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The Poets who have been regarded as the most representative of the Romantic poetry movement are divided usually into two camps...the early generation and the late or older generation. The older generation of the romantics begins with William Blake then William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge then the younger generation that succeeds them includes Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats. These six poets are often called the big six of Romanticism
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because throughout the teaching of Romanticism it's these poets who were on the syllabi of university courses. But there are other romantic age poets who are worth reading and one of them is Charlotte Smith. We're going to be reading one of her sonnets. So throughout much of the Augustine age in 18th century, the order, rationality, and stability of neoclassical poetry have held sway
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in the domain of poetry for decades. I mentioned in the last lecture that much Augustine age poetry that from the Augustine age onto the Romantic Period for almost a century the sonnet virtually disappears and it makes sense because the strains of passion and private feeling were exchanged for these highly controlled public utterances and verse. But toward the end of the 18th century the sonnet is rediscovered and its voice, when it reemerges after decades of silence,
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is in striking contrast with the normative style of the period previous. Charlotte Smith's sonnet here is a really good example of this difference. It's perhaps an extreme example. Now, we on Patreon celebrated Charlotte Smith's birthday yesterday with a reading, several readings of her poems. So I think it fitting to actually begin with her. This sonnet is called, with its very 18th century title, On Being Cautioned Against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea Because
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It Was Frequented by a Lunatic. "Is there a solitary wretch who hies to the tall cliff with starting pace or slow and measuring views with wild and hollow eyes its distance from the waves that chide below who as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs chills his cold bed upon the mountain turf with hoarse half-uttered lamentation lies murmuring responses to the dashing surf? In moody sadness on the giddy brink, I see him more with envy than with fear; he has no nice
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felicities that shrink from giant horrors; wildly wandering here he seems (uncursed with reason) not to know the depth or the duration of his woe." Here we have almost the romanticization of the state of madness which is cast as a respite from the curse of reason. Now, this is a description the solitary wretch of what was called Bedlamites. These are wondering people who were considered lunatics. It's a reference, bedlamites, comes from the hospital of St Mary
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of Bethlehem or pronounced bedlam, which was a former London institution for the insane. So these people often, without care of family or society, would often wonder the landscape and Wordsworth, it seems, had seen a few in his childhood and that there were some actually living in the ruins of Tintern Abbey around the time Wordsworth was there. So these are people who are really a part
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of the landscape at the time because unfortunately society didn't really have a place for them. But what's fascinating here is not only the state of madness being envied by the speaker but right here her use of the sonnet where we would expect the volta in line nine... it's delayed. It's technically delayed. Because when you come to this line, you think "in moody sadness on the giddy brink"...you think it's referring to the wretch. But line 10 reveals it to be the speaker
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who's in moody sadness on the giddy brink almost enlightening the shift from object of the third person singular him to the first person of the poet I, who wants to, this the sympathy with the madness,. This is something you would not have found in the Augustine age poetry. Well, welcome everyone to our lecture on romantic age poetry. I'm joined over Zoom by my Patreon supporters who are supporting my public humanity's work so thanks to them for making this series
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possible for you. We'll meet after this lecture to talk about some romantic poems that we all have brought for discussion. So if you'd like to join the in-person conversations or rather the online conversations and to support my work in making the study of poetry accessible to people outside the university, you can find more information on the Patreon link in the description. Now, let's talk about nature. We'll be talking a lot about nature in this lecture. Romantic
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era poetry turns its eye towards the fantastical, the imaginative, the nostalgic. Turning its eye toward prior states of innocence in childhood. And this poetry attempts, I think, for the first time in English history, to use poetry as a means to connect and commune with nature. And its poetry is no longer merely descriptive. It doesn't just describe nature, it addresses nature as a spirit
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of intelligence sometimes almost like a deity. Poetry becomes a verbal act in a medium through which such communion is possible. There's a recent book, Charles Taylor's recent book, called Cosmic Connections, that just came out from Harvard press this year and I've been working my way through it and it he he talks a lot about the romantics and he's really focusing on this connection that poetry enabled that's it's an interesting discussion in some recent
