Topic : History and Poets of Romantic era…
Introduction of Romantic period :~
The Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, musical, cultural and intellectual movement originating in Europe, toward the end of the 18th century. In most areas it was at its peak approximately 1800–1850.
Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotional and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical.
It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity.
It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.
It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism and nationalism.
The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially experienced when confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.
It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble; also, spontaneity as a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu). In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, and industrialism.
Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which preferred intuition and emotion to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the events and ideologies of the French Revolution were also proximate factors. Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of "heroic" individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed freedom from classical notions of form in art.
There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism.[8]
The decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism.
REVOLUTIONS :~
The American Revolution (last half of the 18th century) :
The American Revolution was a colonial revolt that took place between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America. They defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War in alliance with France and others. Members of American colonial society argued the position of "no taxation without representation", starting with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. They rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them because they lacked members in that governing body. Protests steadily escalated to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, during which Patriots destroyed a consignment of taxed tea. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor, then followed with a series of legislative acts which effectively rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's rights of self-government and caused the other colonies to rally behind Massachusetts. In late 1774, the Patriots set up their own alternative government to better coordinate their resistance efforts against Great Britain; other colonists preferred to remain aligned to the Crown and were known as Loyalists or Tories.
Tensions erupted into battle between Patriot militia and British regulars when the king's army attempted to capture and destroy Colonial military supplies at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The conflict then developed into a global war, during which the Patriots (and later their French, Spanish, and Dutch allies) fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). Each of the thirteen colonies formed a Provincial Congress that assumed power from the old colonial governments and suppressed Loyalism, and from there they built a Continental Army under the leadership of General George Washington. The Continental Congress determined King George's rule to be tyrannical and infringing the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and they declared the colonies free and independent states on July 2, 1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and they proclaimed that all men are created equal.
The French Revolution (1789-99): the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Woman) :
The French Revolution was a revolution in France from 1789 to 1799. It led to the end of the monarchy, and to many wars. King Louis XVI was executed in 1793. The revolution ended when Napoleon Bonaparte took power in November 1799. In 1804, he became Emperor.
Before 1789, France was ruled by the nobles and the Catholic Church. The ideas of the Enlightenment were beginning to make the ordinary people want more power. They could see that the American Revolution had created a country in which the people had power, instead of a king. The government before the revolution was called the "Ancien Regime"
1792: The French First Republic (waging war upon England) : In the history of France, the First Republic, officially the French Republic, was founded on 22 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire in 1804 under Napoleon, although the form of the government changed several times. This period was characterized by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the National Convention and the Reign of Terror, the Thermidorian Reaction and the founding of the Directory, and, finally, the creation of the Consulate and Napoleon's rise to power.
1793: King Louis XVI executed : The execution of Louis XVI, by means of the guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Revolution ("Revolution Square", formerly Place Louis XV, and renamed Place de la Concorde in 1795) in Paris. The National Convention had convicted the king (17 January 1792) in a near-unanimous vote (while no one voted "not guilty", several deputies abstained) and condemned him to death by a simple majority.
1793-94: The Reign of Terror (under the Jacobin Club) : The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, after 1792 renamed Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and, commonly known as the Jacobin Club (Club des Jacobins) or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution. Initially founded in 1789 by anti-Royalist deputies from Brittany, the club grew into a nationwide republican movement, with a membership estimated at a half million or more.[1] The Jacobin Club was heterogeneous and included both prominent parliamentary factions of the early 1790s, the Mountain and the Girondins.
1804: Napoléon Bonaparte crowned Emperor of the First French : Emperor of the French (French) was the title used by the House of Bonaparte starting when Napoleon Bonaparte was given the title of Emperor on 14 May 1804 by the French Senate and was crowned emperor of the French on 2 December 1804 at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, in Paris, with the Crown of Napoleon.
Empire :~
1815: Napoléon defeated at Waterloo :
Beginning in 1812, Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career, suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia, losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814. Exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, he escaped to France in early 1815 and set up a new regime. As allied troops mustered on the French frontiers, he raised a new Grand Army and marched into Belgium. He intended to defeat the allied armies one by one before they could launch a united attack.
