eton, but his first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810), in which he voiced his own heretical and atheistic opinions through the villain Zastrozzi. At university Shelley wrote articles defending Daniel Isaac Eaton, a bookseller charged with selling books by Tom Paine and the much persecuted Radical publisher, Richard Carlile. He also wrote The Necessity of Atheism, a pamphlet that attacked the idea of compulsory Christianity. Oxford University was shocked when they discovered what Shelley had written and on 25th March, 1811 he was expelled. Shelley eloped to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook, a sixteen year old daughter of a coffee-house keeper. his created a terrible scandal and Shelley’s father never forgave him for what he had done. Shelley moved to Ireland where he made revolutionary speeches on religion and politics. He also wrote a political pamphlet A Declaration of Rights, on the subject of the French Revolution, but it was considered to be too radical for distribution in Britain.
Shelley fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of William Godwin and his first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. Against Godwin’s objections, Shelley and Mary Godwin eloped to France on July 27, 1814, taking with them Mary’s stepsister Jane (later “Claire”) Clairmont. Shelley eloped a second time with Mary and her stepsister Claire in tow, settling in Switzerland. This action drew the disapproval of both their fathers, and they struggled to support themselves. The Shelley’s were spending much time with Lord George Gordon Byron who also led a controversial life of romantic entanglements and political activity. Shelley was passionate about life and very generous to his friends, which often caused him financial hardship. They passed their days sailing on the lake and telling each other ghost stories. Mary overheard Percy and Byron speaking one night of galvanism, which inspired her most famous novel ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘The Modern Prometheus’ (1818) and which Percy wrote the introduction for.
Later the Shelley’s moved to Italy and their son Percy Florence was born a year later.
Shelley continued to venture on sailing trips on his schooner ‘Don Juan’. It sank on 8 July 1822 in a storm and Shelley drowned, at the age of twenty-nine. His body washed ashore and he was cremated on the beach near Viareggio. His ashes are buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, Italy.
The Shelley Memorial stands at Oxford University College in England.
Sources:
http://www.online-literature.com/
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur
http://www.poets.org/index.php
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/
http://www.britannica.com/
As bhuhnsto already gave a very detailled overview of Prometheus as a god and Titan in Greek mythology, I will concentrate on the legends concerning Prometheus.
The Greek poet Hesiod came up with two important legends about Prometheus.
The first is that Zeus hid fire from the mortals, because Prometheus had tricked him: He made Zeus accept bones and fat of sacrifice instead of the meat.
Prometheus, after that, searched for the fire and brought it back to Earth. As a punishment, Zeus created the woman Pandora, who married Epimetheus, although Prometheus told him not to become Pandora’s husband. Pandora, however, “(…) took the great lid off the jar she carried, and evils, hard work, and disease flew out to plague humanity. Hope alone remained within.”
During the second legend Zeus satisfied his desire for revenge and nailed Prometheus to a mountain in the Caucasus.
He sent an eagle that was supposed to eat the immortal liver of Prometheus, “(…) which constantly replenished itself; (…)”.
As a result, Prometheus was depicted as the bringer of fire and civilization and respected as a preserver who gave the mortals “(…) all the arts and sciences as well as the means of survival.”
Relating to Romanticism, fire as a symbol is very important to look at:
Among other things it represents the worship of nature, which is a keyword in Romanticism.
Sources:
“Prometheus.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 Nov. 2009 .
“nature worship.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 Nov. 2009 .
Benjamin and Sandra explained the term/name “Prometheus” very well. Sandra also comes up with the idea of the fire which was stolen by Prometheus to give it to the people as a symbol which is connected with Romantic worship of nature. It is interesting though that we encounter this mythic figure in three so-called Gothic texts by Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley. One question which now arises is: What makes Prometheus so important for Gothic fiction?