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publication that you might be interested in. But take for example these lines from the second verse paragraph of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mont Blanc, addressed to the deep ravine. This is an extraordinary example. In fact, I don't want you to read it, I just want you to listen to it. Just going to read 5 stanzas and then we're going to look at it. He's addressing the mountain range, Mont Blanc in the Alps. "Thus thou ravine of our dark deep ravine B many colored many voiced veil
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over whose pines and crags in caverns sail fast cloud shadows in sunbeams, awful scene where power in likeness of the Arve comes down from the ice gulfs that gird his secret throne bursting through these dark mountains like the flame of lightning through the Tempest thou dost lie by giant brood of pines around thee clinging children of elder time in whose devotion the chainless winds still
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come and ever came to drink their odors and their Mighty swinging to hear an old and solemn harmony. Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep of the ethereal waterfall whose veil robes some unsculptured image, the strange sleep which when the voices of the desert fail wraps all in its own deep eternity. By caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion a loud lone sound no other sound
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can tame thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion thou art the path of that unresting sound, dizzy ravine and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange to muse on my own separate fantasy my own my human mind which passively now renders and receives fast influences holding an unremitting interchange within the clear universe of things around. One legion of wild thoughts whose wandering wings now float above thy dark darkness and
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now rest where that or thou art no unbidden guest in the still cave of the witch Poesy, seeking among the shadows that pass by, ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, some phantom, some faint image; till the breast from which they fled recalls them, thou art there!"
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Note the harmonious discord. This is not the harmonious discord of 18th century nature poetry which depicts nature's variety and moving colors and a shifting chiaroscuro of light and shade. There is that but there's more here. Nature here is transformed into a profound spiritual vision terrible and awe inspiring. Here's the address addressing the Ravine thus thou Ravine of Arve, dark deep ravine. The Arve, the river that runs along the Mont Blanc range of mountains and
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travels north and is a tributary of I believe the Rhine. This is where power awful scene key word awful, meaning filled with awe. A scene where power and likeness of the Arve comes down from the iced Gulf that gird his secret throne bursting through these dark mountains like the flame of lightning through the Tempest. I get chills on my scalp every time I read this. Every line is loaded with this weight, the power and the likeness of the Arve. Tracing the likeness between the
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arbitrary flow of the river as the glaciers melt between that and the sight of a lightning flash coming from a tempest. There's this elemental syncretism in the similes this power like the Arve. The river bursts through the mountains like the flame and then the address again thou dost lie thy giant fruit of pines around the clinging children of an elder time in whose devotion the chainless winds still come and ever came to drink their odors. You ever smelled a a pine
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odored wind? There's something striking about it. It's almost seclusion distilled into an odor. And he's really capturing the sensory experience here but something more than just the senses and old and solemn harmony. This is key for the romantics which we'll get to when we talk about imagination but the idea that this is relevant to the imagination too, is what produces the harmony is in part the way the poet's eye is synthesizing all of this into this aesthetic experience. Its
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own deep eternity. I mean that's striking. That's a shocking way to describe this. Like caverns echo
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voices of the desert, strange sleep, unresting, ceaseless. We have this perpetuity in the motion, a gaze on thee in a trance sublime and strange, meaning outside ordinary experience. Sublime is very important for the romantics. Generally, it refers to this exalted state in which the senses are heightened by a sense of overwhelming power and beauty into this psychological state which is akin to fear, terror, or wonder. The romantics, some of the
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romantics, regard it as a faculty of spiritual intuition. To muse on my own separate fantasy, meaning that there's this outward reality of what he's viewing but there's also what's going on in his own my human mind which passively now renders and receives fast influence holding an unremitting interchange with the clear universe of things around. Some phantom, some faint image, till the breast from which they fled recalls them. It's almost as if the
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spirit of this overpowering encounter with nature goes forth, enters through the senses and then is called back and the experience ends after this suspension. I'll not trespass anymore upon this passage with further commentary but read the whole poem if you haven't. It's quite an experience.