On June 16, 1815, he defeated the Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher at Ligny, and sent 33,000 men, or about one-third of his total force, in pursuit of the retreating Prussians. On June 18, Napoleon led his remaining 72,000 troops against the Duke of Wellington’s 68,000-man allied army, which had taken up a strong position 12 miles south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo. In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry. The delay in fighting gave Blucher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon.
The Industrial Revolution (the mid-18th and 19th centuries) :
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system.
Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and Africa, and with some political influence on the Indian subcontinent, through the activities of the East India Company. The development of trade and the rise of business were major causes of the Industrial Revolution.
The country vs. the city :
Coming from the Welsh border, a village in the Black Mountains, Raymond Williams found that the images of rural life taught at the University of Cambridge did not match what he had seen. As an academic at Cambridge, he studied and examined the contradiction, along with the contrasting idea of the city, which in the United Kingdom has never been separate from the countryside. Rural life without cities had existed in other parts of the world, but not for a very long time in Britain.
A Problem of Perspective, examines the idea that an ancient continuous rural life has recently ended. Authors generally remember this timeless order existing in their own childhood. But look at writers from the time of their childhood, and they consider that the timeless order has already vanished, having still existed in the older writer's childhood. He gives a chain of examples, going back as far as Thomas More in 1516. Urban life is also examined - see in particular chapter 19, Cities of Darkness and of Light.
The poor vs. the rich (or capital vs. labour) :
Capital income may be thought of as a return on investment. When there's a large discrepancy between the rich and the poor in return on investment, it means some combination of the following: That the rich have access to far more efficient ways to use their money, and that the rich have far more money and assets "deployed" and earning them passive income. Labor income equality has to do with direct earnings for work.
So you can think of an economy with high capital income inequality and low labor income inequality as an economy where there's not a huge discrepancy in the available work in the marketplace, i.e. banking CEOs vs. janitors, but there's a huge divide in accumulated wealth. The wealthy don't work -- they have estates where other people work!
Conversely, an economy with high labor income inequality but low capital income inequality might represent a young and emerging economy, where some people have found ways to earn far faster than others, but the rich haven't yet built a huge wealth base. Or it might represent an economy where investment and equity are legally and practically very difficult. For example, in a hardline communist society, formal investment and ownership may be illegal and counter-revolutionary (which doesn't mean they don't happen, but it does mean they aren't measured). So you would see low capital income inequality, because at least on paper, capital income is illegal. On the other hand, there's typically a clear lifestyle divide between the ruling party and the proletariat, which can be characterized entirely as labor income inequality, even if the lifestyle is delivered "in kind" instead of in cash. Most likely, that isn't measured either. The society officially represents perfect equality, and anyone with evidence to the contrary is counter-revolutionary.
THE BIG SIX ROMANTIC POETS :~
The first generation :~
William Blake (1757-1827) :
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham), he produced a diverse and symbolically rich, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".
Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) :
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.
~Major works :
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
"Simon Lee", "We are Seven", "Lines Written in Early Spring", "Expostulation and Reply", "The Tables Turned", "The Thorn", "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"
PLyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways", "Three years she grew", "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal", "I travelled among unknown men", "Lucy Gray", "The Two April Mornings", "The Solitary Reaper", "Nutting", "The Ruined Cottage", "Michael", "The Kitten At Play"
Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) :
"Resolution and Independence", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" Also known as "Daffodils", "My Heart Leaps Up", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", "Ode to Duty", "The Solitary Reaper", "Elegiac Stanzas", "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802", "London, 1802", "The World Is Too Much with Us", Guide to the Lakes (1810), " To the Cuckoo ", The Excursion (1814), Laodamia (1815, 1845), The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), Peter Bell (1819), The Prelude (1850)
S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834): the Lake School :
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and on American transcendentalism.
Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction. A current standard edition is The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Kathleen Coburn and many others from 1969 to 2002. This collection appeared across 16 volumes as Bollingen Series 75, published variously by Princeton University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul.
