University of Education Lahore

Department of English

Course Title: History of English Literature

Programme: BS English 4 th Semester

Course Code: ENGL 2118

Instructor Name: SIR MUHAMMAD NAEEM AMIN BHATTI

Second lecture on the topic “Poets of The
Romantic Age”
This Study Session will cover the following topics.
• Features/ Characteristics of Romantic Poetry.
• Major Subjects of Romantic Poetry.
• Three Schools/Groups of Romantic Poetry.
1. The Lake Poets ( Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey)
2. The Scott Group ( Scott, Campbell, Moore)
3. The Younger Group ( Byron, Shelley, Keats)
Characteristics of Romantic Poetry

The Romantic Poetry explores

• A love of the unspoiled natural world
• The sublime and the beautiful
• The nature of existence
• The value of the individual
• Imagination, memory, and the importance of
emotions.
Major Subjects of Romantic Poetry

It talks about
• Optimistic sense of renewal
• Interest in the language and life
• Common People
• Creativity
• Mystery
• Synthesis
• Universality
Three Schools of Romantic Poetry

1. The Lake Poets

• William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
• Robert Southey (1774-1843)
2. The Scott Group
• Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
• Thomas Campbell (1774-1844) and Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
3. The Younger Group
• Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
• John Keats (1795-1821)
2. The Scott Group
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
• Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771.
• Born in a third-floor flat on College Wynd in the Old Town
of Edinburgh.
• He was the ninth child of Walter Scott, a Writer to the Signet and
Anne Rutherford (sister of Daniel Rutherford).
• Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer
• He is often considered both the inventor and the
greatest practitioner of the historical novel.
• Died September 21, 1832, Abbotsford, Roxburgh,
Scotland.
Scott’s Poetry

• He was the first to make romantic poetry popular among

the masses.
• His “Marmion” and “Lady of the Lake” gained greater
popularity.
• Scott’s poetry appeals some themes like
• Vigour, youthful abandon, vivid pictures, heroic characters,
rapid action and succession of adventures.
• We do not find the deeply imaginative and suggestive
qualities in his poetry.
His Major Works

His best known poems are

• The Lady of the Last Ministrel
• Marmion
• The Lady of the Lake
• Rokeby
• The Lord of the Isles.
Thomas Campbell (1774-1844)

• Campbell wrote Gertrude of Wyoming (1809) in the

Spenserian stanza
• Which does not hold so much interest today as his patriotic
war songs
• Ye Mariners of England
• Hohenlinden, The Battle of the Baltic
• Ballads such as Lord Ullin’s Daughter.
• The minor poet of Romantic age.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

• Poems of Moore are now old-fashioned and have little

interest for the modern reader.
• He wrote a long series of Irish Melodies, which are musical
poems, vivacious and sentimental.
• His Lalla Rookh is a collection of Oriental tales in which he
employs lucious imagery.
• Though Moore enjoyed immense popularity during his time
• He is now considered as a minor poet of the Romantic Age.
3. The Younger Group

• Second Flowering of English Romanticism

• Against the historic and social traditions of England.
• Byron and Shelley lived their best years, and produced their best
poetry in Italy;
• Keats was more interested in Greek mythology.
• Incidentally, these three poets of second generation of Romanticism
died young
• Byron at the age of thirty-six, Shelley thirty and Keats twenty-five.
• So the spirit of youthful freshness is associated with their poetry.
Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

• George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron

• Born on 22 January 1788 in London.
• His father died when he was three
• He inherited his title from his great uncle in 1798.
• Byron spent his early years in Aberdeen
• He was educated at Harrow School and Cambridge
University.
Byron as a Poet

• Byron was the most popular of all Romantic poets.