I would like to give some information about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. I will start with biographical facts and then I will characterize her as author, especially concerning her famous novel Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft was born on August 30, 1797, as the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, but during her infancy she lived with her father and her stepmother Mary Jane Clairmont, because Mary Wollstonecraft died only eleven days after she gave birth to her daughter Mary Shelley. ( This was not yet her name, but due to the fact that there are about five Maries in her family, I will refer to her as Mary Shelley not considering if she was already married or not). At the age of fifteen, Mary met Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of her father`s disciples, for the first time and two years later, in 1814 they eloped to France, where Mary gave birth to her first child Clara. But Clara lived only for two weeks and although Mary suffered from a shortage of money and Percy`s unfaithfulness, she was pregnant again and gave birth to her son William in 1816. In the same year Percy and Mary married, now that Percy`s wife Harriet had committed suicide. After Mary received her third child Clara Everina, the whole family together with their cortege, moved to Italy, where her two children and Percy Shelley died. She returned to England with her son Percy Florence Shelley, who was born 1819, 3 years before his father died. After she experienced these personal tragedies she dedicated her life to the publishing and editing of the literary works of her deceased husband. Besides, of course, she was productive as an author herself. In 1851 she died from a brain tumor.
Her novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus , which the Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature calls “ the most famous literary work in the Romantic period” and which is still commonly known as trope, deals with the scientist Victor Frankenstein who composes a creature from dead body parts. But since Victor is not capable to care for this creature properly, it develops into a monster and turns on his master. One of the novel`s main focuses is considered to be the negotiation of the possible danger of modern science and the responsibility that goes along with new technologies, since Mary Shelley lived within a time, where a lot of research took place. Especially Galvani`s experiments, in which he electrified for instance legs of dead frogs and induced them to move, influenced this novel. Also the implication to Prometheus, as “the creator of mankind” as bhuhnsto calls him, is quite obvious. But Victor Frankenstein is not punished by divine power for this , but by his own experiment, namely the monster. But in contrast to the myth the modern prometheus is not saved by his creation but instead murdered. Another vital topic, whose treatment is personally motivated, is the development of this creature. First it behaves benevolently, but as it experiences increasing rejection even from his master, he evolves into a monster.
Sources:
Anne K. Mellor, “Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft” The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press 2005. Accessible http://www.Oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview =Main&entry=t198.e0427
“Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft” An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age. Iain McCalman. Oxford University Press 2009 Oxford Reference Online. Accessible http://www.Oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview =Main&entry=t285.e637
Lisa and Irina, your comments on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (it is indeed sometimes complicated to keep on overview over all the various Maries in that family) will be very helpful for our discussion of her work “Frankenstein” of which we will only read a very short extract. Irina mentions an interesting fact, namely that “Frankenstein” still is the best known peace of Romantic writing which is somewhat strange considering the fact that it is a Gothic fiction and that the Gothic was not very highly appreciated by many Romantic writers. Still, the connection to motives which were only too well-known from other Romantic writings will give us an idea of how “Frankenstein” influenced not only Gothic but Romantic writing in general.
I would like to give some info on William Wordsworth, without going into biographical details. I think that “shoffrog” has given us a very good biographical overview.
William Wordsworth is one of the most important English poets and reprsentatives of the Romantic Movement.
According to A. C. Bradley there have been greater English poets than Wiliam Wordsworth, but none more original. He saw things in a new way.
In the course of time Wordsworth was recognized as a radical, as an “establishment” poet laureate, as the “Daddy Worthswoth”, as the “simple” Anglican poet of nature and also as a “Nobodaddy”, being too conservative in the Age of Revolution.
In the essay “Wordsworth and the Revolt against Abstractions” by A. N. Whitehead describes Wordsworth as being “passionately absorbed in nature [...] drunk with nature”, but on the other hand as being “a thoughtful, well-read man” who also had philosophical interests.
In 1795 Wordsworth meets the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which was an important point in the poetic life of Wordsworth. During that time Wordsworth and Coleridge collaboratively pioneered new ways of seeing and responding to the natural world.
In the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, especially in the “Lyrical Ballads”, first published in 1798, the influence of German Romanticism is obvious. Some of its most distinctive characteristics are the revival of ballad stanza, reliance upon the language of everyday life, and extensive use of natural imagery.
Sources:
“Wordsworth, William” The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford university Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Universitatsbibliothek Osnabrück. 23 November 2009
McKusick, James C. “Nature.” A Companion to European Romanticism. Ferber, Michael (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Blackwell Reference Online. 23 November 2009
Abrams, M. H.(ed) (1972): Wordswoth: A Collection of Critical Essays, New Jersey: A SPECTRUM BOOK.
Gilpin, G.H. (1990): Critical Essays on William Wordsworth, Boston, Massachusetts: G.K. Hall & Co.
In the following, I want to concentrate on Percy Bysshe Shelley. Since ehaberma has already pointed out the most important facts on Percy B. Shelley’s life and death, I want to put emphasis on the reception of his works.
