LetteraturaL11_Romanticism

1. Letteratura inglese
dall’800 all’età contemporanea
a.a. 2020-2021
LCEE-L
Manuela D’Amore

2. Info sul corso e contatti
• Il corso è diviso in due moduli: 1) Fondamenti e testi; 2) Approfondimento
• Sia il Mod. 1 che il Mod. 2 del corso saranno tenuti in inglese con il supporto di slide e momenti di sintesi in italiano
• Tutti i materiali presentati in aula e caricati sulla piattaforma Studium faranno parte del programma di esame
• Modalità di esame
Colloquio orale – Date sulla pagina dedicata dell’insegnamento
LCEE – Modulo 1 in inglese – Modulo 2 in italiano
L – L’esame si terrà interamente in italiano
N.B. GLI ESAMI PREGRESSI – PRE 20017-2018 – CONTINUERANNO AD ESSERE A CARICO DELLE PROFF.
ARCARA E NICOLOSI
• Prova in itinere
Colloquio orale - Data da concordare in aula
Argomenti – Relativi solo al Modulo 1 (Storia della letteratura e analisi stilistico-retorica dei testi discussi a lezione)

3. • Ricevimento:
• Tutte le info sono presenti sulla pagina docente
http://www.disum.unict.it/docenti/manuela.fortunata.damore
• Email: m.damore@unict.it
• FB: Letteratura inglese D’Amore

4. The Romantic Period
1780-1830

5. Module 1: An Overview
• A short overview of the main historical events leading to Romanticism
• The Enlightenment vs Romanticism in England: distinctive features and themes
• Authors and texts: A thematic, intertextual approach
• Nature, Imagination and Egotism
• Ethics, Bioethics and Dissent
• History and Beauty
• Focus on
• William Blake, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Mary Shelley, P.B.
Shelley, Walter Scott and John Keats
• Materials
• Visuals, audio-video materials and literary texts

6. At the Root of Romanticism
Key Historical Events
1. The Industrial Revolution (1760s- the late 1800s)
Invention of the spinning machine (1764)
Enclosure Acts (1773)
Invention of a power machine for weaving (1785)
Invention of the steam engine (since 1800)
Colonies and raw materials as new economic sources
2. The American War of Independence (1775-1783)
3. The French Revolution (1789)

7. Brainstorming:
The Enlightenment and Romanticism
The Enlightenment
• Human Reason
• Nature as a source of clarity and
rules for the poet
• Enthusiasm for scientific
progress
• Creation of a public consensus
both on aesthetic and moral
values
• Belief in social progress
• Foundation of new genres
• Travel and cosmopolitanism
Romanticism
• Nature as a shelter
• Egotism and human feelings
• Progress as a threat
• Rediscovery of traditions and
national/personal identity
• Exotism as a form of freedom
• Social-political commitment

8. 1. Nature, Imagination and Egotism

9. Nature in 1700-1800
Beauty and Order vs Man’s Manipulation and Ugliness

10. Intertextual links
From Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711)
(ll. 58-77)
First follow Nature, and your judgement frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides.
In some fair body thus the informing soul
With spirit feeds, with vigor fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in the effects remains.

11. Some, to whom Heav’n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other’s aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;
The winged courser, like a gen’rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

12. • A poem in heroic couplets, Pope’s An Essay on Criticism
immediately became the emblem of Nature and Beauty in
the early Enlightenment.
• Nature was
• unerring
• divinely bright
• clear, unchanged, and universal light
→ Nature embodied an ideal of formal perfection and provided artistic
models to follow
• The Poet’s inspiration is compared to a horse
• should be guided and put under control

13. Nature in Early Romanticism:
William Blake, The Lamb (1789)
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:

14. He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

15. • The Lamb is one of the most popular poems of William Blake’s
Songs of Innocence (1789).
• Aside from its simple form, it represents a complete change in the
way it depicts Nature
• The speaker focuses on
• the lamb
• the rivers, the meadows and the vales around it
• Nature is personifed and there is also a high level of
symbolism.
• Man and Nature – Nature and religion

16. Laocoön (1826-1827)
The Power of Energy and Imagination

17. • “Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d
Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the
chief inlets of Soul in this age".
• “Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and
Reason is the bound or outward circumference of
Energy”.
• “Energy is Eternal Delight”.
• "The Imagination is not a mental State it is the Human
existence itself".