• The only one who made an impact on the continent.
• He is the only Romantic poet who showed regard for the
poets of the eighteenth century
• He ridiculed his own contemporaries in his early satirical
poem,English Bards and Scottish Reviewers (1809).
• That is why, he is called the ‘Romantic Paradox’.
His Cantos and Romance

• Captured the imagination of his readers by the publications of the

first two Cantos ofChilde Harold Pilgrimage (1812).
• This work made him instantly famous.
• As he said himself, “I woke one morning and found myself famous.”
• Under the pressure of the popular demand Byron wrote a number
of romances which began with The Giaor (1813)
• He dealt with the exploits of the Byronic hero.
• The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold (1816-1818) have more
sincerity, and are in every way better expressions of Byron’s genius.
• He also wrote two sombre and self-conscious tragedies—
Manfred and Cain.
• But the greatness of Byron as a poet lies, however, not in
these poems and tragedies, but in the satires
• Which begin with Beppo (1818) and include The Vision of
Judgment (1822) and Don Juan (1819-24).
• Of all the romantic poets Byron was the most egoistical.
• His last great act, dying on his way to take part in the Greek
War of Independence.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

• Born on August 4, 1792 in the English countryside in the village Broadbridge

Heath, just outside of West Sussex.
• His parents were Timothy Shelley, a squire and member of Parliament, and
Elizabeth Pilfold.
• The oldest of their seven children, Shelley left home at age of 10 to study at
Syon House Academy, about 50 miles north of Broadbridge Heath and 10 miles
west of central London.
• After two years, he enrolled at Eton College.
• Shelley retreated into his imagination.
• Within a year’s time, he had published two novels and two volumes of poetry,
including St Irvyne and Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson.
Shelley as a Poet

• Shelley was the revolutionary idealist, a prophet of hope

and faith.
• He was a visionary who dreamed of the Golden Age.
• Unlike Byron’s genius which was destructive, Shelley’s was
constructive.
• The French Revolution which aimed at building up a new
and beautiful edifice on the ruins of the old traditions.
• The essence of all his poetical works is his prophecy of the
new-born age.
His Early Works

• In his first long poem, Queen Mab,which he wrote when he

was eighteen, he condemns kings, governments, church,
property, marriage and Christianity.
• The Revolt of Islam which followed in 1817, and is a sort of
transfigured picture of the French Revolution is charged
with the young poet’s hopes for the future regeneration of
the world.
• In 1820 appeared Prometheus Unbound, the hymn of
human revolt triumphing over the oppression of false gods.
His Major Works

• Alastor(1816)
• Julian and Meddalo (1818)
• The Cenci, a poetic drama
• “Hallas” in which he sings of the rise of Greece against the
Ottoman
• “Epipsychidion” in which he celebrates his Platonic love for
a beautiful young Italian girl.
• “Adonais”, an elegy dedicated to Keats.
His Odes

• The Triumph of Life, an unfinished work.

• Ode To a Skylark
• Ode to The Cloud
• Ode to the west wind, in which he utters forth his
passionate, lyrical appeal
• As the poet of Nature, Shelley was inspired by the
spirit of love.
John Keats (1795-1821)

• English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October

31, 1795, in London.
• The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a
young age.
• His father, a livery-stable keeper, died when Keats was
eight
• His mother died of tuberculosis six years later.
• Keats came from a poor family
• At an early age he had to work as a doctor’s assistant.
Keats as a Poet

• Of all the romantic poets, Keats was the pure poet.

• He was not only the last but the most perfect of the
Romanticists.
• He was devoted to poetry and had no other interest.
• He devoted himself entirely to the worship of beauty, and
writing poetry as it suited his temperament.
• His passion for writing poetry which was roused by his
reading of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
His Works

• His first volume of poems appeared in 1817 and his first

long poem Endymion in 1818.
• Disappointment in love for Fanny Brawne.
• Remained under the shadow of death and in midst of most
excruciating sufferings
• Keats brought out his last volume of poems in the year
1820 (which is called the ‘Living Year’ in his life.)
• The Poems of 1820 are Keats’ enduring monument.
His Later Works and Death

• They include the three narratives, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and
Lamia
• The unfinished epic Hyperion
• The Ode “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, “To a Nightingale”, “On a
Grecian Urn” and “To Autumn” are the masterpieces of poetic art.
‘Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty’,--that is all,
Yea know on earth, and all ye need to know.( Ode on a Grecian Urn)
• A few sonnets.
• Keats died of what we now know to be
pulmonary tuberculosis.
References

• Dr. BR Mullik, A Critical History of English Literature.

• David Daishes, A Critical History of English Literature.
• Wilson, Jenny. The Lakeland Poets. Edison New Jersey: Chartwell
Books. 1994
• http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/introduction.html
• http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-to-romanticism.
• Wikipedia.
• Different internet web sites.