The set is broken down as follows into further parts, resulting in a total of 34 separate printed volumes :
Lectures 1795 on Politics and Religion (1971), The Watchman (1970), Essays on his Times in the Morning Post and the Courier (1978) in 3 vols, The Friend (1969) in 2 vols ,Lectures, 1808–1819, on Literature (1987) in 2 vols, Lay Sermons (1972), Biographia Literaria (1983) in 2 vols, Lectures 1818–1819 on the History of Philosophy (2000) in 2 vols, Aids to Reflection (1993), On the Constitution of the Church and State (1976), Shorter Works and Fragments (1995) in 2 vols, Marginalia (1980 and following) in 6 vols, Logic (1981), Table Talk (1990) in 2 vols, Opus Maximum (2002), Poetical Works (2001) in 6 vols (part 1 - Reading Edition in 2 vols; part 2 - Variorum Text in 2 vols; part 3 - Plays in 2 vols).
The second generation :~
Lord Byron (1788-1824):~
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known as Lord Byron, was an English nobleman, poet, peer, politician, and leading figure in the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as well as the short lyric poem "She Walks in Beauty".
He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years in the cities of Venice, Ravenna and Pisa. During his stay in Italy he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted in Missolonghi.
Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in his life for his aristocratic excesses, which included huge debts, numerous love affairs with both men and women, as well as rumors of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister. His only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace, is regarded as the first computer programmer based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Byron's illegitimate children include Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly Elizabeth Medora Leigh.
Percy Shelley (1792-1822):~
Percy Shelley was a poet, literary theorist, translator, political thinker, pamphleteer, and social activist. An extensive reader and bold experimenter, he was a major English Romantic poet. His foremost works, including The Revolt of Islam (1818), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Adonais (1821), and The Triumph of Life (1824), are recognized as leading expressions of radical thought written during the Romantic age, while his odes and shorter lyrics are often considered among the greatest in the English language. In addition, his essay A Defence of Poetry (1840) is highly valued as a statement of the role of the poet in society.The Elder Son of a Noble Family Born on August 4, 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley was the son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley. As the eldest son, Percy stood in line not only to inherit his grandfather's considerable estate but also to sit in Parliament one day.
While in school at Eton, Shelley began two pursuits that he would continue with intense fervor throughout his life: writing and love, the two often blending together so that the love became the subject matter for the writing. Although Shelley began writing poems while at Eton, some of which were published in 1810 in Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire and some of which were not published until the 1960s as The Esdaile Notebook, his first publication was the gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810).
~MAJOR WORKS:
The Revolt of Islam (1818), The Cenci (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Adonais (1821), A Defence of Poetry (1840)
John Keats (1795-1821):~
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death at age 25 in the year 1821.
Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats's work was the most significant literary experience of his life.
He poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
The French Revolution (1789-99): the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Woman) :
The French Revolution was a revolution in France from 1789 to 1799. It led to the end of the monarchy, and to many wars. King Louis XVI was executed in 1793. The revolution ended when Napoleon Bonaparte took power in November 1799. In 1804, he became Emperor.
Before 1789, France was ruled by the nobles and the Catholic Church. The ideas of the Enlightenment were beginning to make the ordinary people want more power. They could see that the American Revolution had created a country in which the people had power, instead of a king. The government before the revolution was called the "Ancien Regime"
1792: The French First Republic (waging war upon England) : In the history of France, the First Republic, officially the French Republic, was founded on 22 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire in 1804 under Napoleon, although the form of the government changed several times. This period was characterized by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the National Convention and the Reign of Terror, the Thermidorian Reaction and the founding of the Directory, and, finally, the creation of the Consulate and Napoleon's rise to power.
1793: King Louis XVI executed : The execution of Louis XVI, by means of the guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Revolution ("Revolution Square", formerly Place Louis XV, and renamed Place de la Concorde in 1795) in Paris. The National Convention had convicted the king (17 January 1792) in a near-unanimous vote (while no one voted "not guilty", several deputies abstained) and condemned him to death by a simple majority.