18. Focus on William Blake (1757-1827)
Art and Poetry

19. • In the Enlightement, imagination was «beneath reason in
D’Alemert’s account of human faculties», and was thus
connected to the fine arts
→ In general, a substantial number of philosophes would argue
that imagination is useful and charming, but without any
relevance to their own projects.
In late Enlightenment England, women intellectuals promoted
history as the emblem of facts rather than the power of
imagination and fiction.
• William Blake executed the central statue in 1815, but finished
his inscriptions between 1826 and 1827.
• Most of them clarify the importance of
• the human body
• energy
• imagination
• www.blakesociety.org/society-publications/voice/laocoon/

20. William Blake: Poet, Artist & Visionary - a genius of early
Romanticism in England
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IH-6R0XaGc

21. A Short Bionote
• Born into a Dissenting tradition, he remained a religious, political and artistic radical
throughout his life.
• He was always a visionary, and associated texts to visuals, thus adding fuerther
meaning to his works.
• Dante, Milton, Swedenborg and Boheme as his main sources of inspirations.
• Works
• 1790 – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell → Fascinascion for Blake and for oppositions.
• 1789-1794 – Songs of Innocence – Songs of Experience → Strong connection with the French
revolution – Close description of the contrary states of the human soul – Challenges to and
corruptions of the innocent state – Final perception of a future regeneration in the name of
God.
• 1793-1810 – The Prophetic Books: In America, a Prophecy (1793) – The First Book of Urizen
(1794) – A Vision of the Lost Judgement (1810).

22. More on Nature and Imagination
From Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse
incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout,
as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and at the same
time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things
should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to
make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not
ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in
which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Low and rustic life was generally
chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in
which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and
more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings co-
exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately
contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life
germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural
occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because
in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and
permanent forms of nature.

23. The language, too, of these men is adopted (purified indeed from
what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational
causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly
communicate with the best objects from which the best part of
language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in
society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse,
being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their
feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.
Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience
and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more
philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted
for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon
themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves
from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and
capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle
tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.

24. William Wordsworth's daffodils poem (I wandered lonely as a
cloud)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5-KMRUxyug

25. William Wordsworth
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (1804-1807)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er vales and hills,
when all at once I saw a crowd,
a host, of golden daffodils;
beside the lake, beneath the trees,
fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance

26. The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company.
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

27. Form and Topics
• Four stanzas in iambic tetrameter – The rhyme scheme is
ABABCC
• The main topic is Nature. The poem’s similes and
personifications are all meant to reinforce the connection between
Man and Nature
→ Personification of Nature
Nature as a source of company and joy

28. A Short Bionote
• He was born in the Lake District in 1770
• After his degree at Cambridge, he leaves for France and Paris
• His first works date to 1793
• 1795 – He meets Coleridge and starts collaborating with him
• 1798 – Lyrical Ballads
• 1799 – He starts working on The Prelude, an autobiographic poem
• 1800 – He writes a new Preface or Lyrical Ballads
• 1801 – The second edition of Lyrical Ballads is issued
• 1807 – He publishes Poems in Two Volumes, collecting his best works
• 1840 – He is awarded the title of Poet Laureate
• He died in 1850

29. The Poet’s Vision
• Wordsworth and his democratic vision of poetry – He always wanted
the common man to have a role in contemporary times
• Nature was the main topic in his early production: he believed that
using a «certain colouring of imagination» it was possible to see its
most hidden aspects. As for Coleridge, he wanted to experiment with
different forms of expressions and create new imaginary worlds
• In the Prelude, though, he used the expression «spots of time» to
describe his visionary experiences and epiphanies.
• William and his relationship with his sister Dorothy
• His gradual change to conservatism and nationalism

30. 2. Ethics, Bioethics and Dissent

31. From the Late Enlightenment to Romanticism
• In the Enlightenment ethics and dissent were closely related to
man’s capacity to improve human nature and the society at large.
• In the Romantic period these two concepts entailed the re-
discussion of Man’s power over Nature, as well as his support of
national identities and freedom.

32. Rime of the Ancient Mariner Orson Welles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRGnoFf2cZQ
See minutes 1.00-6.35

33. From S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
(1798)
“And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

34. At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.”
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?”—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.

35. • Coleridge’s six-part poem was written in 1798, but he
continued to work on it for several more years.
• It was part of the Preface to Lyrical Ballads and it was
considered one of the manifestos of Romanticism.
• A tribute to the past Medieval tradition, it provides a
different vision of Nature: it represents a danger for Man,
but it is a sacred element that he is not allowed to destroy.
• Crime and punishment / Life and death
• Nature as a sacred element in the universe: Blake’s The Lamb is
an anticipation. Both The Lamb and The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner are rich in religious elements.