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Now that we've actually done the Augustine age in the 18th century you get a sense of how wild the romantics were. I mean, we are, in our aesthetic sensibilities, children of the romantic so that their verse is like oh yes that you know that of course you would rhapsodize about a flower or a mountain in this way and it's not too shocking to us but put yourself into the world of last week's
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lecture and you begin to see something has changed in the culture. Shelley's Mont Blanc is an example of romantic transcendentalism which was a direct reaction against the empirical and Enlightenment tradition. For Immanuel Kant, transcendental he's late 18th century German philosopher. Transcendental refers to how the mind organizes and orders its own content through its own laws. The transcendent refers to ideas that cannot become objects of knowledge. They are ideas like
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God, immortality, that which is spiritual. David Perkins says more generally transcendentalism is the belief in the existence of a timeless realm of being beyond the shifting sensory world of common experience. And it's in this Godlike shuffling of beauty and power witnessed within the scene of Mont Blanc where we find, intuitive, a materialistic transcendentalism that's so Shelley. It's not like the transcendentalism of Wordsworth or of Coleridge, but it's almost a materialistic
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transcendentalism in which some greater phantom or being governs. And this leads more broadly into the question of nature, what did it become to the romantics. In the 18th century and part of the 17th century, nature was viewed...let's say you would view it religiously by analogy. You had what was called the physico theological tradition which had its greatest articulation in William Paley's
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natural theology where we get the watchmaker God analogy perhaps you've heard it. It's the argument that the nature is so intricate that we have to look at it and say, ah yes of course there's a maker. But for the romantics, physico theological, the process, merely looks at nature to an end. They wanted to see how God was actually in the clock. Somehow that there is this deity animating the clock and for this reason many of the romantics were taken with pantheism. Coleridge,
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throughout his whole life, had this struggle, where if he were not a trinitarian Christian, he probably would have been pantheist. The only reason why he wasn't a pantheist is because it...it basically incriminated God for all evil in the world. He talks a lot about pantheism because it's so fascinating to him because it's a different way of looking at the world. So in the romantics, we see nature become sacramental symbolic, not merely allegorical and
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full of this nurturing power and this is true even for the non-Christian poets of the time, including Keats and Shelley, who were profoundly spiritual in their own ways. Again, very critical of Orthodox Christianity so you sometimes get the impression that they wouldn't be spiritual. They do have their own sensibility. Take these lines...we're just talking of Coleridge...take these lines from Frost at midnight beautiful lines in which the poet addresses his sleeping babe.
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"Dear babe that sleepest cradled by my side whose gentle breathings heard in this deep calm fill up the interspersed vacancies and momentary pauses of the thought. My babe so beautiful it thrills my heart with tender gladness thus to look at thee and think that thou shalt learn far other lore and in Far other scenes for I was reared in the great City pent mid cloisters dim and saw nought lovely
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but the sky and stars. But thou my babe shalt wander like a breeze by lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags of ancient mountain and beneath the clouds which image in their bulk both lakes and shores and mountain crags so shalt thou see and hear the lovely shapes and sounds intelligible of that eternal language which thy God utters who from eternity doth teach himself in all and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! He shall mould thy spirit and by giving make it
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ask." Fascinating about this, is the vision he has for his child which is so endearingly romantic and Coleridgean. The contrast of his childhood and what he hopes for his babe heartly who really did grow up in the Lake District among the haunts of the Wordsworth house and the Robert Southey house and many other Romantics and he did grow up beneath the clouds and beneath the crags of ancient mountain. But this so shalt thou and not this so here is very much like Shelley's so
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of the spirit that receives passively receives the Impressions just as the lakes and shores image in their bulk these ancient mountains so shalt thou see and hear the lovely shapes and sounds intelligible. But this is representative here, this nature of that eternal language, here's nature which thy God utters. So this is representative of the shift towards pantheist thought. You can't call this pantheism. It could be but knowing what we know of Coleridge,