As many of his romantic writing colleagues, Shelley was very aware of the impact that his work could probably have even after his death (the invention of the printing press and the implementation of copyright laws gave poetry a longer duration). He often reflected on the afterlife in his works, he thinks of it as being a possibility to escape from the daily routine and imagine how life could have been different than it actually was.
Likewise, Percy B. Shelley was able to write for several different audiences, for example in a radical workers’ underground style as well as for upper class readers. His style contained elementes that would later be called ‘constructivism’, a poetic that should not be ‘nice’, but puzzle and challenge the reader to start a complex thinking process.
After his death, people tried to categorize Shelley’s wirting into political and apolitical writing (mostly his lyricism), but both terms alone do not depict the value of what he wrote – it is impossible and not advisable to try to put his work in a black-and-white-scheme like this.
Source:
Morton, Timothy. “Receptions”. The Cambridge Companion to Shelley. Cambridge University Press. 2006.
In my blog entry, I would like to concentrate on the term “Dark Romanticism”. Several sources said that there would not exist an exact definition. The term would have a lot of meanings. Generally, “Dark Romanticism” can be described as a movement in literature, music, art etc. towards the unfettered expression of the “decadent natural world and the obscure supernatural world”. This movement occurred in the 18th century as a reaction against the Age of Reason. One can say that it developed out with the Romantic Era. Emotions and imaginations were emphasized, which can be seen for example at the literature to that time. Many authors wrote about horror and terror, about the tragic dimension of human life. Edmund Burke for example claimed:
“The passions which belong to self-perservation turn, on pain and danger; they are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances;”
This statement constitutes the theoretical background of the origin of Dark Romanticism and Burke stresses that pain and danger are more delightful than pleasure. Further famous names in the context of Dark Romanticism are Blake, Baudelaire, Poe and Stoker.
Sources:
http://www.hem.passagen.se
http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org
I would like to comment on the two generations of Romantic poets: the first generation is represented by Blake, Wordwsworth, Colleridge, the second by Byron Shelley and Keats. According to one source: “The division in two generations corresponds both to the actual age difference between the two groups and to changes in the context where they wrote and in certain features of their works. The First generation is characterised by emphasis on the self and its relationship with nature. The Second generation is more interested in the problems connected with the relationship between life and art.”
http://english.freehosting.net/englishpoets800.htm
Prof. Kelley says in a summary: “Briefly put, the second generation of Romantic poets critique or complicate the aspirations and traits of the first generation[...]” (celebration of nature, emphasis on individuals and individual feelings, rejection of prescribed poetic norms etc.). The second generation is much more skeptical of political changes (Reign of Terror after the French revolution, post Napoleonic war unrest , economic crisis etc.) but these poets “continue and redirect the formal experimentation of the first generation”. tkelley@wisc.edu
According to different source: “The poets of the 1st generation were characterized by the attempt to theorize about poetry, they fervently supported the French Rev. [...] being later bitterly disappointed [...]
The poets of the second generation [...] also experienced disillusionment, which results in the clash between the ideal and reality in their poetry. Poetry thus became a means to challenge the cosmos, nature, political and social order, or to escape from all this.”
http://www.massimilianobadiali.it/english_romanticism.htm
Perhaps one could say that the so-called second generation responded to the poetic issues of the first but reflected a different historical situation?
In the following I want to tell something about William Wordsworth.
William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, a town in the Lake District, in 1770. He spent most of his eighty-years-long life in that area and died at Rydal Mount in 1850. Wordsworth was a poet of romanticism. William Wordsworth went to Europe and witnessed the French Revolution. During that period of time he sympathized with the life, troubles and speech of the “common man”. This influenced his poetry as well as the importance of domestic life and his love for the Lake District. Another important event in his life is the meeting between him and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They both published Lyrical Ballads (1798). Another famous work is Prelude(1815) which is now “considered to be the crowning achievement of English Romanticism”.
Sources:
http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/ -
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296
Sarah and Katharina provided us with some information concerning William Wordsworth. As your entries make clear it took some time until Wordsworth was finally appreciated as a great poet, one reason certainly being his “experimental” approach to poetry and his use of unconventional style. Sarah mentions that Wordsworth was a supporter of the French Revolution, which is true, but only for a certain time. As soon as the French Revolution started to kill off even those who had started it and the former principles were turned upside down he became much more conservative in his opinion and even supported Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Katharina refers to this in her entry. Besides, be careful with phrases like “he used childish language”, which is not really true when it comes to Wordsworth.