36. S.T. Coleridge (1772-1834)
A Short Bionote
• The son of a learned clergyman, S.T. Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772.
• He was educated in London, where he made friends with Charles Lamb and read the
Neoplatonists.
• 1791 – He was admitted at Cambridge, but left without a degree. He started to use opium to
relieve his rheumatic pains.
• 1794 – He met Robert Southey and planned to emigrate to America
• 1796 – He met and made friends with Wiliam and Dorothy Wordsworth. Together he and
William wrote Lyrical Ballads. Aside from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, his main work
was Kubla Khan (1797)
• 1798-1799 – He and the Wordsworths travelled to Germany and he became interested in Kant’s
philosophy
• 1801-1813 – He became an opium addicted and separated from Wordsworth. He moved to
London and wrote Biographia Literaria (1817)
• He died in 1834.

37. • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Graphic-Novel Animated by
Joe Matamales
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Mm5ypkYf0

38. From Mary Shelley, Frankenstein,
or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
IT WAS on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my
toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments
of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that
lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally
against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of
the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it
breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch
whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs
were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great
God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath;
his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but
these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that
seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were
set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

39. The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of
human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole
purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived
myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far
exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the
dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the
room, continued a long time traversing my bed chamber, unable to
compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I
had before endured; and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes,
endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain:
I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I
saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of
Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted
the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her
features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my
dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the
grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.

40. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead,
my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed: when, by the
dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the
window shutters, I beheld the wretch ― the miserable monster whom
I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed and his eyes, if eyes
they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he
muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks.
He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out,
seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed down stairs. I took
refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited;
where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down
in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing
each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal
corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

41. • The myth of Prometheus in English Romanticism
• Fiction and science: Shelley and the latest studies on electricity
and galvanism
• Nature and the limitations of human powers at the core of the
narration
• Representation of horror and disgust

42. Shelley, Protoscience Fiction and Humanism
• Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status
in the universe.
• Frankenstein’s questions point to the central motif of the story:
the question of human nature, a human essence, and what to
include in the definition of this essence.
• Frankenstein as a novel explores elements of knowledge about the
human position in the technologized world that reverberate with
early 19th-century discourse of humanism.

43. Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
A Short Bionote
• Mary Woolstonecraft’s and William Godwin’s daughter, Mary lived in an
unconventional intellectual milieu in London, where sge was encouraged to
study and develop her political ideas.
• In 1814 she fell in love with Percy Bisshe Shelley. Because he was married,
they went to France and then travelled all ver Europe.
• After Percy’s wife’s suicide in 1816, they spent the Summer with Lord Byron
and John Polidori. It was then that she wrote Frankenstein
• 1819-1822 – She and Percy settled down in Italy and wrote their best works.
Percy died near Leghorn and she decided to go back to England
• 1823-1826 – She wrote Valperga and The Last Man.
• 1835-1844 – Aside from newspaper articles, she wrote Ladore , Falkner and
Rambles in Germany and Italy.
• She died in 1851.
•

44. Political Commitment and Dissent
in the Second Generation of Romantic Poets
• This new generation of poets was equally influenced by the French
Revolution. G. G. Byron and P.B. Shelley, for instance,
rediscovered the importance of patriotism, and supported other
European countries’ fight for independence and freedom.
• Poets like Shelley and Byron fought for Italy’s and Greek’s
independence, but also created utopian projects of social reform

45. Percy Bisshe Shelley
Song. To the Men of England (1819 – pub. 1839)
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat – nay, drink your blood?

46. Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
The seed you sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap:
Find wealth – let no impostor heap:
Weave robes – let not the idle wear:
Forge arms – in your defence to bear.
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

47. Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!

48. Song. To the Men of England
Formal Issues and Themes
• Eight four-line stanzas – The rhyme scheme is ABCC
• There are repetitions and anaphors together with allitterations and assonances → In fact,
the word «song» is part of the title
• The questions in the first four stanzas are meant to show that the men of England are
being exploited by the upper classes → There is a sharp contrast between the «men of
England»/«Bees of England» and the «lords»/«Tyrants»/«stingeless drones»/«ungrateful
drones»
• This contrast becomes even sharper in the second part of the poem where «ye» is
opposed against «another», and this latter is even defined as a «tyrant», an «impostor»
and «the idle»
• The climax in the final stanzas are meant to show the «men of England» that it is time to
take action and rebel.
• Language and style: it is generally simple and concrete, even though there is «ye», an
archaism.
• Shelley’s criticism and archaism

49. L21 Shelley life and context
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDtxsGt5Uw

50. 3. Forms of Escapism: Beauty and History

51. From the Enlightenment to Romanticism
• Industrialization, but also the political turmoil on the Continent, made
intellectuals unhappy with the world they were living in: it was for this
reason that most of them found shelter not only in Nature, but also in
Beauty and History.
• In the Enlightenment history represented truth and facts – at that time
escapism was only associated with travel and utopian worlds – also, it
was a key component in the English education system. As for Beauty, it
was that of the Classics, and it coincided with Reason, light and order.
• During Romanticism History represented the roots of cultural identity
nd difference, whereas Beauty could be found in a new vision of
Nature, as well as in the world of human emotions.

