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William Blake
Only reality is what the mind can see, Pure vision, the genius of imagination
Songs of Innocence (1789)
Introductory Poem
"Child in a cloud", with pen "stains water clear" (can take something dark and rewrite it to make it appear happy, subversive), piper piping happy songs, whimsey, (illusory) happiness; art can cover over the reality of life
Chimney Sweeper
Tom has head shaved, cries, dreams that child sweepers are put in coffins but then happy and playing with angels in heaven, angel says as long as he is good, he will have God for his father; illusion of comfort in religion, already indoctrinated in kids
Holy Thursday
Colorful children walk behind nuns into St. Paul's, "multitudes" repeated; pomp and circumstance of religion
Nurse's Song
Nurse calling children in from play, they want to continue, she lets them; denying the end of day = denying that the innocence of childhood will end |
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William Blake
Only reality is what the mind can see, Pure vision, the genius of imagination
Songs of Experience (1794)
Introductory Poem
Solemn, begins with the bard's voice, looking forward to spiritual considerations; importance of seeing the truth clearly and having straightforward honesty
Clod and Pebble
Clod (showing love via self-sacrifice, being of use), Pebble (self-satisfaction); need to be able to practice both extremes, Pebble is preferable (in godliness)
Holy Thursday
"Land of poverty", cold, hungry children, shame for not caring for them better; Holy Thursday refers to the Last Supper, criticism of non-feast, non-feet washing
Chimney Sweeper
Child in snow knows the injustice and misery of his situation, acts happy, dances and sings as a facade, parents leave him to go to church, feel justified by religion, "weep"; church detached from suffering of poor and children
Nurse's Song
Speaker nurse, hearing voices of children in play reminds her of her lost innocence and the inevitability of death, makes her sick
Sick Rose
Rose made ill by "dark secret love" of worm; Wife/beloved deathly ill from STDs picked up by man who secretly visits prostitutes; Sickness of the city/culture infects what would be good passion/love
The Tyger
Consideration of the creator of the tiger/Christ; God is the broken-hearted (we kind of suck as a creation) creator; Christ is all God and all man, awesome and terrible but tangible and corporeal; Tiger and lamb (comforting Christ) created by God; Or just a consideration of the creation, as both terrible and beautiful, humans as kind and cruel
London
"Mind-forged manacles", "chartered streets", survey sadness and illness of citizens, children, harlots, "wander through" without plan allows ones to see truly; this suffering isn't natural or necessary, it is determined by culture, society, government
Infant Sorrow
Speaker a newly born baby, during and immediately after birth, baby thinks life sucks, childbirth bad for mother ("groans") and father ("wept") |
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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Tintern Abbey (1798)
Genre & Form: Greater Romantic Lyric
Characters: Speaker (WW) and sister (Dorothy)
Summary: "Five years have passed..." Returning to this location, now with his sister; Nature is permanent but he is changed; Landscape fuses with the sky (oneness in nature); Feels joy in the oneness; "Gleam" represents that the whole world is both real and unreal; Addresses Dorothy
Themes: Time is the critical issue, explores past and memory; Connection to nature allows us to enter oneness, connect with divine creativity; Our experience of nature changes with age: animal (child), moral, spiritual |
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Eolian Harp (1795)
Genre & Form: Greater Romantic Lyric, romantic journey into the realm of letting go to control, escape from religion and fear of God
Characters: Coleridge (speaker) and wife Sarah
Summary: Description via all senses of natural surroundings and wife; hears the harp "Hark!" moves him into nature vision; inspiration a breeze that moves through all of us; sensual; his passive brain breeze passes through; intellectual breeze passes through all beings, even God; religious wife looking at him as though she can tell he is thinking blasphemous thoughts, how dare I think of God as just another being
Themes:
Relevance: free, uncontrolled art |
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Samuel Coleridge
Kubla Kahn: A Vision in a Dream (1797)
Genre & Form:
Characters:
Summary: In preface: Sitting before fire reading story about KK, falling asleep (likely on opium), dream/vision during which composes 200-300 lines of poetry; interrupted by someone before he can get all the lines down; volcanic, fire, and caves of ice imagery, ideas seem separate but the imagination can combine anything; description of Xanadu and the pleasure dome, sexual/fertility image of chasm and fountain
Themes: Art is chaos; Imagination is better than nature, can create new things, can change the world; People are creative by nature; Organic, multeity in unity; With good art, you can't capture it all
Relevance: Poetic imagination is more powerful than nature or art |
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mont Blanc (1816)
Genre & Form: Ode
Summary: Opens with "crisis", vision, declaration "The everlasting universe of things / Flows through the mind"; description of Ravine of Arve (the mind), River powerful flux, inspiration; Mountain is Shelley's "gleam", physical fixed object of truth that communicates doubt, Mont is power of the universe (constructive and destructive) that only has meaning via imagination; Must see past the mind, physical experience and sensation to see truth and power
Themes: Feeling over thought; fire and ice
Relevance: a "rawer" version of Tintern Abbey |
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John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale (1819)
Genre & Form: Greater Romantic Lyric (without conversation tone)
Summary: Bird's song = intense pleasurable experience of beauty that escapes reality; when imagination takes over, all divisions drop between death, life, self and nothingness; at this perfect moment could die, except that he is mortal and bird song is immortal and won't lose the chance to experience this again
Themes: Physicality; sense of beauty obliterates all else for a poet; can't give up beauty and pleasure for transcendence |
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Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818)
Genre & Form: frame narrative, gothic, romantic, (first) science fiction
Characters: Victor Frankenstein, the monster (creation), Captain Robert Walton, De Lacey family (blind dad), Justine (nanny)
Summary: Walton finds V in arctic, V tells of happy childhood, becomes obsessed with the "secret to life", creates M, V runs away, brother William is murdered, Justine executed, V suspects M but doesn't speak up during trial; they meet, M tells all, rejected and attacked by De Laceys and others, a reject, decides revenge on V, kills bro and frames nanny; demands a mate, V makes but destroys, M kills V's wife on wedding night, V tries to track down monster to destroy; V dies, M is alone and corrupted, will suicide on pyre, floats away on ice raft
Themes: The sins of the father; playing God; nature as symbolic emotion, and as potentially healing; monstrosity; nature vs. nurture; appearance vs. interiority |
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