Eike and Thomas give us some information concerning Percy Bysshe Shelley, the famous husband of Mary Shelley who also led a quite eventful and unconventional life as Eike points out. Thomas furthermore emphasises that Shelley’s unconventional lifestyle is also reflected in his unconventional poetry. The incident with Lord Byron in Geneva mentioned in several of the entries will be of some more importance for our discussion of Gothic writing.
I would like to present the first and second generation of Romantic writers. The writers of the first generation, as for example Wordsworth and Coleridge, were although
called “Lake Poets” because they lived in the Lake District of England. They all have in common that they tried to create a new kind of poetry with nature and imagination as their main
features, while focusing on the unity between intellect and emotion. In addition to this many of them supported the ideas of the French Revolution.
The second generation of the romantic writers, as for example Byron and Keats, were influenced by the works of the first generation but although by Roman and Greek literature. They tried to combine emotion and passion with the meaning of the “real life”. I think that in some ways the writers of the second generation only increased the supernatural and exotic parts in their writings to become even more “romantic” than the first generation.
–
http://science.jrank.org/pages/8061/Romanticism-in-Literature-Politics.html
–www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/19th_c/Romantic_poetry/Romantic_poetry.htm
I would like to add to the information about first and second generation romantic writers that was already given above by marlklei.
The Encyclopedia Britannica dates these two generations to roughly 1790 to 1805 for the first generation and 1805 to 1830 for the second generation, respectively. Notable is, that the first generation of romantic writers had the direct historical context of the French Revolution to influence their writings and perception of the world while the second generation of writers had the aftermath of this monumental event to influence them. At times the chaos of the French Revolution even inspired writers to draw conclusions about existing similarities to apocalyptic scenarios and prophecies from christian and hebrew sources.
The second generation in turn featured a notable increase of cultural nationalism, shown by re-iteration, imitation and inspiration by folklore in all of its extended aspects like for example poetry, music or dance.
Sources:
“Romanticism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 24 Nov. 2009 .
“The Romatic Periods.” The Northon Anthology of British Literature. 2009. Norton Topics Online. 24 Nov. 2009 .
I would like to focus on Dark Romanticism (and try to find some other aspects as “Kriddebr“).
First of all there is no exact definition for Dark Romanticism. But the term Dark Romanticism certainly refers to a pessimistic view on the one hand and to the early Romantic literary movement on the other hand.
Furthermore it is important to say that works of Dark Romanticism and Gothic fiction are not identically though similar in some points and some authors (like Edgar Allan Poe) are known for both genres. While Gothic fiction is more about sheer horror, the works of Dark Romanticism focus on dark mysteries and skepticism regarding men and they deal with personal torment, outcasts from society and with the fate of man und whether it will bring him salvation or destruction (i.e. in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein you’ll find most of these aspects).
Famous authors and works of Dark Romanticism are Edgar Allan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher), Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Minister’s Black Veil), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Herman Melwill (Moby-Dick).
http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/engl/resguide/darkrweb.htm
For the last three comments, rethink the phrase : Write your blog entries on time.
In my blog entry I want to deal with the term “Dark Romanticism”. The first, that I found out, was that it is very difficult to find good sources about this term or even a “good” definition.
This is quite interesting, because the term to me seems very common.
An interesting attempt to define this term, that I found in my source was to look up the two words “dark” and “romanticism” in a dictionary to find out about possible links between them.
The word “dark” describes things like “night”, you are not able to see anything, the color black and is even linked to something “evil”.
The word “romanticism” oder better “romantic”, according to my source, is something “imaginative”, “sentimental” or “picturesque”.
As you can see these two words are not directly linked to each other, they are a bit contrary.
But might be the key to this term, because on the one hand we have these beautiful things linke imagination and picturesque environment and on the other hand we have some kind of counterpart in which these things turn more into gloomy landscape and show us the terrifying side of life.
But how can “Dark Romanticism” find its place in literary history?
As said in my source, which I would in this concern support, “Dark Romanticism” is a “movement” and so is one part of the romantic movement and that for also was a counterpart to the Age of Enlightment. Its writers “wrote about the tragic dimension of human life”. The most famous writers were Baudelaire, Poe and Blake.
Source:
http://www.hem.passagen.se