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it's not. But the romantics were taken with the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza, a 17th century philosopher. There was largely a concept of nature that was acted upon and this is the physico Theologian's view of nature, we say okay, nature is a wound up clock. It kind of runs and the deos oeus or deos absconditus is removed the God is removed but Baruch Spinoza had this idea of Natura naturon. This idea of a living, acting, unfolding nature that participates in the energies
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of the Divine. And that is how Coleridge can say, so shalt thou see and hear the lovely shapes and sounds of that eternal language which thy God utters. He shall mold thy spirit and by giving make it ask. There's this dialogic communion with nature and sometimes in romantic poetry, nature and God are hard to differentiate. I'm going to turn up my light here because the sun's going down in Cambridge. Sometimes nature and God are blended and they're not really at pains
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to separate them or distinguish. So nature, for the romantics, was a shaping power, a formative molding power, often allied with the workings of some deity. In book 10 of Wordsworth, The Prelude,
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here's how he talks about he's an interesting example of this. "When I began at first in early youth to yield myself to nature"...notice it's the third instance of a receptivity to nature, just go out and be receptive to yield myself to nature..."when that strong and holy passion overcame me first neither day nor night, evening or more were free from the oppression but great God who send thyself into this breathing world through nature and through every kind of life
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and makes man what he is, creature divine, in single or in Social imminence above all these raised infinite as sense when reason which enables him to be is not sequester What A Change Is Here.
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The idea of God being sent through the world... not talking about mere incarnation. he Nick Hy has an interesting book on this called the Romantic symbol uh interesting discussion of how the romantics sometimes blend the Incarnation with what some of the what maybe johanes scus originally would just call nature unfolding out of God. But it's fascinating too great God who sends thyself into this breathing world. I was recently talking with Christopher Ricks,
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who's a critic of Wordsworth and many other poets, an excellent critic and he was telling about Wordsworth in this phrase "breathing world" because it comes from Richard III. When Richard III is talking about being deformed sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up. And Christopher Rick's point was that Wordsworth will often take an illusion which is in a negative context and then redeem it in this new context so in a way talking about the deformity of
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Richard III and then throwing that term breathing world in here to talk about God's influence manifestation is strange. I don't really know what it means. Christopher Rick seems to think it's redemption of illusion which he's the premier critic on the illusion. So, I don't disagree but that's his thought and it's fascinating to me that this is an example of that. Anyway, let's turn our attention to a social modes of verse and we can talk more about this in discussion.
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If I've moved too hurriedly on from that passage. Satire and prophecy two very public modes romantic poetry in my generalization is generally private but it's not always so and there are ways to defy these easy generalizations. Even the romantics had satire public facing verse at least in the poets Shelley and Lord Byron. Byron's dedication to Don Juan begins with this Lampoon against the older generation of romantic poets; Robert Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. It's pretty
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amusing and this is one of the last examples of how 18th century satire lives on. Because in the Victorian period, we won't get satire like this. It nearly disappears. "Bob Southey! You're a poet, poet laurate and representative of all the race. Although it is true that you turned out a Tory at last yours has lately been a common case and now my epic Renegade what are ye at with all the lakers in and out of place? a nest of tuneful persons to my eye like four and 20 blackbirds
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in a pye." Context here...the late poets were the older generation Bob Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth...they all started out very progressive and radical and they all became conservative towards the end of their lives and this is what Byron's hinting at. Many of the younger generations absolutely disappointed by the older generation. When Shelley picked up Wordsworth's The Excursion in 1814, Mary Shelley in her journal records how, Shelley drops the book disappointedly
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and says, Wordsworth is a slave because he laads the institutional Church in that and among other reasons. Very conservative. Different from the Wordsworth we saw in the beginning of his career. Now continuing here which pie being opened they began to sing this old song and new simile holds Good a dainty dish to set before the king or Regent who admires such kind of food and Coleridge too has lately taken wing but like a hawk encumbered with his hood explaining metaphysics to
