Romanticism

Major poets:
William Blake (1757-1827) precursor
Robert Burns (1759-96) National poet of
Scotland
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834)
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Percy. B. Shelley (1792-1822)
John Keats (1795-1821)

The Age of Transition: The Gothic Novel

Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
Matthew G. Lewis (1775-1818)
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
Charles R. Maturin (1782-1824)

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)- Historical

2 main novelists:
Novel
Jane Austen (1775-1817): Romantic
prose
Other novelists: M. Edgeworth (1767-1849)

Historical background

The impact of the French Revolution

The European War
Social conditions
The return to nature
Political and periodical writing
Women writers
Transformation in artistic styles and in cultural
attitudes
Imaginative spontaneity
Darwins On the Origin of Species (1859)

William Wordsworth
(1770-1850)
Poet Laureate (1843) after the death of Southey
Lyrical Ballads (1798) a joint production of
Wordsworth and Coleridge. 19 poems by
Wordsworth and 4 by Coleridge. In the Preface
he laid down the principles on which the
composition of poetry should be founded. The
language of poetry should be the language of
ordinary people. He was against the rationalist
content of the Augustan poets.

The Prelude
Completed in 1805, but published in 1850
It is a record of his development as a poet
Part of a vast philosophical work
The Excursion(1814) Autobiographical
Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood (1803)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772-1834)
I never thought as a child I never had the
language of a child
Intense imaginative power. Exploits the
supernatural. Simplicity of diction.
In 1797 he met Wordsworth. Both wrote the
Lyrical Ballads. His best: The Rhyme of the
Ancient Mariner
Poems on Various Subjects (1796)
Christabel (1800)
Kubla Khan (1798)

Lord Byron
(1788-1824)
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (1812, 1816,
1818)
He visited Switzerland, where he met
Shelley, and later Italy and Greece, where
he fought for Greek independence
Poetic tales: The Giaour and The Bride of
Abydos (1813)
Don Juan (1819-24)
Blank-verse tragedies

Percy Bysshe Shelley

(1792-1822)

Queen Mab (1813)

Alastor (1816)
The Revolt of Islam (1818)
Prometheus Unbound (1818-9)
The Cenci (1819)
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)
The Witch of Atlas (1820, publ. 1824)
Adonais (1821), a lament for the death of Keats
Several odes (West Wind and poems (To a Skylark)
Prose: The Defence of Poetry (1821, publ. 1840)

John Keats
(1795-1821)

Poems (1817) first volume of verse

Endymion (1818)
Hyperion (1818, unfinished)
Isabella (1818)
Lamia (1819)
The Eve of St Agnes (1819) a narrative poem
Odes: To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn, To
Psyche, On Melancholy, To Autumn

The Gothic Novel

Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
(1764). Subtitled A Gothic Story (1765)
Ann Radcliffe: The Romance of the Forest
(1791); The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794);
The Italian (1797)
Matthew G. Lewis: The Monk (1796)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
Charles R. Maturin: Melmoth the
Wanderer (1820)

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Translation of Goethes Gtz von Berlichingen
(1799) & other translations

Waverley (1814)
Guy Mannering (1815)
The Antiquary (1816)
The Black Dwarf (1816)
Old Mortality (1816)
Rob Roy (1817)

The Heart of Midlothian (1818)

The Bride of Lammermoor (1819)
A Legend of Montrose (1819)
Several series of Tales of My Landlord (1817,
1819)
Ivanhoe (1819)
The Monastery (1820)
The Abbot (1820)
Kenilworth (1821)

The Pirate (1821)

The Fortunes of Nigel (1822)
Peveril of the Peak (1823)
Quentin Durward (1823)
St. Ronans Well (1823)
Redgauntlet (1824)
The Talisman (1825)
The Betrothed (1825)
The Talisman (1825) .. Short stories, plays

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

The major novels:

Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1816)
Northanger Abbey (1818) Parody of
Gothic novels
Persuasion (1818)