1793-94: The Reign of Terror (under the Jacobin Club) : The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, after 1792 renamed Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and, commonly known as the Jacobin Club (Club des Jacobins) or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution. Initially founded in 1789 by anti-Royalist deputies from Brittany, the club grew into a nationwide republican movement, with a membership estimated at a half million or more.[1] The Jacobin Club was heterogeneous and included both prominent parliamentary factions of the early 1790s, the Mountain and the Girondins.
1804: Napoléon Bonaparte crowned Emperor of the First French : Emperor of the French (French) was the title used by the House of Bonaparte starting when Napoleon Bonaparte was given the title of Emperor on 14 May 1804 by the French Senate and was crowned emperor of the French on 2 December 1804 at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, in Paris, with the Crown of Napoleon.
Empire :~
1815: Napoléon defeated at Waterloo :
Beginning in 1812, Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career, suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia, losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814. Exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, he escaped to France in early 1815 and set up a new regime. As allied troops mustered on the French frontiers, he raised a new Grand Army and marched into Belgium. He intended to defeat the allied armies one by one before they could launch a united attack.
On June 16, 1815, he defeated the Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher at Ligny, and sent 33,000 men, or about one-third of his total force, in pursuit of the retreating Prussians. On June 18, Napoleon led his remaining 72,000 troops against the Duke of Wellington’s 68,000-man allied army, which had taken up a strong position 12 miles south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo. In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry. The delay in fighting gave Blucher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon.
The Industrial Revolution (the mid-18th and 19th centuries) :
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system.
Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and Africa, and with some political influence on the Indian subcontinent, through the activities of the East India Company. The development of trade and the rise of business were major causes of the Industrial Revolution.
The country vs. the city :
Coming from the Welsh border, a village in the Black Mountains, Raymond Williams found that the images of rural life taught at the University of Cambridge did not match what he had seen. As an academic at Cambridge, he studied and examined the contradiction, along with the contrasting idea of the city, which in the United Kingdom has never been separate from the countryside. Rural life without cities had existed in other parts of the world, but not for a very long time in Britain.
A Problem of Perspective, examines the idea that an ancient continuous rural life has recently ended. Authors generally remember this timeless order existing in their own childhood. But look at writers from the time of their childhood, and they consider that the timeless order has already vanished, having still existed in the older writer's childhood. He gives a chain of examples, going back as far as Thomas More in 1516. Urban life is also examined - see in particular chapter 19, Cities of Darkness and of Light.
The poor vs. the rich (or capital vs. labour) :
Capital income may be thought of as a return on investment. When there's a large discrepancy between the rich and the poor in return on investment, it means some combination of the following: That the rich have access to far more efficient ways to use their money, and that the rich have far more money and assets "deployed" and earning them passive income. Labor income equality has to do with direct earnings for work.
So you can think of an economy with high capital income inequality and low labor income inequality as an economy where there's not a huge discrepancy in the available work in the marketplace, i.e. banking CEOs vs. janitors, but there's a huge divide in accumulated wealth. The wealthy don't work -- they have estates where other people work!
Conversely, an economy with high labor income inequality but low capital income inequality might represent a young and emerging economy, where some people have found ways to earn far faster than others, but the rich haven't yet built a huge wealth base. Or it might represent an economy where investment and equity are legally and practically very difficult. For example, in a hardline communist society, formal investment and ownership may be illegal and counter-revolutionary (which doesn't mean they don't happen, but it does mean they aren't measured). So you would see low capital income inequality, because at least on paper, capital income is illegal. On the other hand, there's typically a clear lifestyle divide between the ruling party and the proletariat, which can be characterized entirely as labor income inequality, even if the lifestyle is delivered "in kind" instead of in cash. Most likely, that isn't measured either. The society officially represents perfect equality, and anyone with evidence to the contrary is counter-revolutionary.
THE BIG SIX ROMANTIC POETS :~
The first generation :~
William Blake (1757-1827) :
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham), he produced a diverse and symbolically rich, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".
Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) :
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.
~Major works :
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
"Simon Lee", "We are Seven", "Lines Written in Early Spring", "Expostulation and Reply", "The Tables Turned", "The Thorn", "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"
PLyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways", "Three years she grew", "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal", "I travelled among unknown men", "Lucy Gray", "The Two April Mornings", "The Solitary Reaper", "Nutting", "The Ruined Cottage", "Michael", "The Kitten At Play"
Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) :
"Resolution and Independence", "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" Also known as "Daffodils", "My Heart Leaps Up", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", "Ode to Duty", "The Solitary Reaper", "Elegiac Stanzas", "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802", "London, 1802", "The World Is Too Much with Us", Guide to the Lakes (1810), " To the Cuckoo ", The Excursion (1814), Laodamia (1815, 1845), The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), Peter Bell (1819), The Prelude (1850)
S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834): the Lake School :
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and on American transcendentalism.
Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction. A current standard edition is The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Kathleen Coburn and many others from 1969 to 2002. This collection appeared across 16 volumes as Bollingen Series 75, published variously by Princeton University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul.
The set is broken down as follows into further parts, resulting in a total of 34 separate printed volumes :
Lectures 1795 on Politics and Religion (1971), The Watchman (1970), Essays on his Times in the Morning Post and the Courier (1978) in 3 vols, The Friend (1969) in 2 vols ,Lectures, 1808–1819, on Literature (1987) in 2 vols, Lay Sermons (1972), Biographia Literaria (1983) in 2 vols, Lectures 1818–1819 on the History of Philosophy (2000) in 2 vols, Aids to Reflection (1993), On the Constitution of the Church and State (1976), Shorter Works and Fragments (1995) in 2 vols, Marginalia (1980 and following) in 6 vols, Logic (1981), Table Talk (1990) in 2 vols, Opus Maximum (2002), Poetical Works (2001) in 6 vols (part 1 - Reading Edition in 2 vols; part 2 - Variorum Text in 2 vols; part 3 - Plays in 2 vols).
The second generation :~
Lord Byron (1788-1824):~
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known as Lord Byron, was an English nobleman, poet, peer, politician, and leading figure in the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as well as the short lyric poem "She Walks in Beauty".
He travelled extensively across Europe, especially in Italy, where he lived for seven years in the cities of Venice, Ravenna and Pisa. During his stay in Italy he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever contracted in Missolonghi.
Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in his life for his aristocratic excesses, which included huge debts, numerous love affairs with both men and women, as well as rumors of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister. His only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace, is regarded as the first computer programmer based on her notes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Byron's illegitimate children include Allegra Byron, who died in childhood, and possibly Elizabeth Medora Leigh.
Percy Shelley (1792-1822):~
Percy Shelley was a poet, literary theorist, translator, political thinker, pamphleteer, and social activist. An extensive reader and bold experimenter, he was a major English Romantic poet. His foremost works, including The Revolt of Islam (1818), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Adonais (1821), and The Triumph of Life (1824), are recognized as leading expressions of radical thought written during the Romantic age, while his odes and shorter lyrics are often considered among the greatest in the English language. In addition, his essay A Defence of Poetry (1840) is highly valued as a statement of the role of the poet in society.The Elder Son of a Noble Family Born on August 4, 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley was the son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley. As the eldest son, Percy stood in line not only to inherit his grandfather's considerable estate but also to sit in Parliament one day.
While in school at Eton, Shelley began two pursuits that he would continue with intense fervor throughout his life: writing and love, the two often blending together so that the love became the subject matter for the writing. Although Shelley began writing poems while at Eton, some of which were published in 1810 in Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire and some of which were not published until the 1960s as The Esdaile Notebook, his first publication was the gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810).
~MAJOR WORKS:
The Revolt of Islam (1818), The Cenci (1819), Prometheus Unbound (1820), Adonais (1821), A Defence of Poetry (1840)
John Keats (1795-1821):~
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death at age 25 in the year 1821.
Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats's work was the most significant literary experience of his life.
He poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
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