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the nation I wish he would explain his explanation in reference to the biography of literarian skipping down to wordsworth's here's the Excursion here mentioned. And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion I think the quarto holds 500 pages has given a sample from the vasty version of his new system to perplex the sages his poetry at least by his assertion and may appear so when the dog star
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rages and he who understands it would be able to add a story to the Tower of Babel. you Gentlemen by Dent of long seclusion from better company have kept your own at kazak and through still continued Fusion of one another's Mind At Last have grown to deem as a most logical conclusion that poetry has wreaths for you alone there is a narrowness in such a notion which makes me wish you'd change
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your Lake for ocean. It's really great example of romantic satire and great example of Byron who I had to include Forona who's not here uh he's our friend here on on the Patreon who admires Byron. Byron's an interesting romantic because he really wouldn't see himself as standing among the group of Romantics that he's usually placed with. Shelley, perhaps, yes, they were friends. Maybe
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Keats but for the most he stands apart almost as his own. So many of the romantics were incredibly invested in the future in the establishment of a golden age and to bring this new age on they resorted to a mode of Prophecy. Now I said in the last lecture that the 18th century poets were mainly public orators and where the romantics were mainly private rhapodizers. But we've seen here from this example that it's not always true and it's especially not true in terms of Prophecy,
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where the Augustine poets in the 18th century were mainly didactic, meaning they wanted to teach. The Romantic Poets were prophetic in that they wanted to inspire. The imagination as a creative spiritual Force you know broadly conceived for each of these poets in different ways authorized romantic prophecy. Now prophecy in this sense does not mean the prediction of future events. It goes back to a mode of Prophecy used by the Hebrew poets, prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, who
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decried the corruption of priests and politicians for the cause of social and religious justice. And the romantics, especially the younger generation, saw similar corruption in their government. Theirs was of a government that promoted the interests of the few rich over the many poor. And this brings us to the French Revolution, probably the most important political event at the end of the 18th century. Try to imagine the shock of first hearing the news that a Paris mob
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in popular uprising broke out in France and overthrew the Bastille in 1789. That was the great prison that was the symbol of royal power and to the Parisians, royal tyranny. This news for many was the first olive branch gathered from a new world. Many hoped that this Rebellion would sweep over Europe and England and bring about for some the millennial age and the return of Christ, others a more equitable world in which there's no more tyranny. Liberty would reign. To give
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you a sense of this absolute dizzying optimism at the start of this for many progressives, here is an illustration from Crane Brinton's, A Decade of Revolution 1789 to 1799, where he quotes the scientist Enrique Stefon and I quote this. "His father came home one night in Copenhagen gathered his sons about him and with tears of joy told them that the Bastille had fallen that a new era had begun that if they were failures in life they must blame themselves for henceforth poverty
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would vanish the lowest would begin the struggles of Life on equal terms with the mightiest with equal arms on equal ground." The poet Robert Southey said of this time, "nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race." I mean they saw this as the new spiritual era and so you can imagine the disappointment that they went through as the revolution devolved into chaos and bloodshed and eventually another reign of tyranny. In the late 18th century, we
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see radical changes happening in society not just in politics but also in nature. Work grows scarce in the countryside. Rural folk are forced to relocate to industrialized cities. Factories begin to adorn the topography like sinister decoration. In the Visionary, William Blake would call these factories the dark satanic Mills, which he imagined as late as 1804, would bring on once they'd be destroyed the establishment of liberty. So in our last exploration, second to
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last exploration, I want to show William Blake's mode of Prophecy here. This is from Milton, around 1804. This is the preface. It gives you a good example of the counter movement. William Blake is a writer primarily of the late 18th century as I said this was 1804, 1805. "The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Avid, of Plato, and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn are set up by artifice against the sublime of the Bible and when the new age is at leisure to
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pronounce all will be set right and those grand works of the more ancient and consciously and professedly inspired men will hold their proper Rank and the daughters of memory shall become the daughters of inspiration." New Age key word here again keep in mind the French Revolution industrialization here's the mode of Prophecy here Rouse up oh young men of the new age set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings for we have hirelings in the camp the court and the
