The Byron hero we meet again in his narrative poems of the following two years, which include The Corsair and Lara. In 1815 his Hebrew Melodies was published, and in the same year Byron was married to Anna Isabella Milbanke. After giving birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada, Byron's only legitimate child, Lady Byron left her ron agreed to legal separation from his wife. Rumors about his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta and doubts about his sanity led to his being ostracized by society. Deeply embittered, Byron left England in 1816 and never returned. In was then that he met the poet Percy B. Shelley, and their friendship began.
* * *
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on his head for his labours.
To do good to mankind is a chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted
In Geneva, Byron wrote the narrative poem The Prisoner of Chillon. He next established residence in Venice, where he produced, among other works, the verse drama Manfred, the first two cantos of Don Juan, and the fourth and final canto of Childe Harold. For two years Byron traveled around Italy.
Don Juan, a mock epic in 16 cantos, encompasses a brilliant satire on contemporary English society. Often regarded as Byron's greatest work, it was completed in 1823.
At the news of the revolt of the Greeks against the Turks, Byron joined the Greek insurgents at Missolonghi. He not only recruited a regiment for the cause of Greek independence but contributed large sums of money to it. The Greeks made him commander in chief of their forces in January 1824. The poet died at Mesolуngion three months later.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was educated at Eton College and, until his expulsion at the end of one year, the University of Oxford. With another student, Shelley had written and circulated a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, of which the university authorities disapproved. Shortly after his expulsion, the 19-year-old Shelley married his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, and moved to the Lake District of England to study and write. Two years later, he published his first long serious work.
The poem was one result of Shelley's friendship with the British philosopher William Godwin, expressing Godwin's freethinking Socialist philosophy. Another result of their friendship was Shelley's relationship with Godwin's daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft. After separating from his wife, Shelley briefly toured Europe with Mary.
During the last four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works. Traveling and living in various Italian cities. Many critics regard Shelley as one of the greatest of all English poets. They point especially to his lyrics, including the familiar short odes “To a Skylark”, “To the West Wind”, and “The Cloud”. His love poetry is essentially tragic.
The sonnet “Ozymandias” is a great example of how Shelley treats the ideas of political radicalism. He was against any kind of tyranny. The profound philosophical understanding of his ideas can be found in this sonnet.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Shelley's wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of the British philosopher William Godwin and the British author and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She was only 21 when her first and most important work, the novel Frankenstein, was published. A remarkable accomplishment for a young author, the work was an immediate critical and popular success. It has been repeatedly dramatized for both the theater and motion pictures. The tale of Frankenstein, a student of the occult, and the subhuman monster he assembles from parts of human corpses added a new word to the English language: a “Frankenstein” is any creation that ultimately destroys its creator.
Despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25, John Keats (1795-1821) is a major English poet. Keats’s poetry describes the beauty of the natural world and art as the vehicle for his poetic imagination. His skill with poetic imagery and sound reproduces this sensuous experience for his reader. Keats’s poetry evolves over his brief career from this love of nature and art into a deep compassion for humanity. He gave voice to the spirit of Romanticism in literature when he wrote, “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.”
It was in 1816 that Keats published his first poem, the sonnet "O Solitude," marking the beginning of his poetic career. In writing a sonnet, a 14-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme, Keats sought to take his place in the tradition established by great classical, European, and British epic poets. The speaker of this poem first expresses hope that, if he is to be alone, it will be in “Nature’s Observatory”; he then imagines the “highest bliss” to be writing poetry in nature rather than simply observing nature.
Keats’s great creative outpouring came in 1819, when he composed a group of five odes. The loose formal requirements of the ode — a regular metrical pattern and a shift in perspective from stanza to stanza — allowed Keats to follow his mind’s associations. Literary critics rank these works among the greatest short poems in the English language. Each ode begins with the speaker focusing on something — a nightingale, an urn, the goddess Psyche, the mood of melancholy, the season of autumn — and arrives at his greater insight into what he values.
For example, in “Ode to a Nightingale,” the nightingale’s song symbolizes the beauty of nature and art. Keats was fascinated by the difference between life and art: Human beings die, but the art they make lives on. The speaker in the poem tries repeatedly to use his imagination to go with the bird’s song, but each time he fails to completely forget himself. In the sixth stanza he suddenly remembers what death means, and the thought of it frightens him back to earth and his own humanity.
After that, Keats produced little poetry. His money troubles, always pressing, became severe. He was engaged, but with little prospect of marriage. Keats sailed to Italy, accompanied by a close friend. The last months of his life there were haunted by the prospect of death.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is a Scottish novelist and poet, whose work as a translator, editor, biographer, and critic, together with his novels and poems, made him one of the most prominent figures in English romanticism.
Trained as a lawyer, he became a legal official, an occupation that allowed him to write. A love of ballads and legends helped direct Scott's literary activity. His translations of German Gothic romances gained him some note, but he first achieved eminence with his edition of ballads, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
His first narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, brought him huge popularity. Following this success, he wrote a series of romantic narrative poems. With years, Scott's popularity as a poet declined, in part caused by the competition of Lord Byron. This led him to turn to the novel.
Waverley (1814) began a new series of triumphs. More than 20 novels followed in rapid succession, including Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, The Bride of Lammermoor, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Quentin Durward, and The Fair Maid of Perth. Although he published this fiction anonymously, his identity became an open secret. Scott used his enormous profits to construct a baronial mansion called Abbotsford.
Scott was entangled with the printing firm of James Ballantyne and the publishing house of Archibald Constable, which both failed in the economic crisis. Refusing the easy recourse of bankruptcy, Scott strove for the rest of his life to repay a debt of more than 120,000 pounds. He wrote several new novels. After a series of strokes, he died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832.
Scott is the first major historical novelist. In his portraits of Scotland, England, and the Continent from medieval times to the 18th century, he showed a keen sense of political and traditional forces and of their influence on the individual. Although his plots are sometimes hastily constructed and his characters sometimes stilted, these works remain valuable for their compelling atmosphere, occasional epic dignity, and clear understanding of human nature. Many writers learned from Scott's panoramic studies of the interplay between social trends and individual character. In Great Britain, he created an enduring interest in Scottish traditions, and throughout the Western world he encouraged the cult of the Middle Ages, which strongly characterized romanticism.
ANSWER OR DISCUSS
1. The second generation of Romanticists was different to Lake Poets (the Lakers). Do you agree? Point out the principle differences between them.
2. Prove that the ‘Luddite’ theme is very important for Byron.
3. Discuss Byron’s lyricism.
4. Speak on Shelley’s political and philosophical views.
5. Explain the greatness of Keats’s odes.
6. Prove that Sir Walter Scott is one of the most prominent figures in English romanticism and the first major historical novelist.
Контрольные задания
TEST
I. Choose the correct fact
1. The term romantic first appeared in … - century English.
a) 19th
b) 18th
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