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university who would if they could forever depress mental and prolonged corporeal War painters on UI call sculptors Architects suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expense advertising boasts that they make of such Works believe Christ and his Apostles that there is a class of men whose whole Delight is in destroying we do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our
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own imaginations notice the binary here classical models reject it for imaginations whose worlds of Eternity in which we shall live forever in Jesus our lord important to note before I continue on to this poem that Blake's Jesus is not the Jesus of Orthodox Christianity it's very complex it's the Jesus of his own system which is interesting because he has a sprawling system Blake's Jesus was a man begotten out of wedlock uh and whose mother was prompted toward free Love by
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the Holy Spirit Blake's Jesus never performed any Miracles much like the deest Jesus um and never rose from the dead he was highly syncratic in his interpretation of the Bible William Blake is wild like he is a certain flavor you got to have a certain proclivity for Blake and um I don't although I I often turned to Blake just just for Taste of this it's it's fascinating you can really get obsessed with it too you have to read him in context of all of his other writings
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or you'll constantly misunderstand him and that's such a huge weight when reading Blake his body of work is like how he described Uris in's Shadow a web moist cold and dim um so be be warned um but speculating on on whether Jesus may have traveled to England we have this famous poem which became a hymn uh and it's speculative thinking well perhaps Jesus went to England there's a thing with Scholars they don't know where J Joseph of arthea was from because there is no arthea
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at least record of arthea so a lot of people speculate perhaps it was in England and so you know with the trade routes during the the Empire perhaps Blake says perhaps Jesus walked here and he writes and did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green and was the Holy Lamb of God on England's Pleasant pastures seen and did the countenance Divine shine forth upon our clouded Hills and was Jerusalem builded here among these dark satanic Mills and here comes the
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prophetic mode now after that question bring me my bow of Burning Gold bring me my arrows of Desire bring me my spear oh clouds unfold bring me my Chariot of fire I will not cease from mental fight nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land in social reform this idea of the new age Jerusalem for Blake he takes the symbol dislocates it from the Bible and in in this system it means Liberty it's the
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symbol for Liberty it is the spirit of Liberty and for him an emanation of albon especially essentially Liberty for Blake was the inspiration of all humankind and all all art all human art this is a voice relying on the Bible not classical AU on Milton not on Pope or dren okay on to our last section which is the imagination the imagination is a concept that came out of the Enlightenment in James Eng Les book The Creative imagination published in the
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1980s is superlative uh it's the textbook on this concept of the imagination and he makes this point it's a concept that came out of the Enlightenment took on an almost religious veilance in the Romantic Period um I came to study at Harvard with James Engel just because of this book that I read as an undergraduate if you're interested in the Romantic Period uh definitely definitely read it uh this idea of the imagination once it enters into late 18th century
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German thought with tans with Kant with fcta and to some extent with novales it becomes this as spiritual as it is intellectual the chief faculty by which Romantics composed and measured their poetry the imagination the imagination was this unifying force something that could make sense of the desperate chaotic elements of experience and beauty and at the end of Samuel Taylor colorages kuon it is a Visionary state which may successfully represent heightened state
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of aesthetic experience and it's the imagination that does this they're very interested in communicating in poetry how do we move the experience into poetry the ineffable that's partly how poetry takes on this new role not merely descriptive imitator a damsel with a douer in a vision I once saw excuse me in a vision once I saw it was was an abian maid and on her duler she played singing of Mount dor could I revive within me her Symphony
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and song to such a deep Delight to win me that with music loud and long I would build that dome in air that Sunny Dome those caves of ice and all who heard should see them there and all should cry beware beware his flashing eyes his floating hair weave a circle around him Thrice and close your eyes with holy dread for he on honeydew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise this Visionary state which immediately makes him appear on the outside of the norm of society as some
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one almost in this state of insanity of Otherworldly in this super sensuous State of Consciousness returning almost to the the beite at the beginning of our lecture um this person who had fed on honey D and drunk the milk of paradise he's someone forever changed one last example of the power of the imagination and that's with John Kat's Flights of Fancy you might call them in John keats's O to a Nightingale the imagination involves this faculty of Escape of
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Barry he he's almost building a nest of poetry in which he's hiding himself in to escape um but it's also this movement of transcendence of moving beyond the temporal and spatial into something new into new worlds through sympathy and this is partway through the Ode to aiting scale can't read the whole thing I I do have a video on this poem and we'll be talking a little bit about it during
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our book club this summer but here's one of the stanzas Midway through fade far away dissolve and quite forget what thou among the leaves Hast never known the weariness the fever and the Fret here where men sit and hear each other groan where py shakes a few sad last gray hairs where youth grows pale and Spectre thin and dies where but to think is to be full of sorrow and Laden eye to despairs where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes or new love Pine at them Beyond tomorrow this
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is the actual world of sickness of decay and then the flight away away for I will fly to thee not Chariot by bakus and his Parts but on the viewless wings of poesy though the dull brain perplexes and retards already with thee although the dull brain scientific word he's not saying mind it's it's the corporeal brain perplexes and retards and then already with thee he's there he's reached the
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state and is speaking to us from that state as though in another world Tender Is the Night and happily the queen moon is on her throne clustered around by all her Starry face but here there is no light save what from Heaven is with the breezes blown through virgous glooms and winding Mossy waves I cannot see what flowers are at my feet nor what soft incense hangs upon the bows but in inal to Darkness guess each sweet wherewith the seasonable month endows the grass the thicket and
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the fruit tree wild white hawthor and the pastural Egen fast fading violence covered up in leaves and midm eldest child the coming musk rose full of dewy wine the murmurous haunt of flies on summer EES Darkly I listen and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death called him soft names in many a mused rhyme to take into the air my quiet breath now more than ever seems it rich to die decease upon the midnight with no pain while Thou Art poor bring forth thy Soul
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abroad in such ecstasy still wouldst thou sing and I have ears in vain to thy High requium become a sad this is a remarkable wish in one I'm not sure I share with the poet but it's certainly this imaginative flight and then he returns the bells call him back at the end of the poem and and fancy is is not such um a deceiver as she is famed to be he says example of just sensuous flights of fantasy so in conclusion in addition to
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the big six whom else have you to read um here are some noteworthy Romantic Era writers that you should explore Charlotte Smith we started with her Sonet um she's a pioneering voice in nature poetry and they Explore her sonnets which she revived explore themes of loneliness loss uh and power and the loss of power rather in the natural world another is Anna latia Barbo a champion of women's rights and education uh and abolitionist ardan Evangelical uh Barb's poems
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tackled social issues and they um they're celebrated for their intellectual curiosity
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Felicia hymon known for her sentimental and sometimes emotionally charged verse her poems explore themes of Love loss like Charlotte Smith but also Domesticity and again John CLA favorite poet among our friend here Robert who's not here today the northamptonshire peasant poet Claire's vivid descriptions of Rural Life uh in the changing English landscape offer this tender intimate perspective of Romanticism you don't have Keets and CLA what you have is a
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naturalist really CLA he has such attention of a of a naturalist um and he actually complained CLA complained of Keats he said you know Keats doesn't write of nature he writes of how nature appears to his fancy I think that's really true of Keats and I think where these poets differ are both brilliant Walter Savage Lander it's another poet Master of the classical form and champion of Liberty um they explore philosophical and political themes and I put Lor formally in
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proximity with Lord Byron and those two are similar in that respect then of course Robert Burns the Scottish national Bard whose poems celebrate Rural Life uh love human spirit and uh they also employ this Rich vernacular language as does Claire's poetry and also some folklore elements so plenty to read with the romantics Romantic Poets any good anthology of Romanticism will include this uh these other poets so thanks everyone on
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YouTube for watching we're now going to move into discussion and uh until until next time
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