52. Ivanhoe (1952) Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8_N5iB2slE

53. Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe
(1819)

54. From Vol. 1
Chapter 1
The outward appearance of these two men formed scarce a stronger
contrast than their look and demeanour. That of the serf, or bondsman,
was sad and sullen; his aspect was bent on the ground with an air of
deep dejection. […] The looks of Wamba, on the other hand, indicated, as
usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgety impatience of
any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction
respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. The
dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried in Anglo-
Saxon, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior
classes, excepting the Norman soldiers and the immediate personal
dependants of the great feudal nobles. But to give their conversation in
the original would convey but little information to the modern reader,
for whose benefit we beg to offer the following translation. […]

55. Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four
legs?» demanded Wamba.
«Swine, fool, swine», said the herd, «every fool knows that.»
«And swine is good Saxon», said the Jester; but how call you the sow
when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the
heels, like a traitor?»
«Pork,» answered the swineherd.
«I am very glad every fool knows that too», said Wamba, «and pork, I
think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives and is in
charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a
Norman, and is called a pork, when she is carried to the Castle hall to
feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth,
ha?»
It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool’s
plate».
«Nay, I can tell you more», said Wamba, in the same tone; «there is old
Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon

56. epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen
such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he
arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destines to
consume him. Mynherr Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau
in the like manner: he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and
takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.»

57. • Narrative-dialogic sequence
• Omniscient narrator
• Language as a weapon and an element of
cultural and political domination
• Opposition between Normans and Anglo-
Saxon
• Focus on cultural identity and difference

58. Focus on Walter Scott and the Historical Novel
• History was already central in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
• History was a form of escapism and the chance to go back to every
community’s cultural roots.
• Walter Scott actually started a new genre
• Maxwell (2012) – «Scott combined a nostalgic with a crisis-oriented
sensibility, and the combination produced inundations of time, where
history is felt as both deep and wide: stretching far back in many layers
and spreading out at each of its turning points to encompass the world».

59. Walter Scott’s Main Literary Production
• Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-1803)
• Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)
• Waverly (1814)
• Ivanhoe (1819)
• On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition (1827)

60. Intro to J. Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)
Holland House, London

62. John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

63. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

64. Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

65. Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

66. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

67. • Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) is a classic example of ecphrasis → a pastoral,
Bacchic scene, and sacrificial ritual depicted on the vase are represented in the
poetic description.
• An antique marble vase with bas-relief of an ancient religious procession
inspired Keats to write his poem. The vase was located in a park in London’s
Holland House, belonging to the Holland barons.
• The rhyming system in the verse “Ode to a Grecian Urn” ABABCDEDCE is
close to the iambic pentameter (decastich) of classical odes.
• Rhetorical questions and exclamations, repetitions, transfers (enjambment)
represent an attempt of the poet to reproduce the impression from seeing the
vase ornaments, edging storyline scenes by the verbal means.
• Ode to a Grecian Urn is formed up on a chain of paradoxes and contrasts. Keats
decorated the poem by dissimilarity between the stationary figures on the urn
and dynamic life, depicted on it; soul, variable and eternal, stable; life and art.
→ The author does not give answers, who these young men actually are – gods
or mortals, and where this place is located – in the mountains or on the coast.
Specific details are shown in the form of questions, from what their reality is
combined with a certain mystery.

68. • John Keats raccontato da Franco Buffoni
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCvpvaIQOI8

69. To Sum Up:
Romanticism: Dates – Themes - Authors
• Early Beginning
• Other Main Events
• Difference Between Britain and Italy
• Romanticism, intellectual reforms and political tensions
• The Manifesto of English Romanticism
• Difference Between the I and the II Generation of Romantic Poets
• Other Historical Events
• Authors, Genres and Topics
• Poetry: W. Blake – W. Wordsworth – S.T. Coleridge – P.B. Shelley – J. Keats → Topics and Peculiar
Romantic Elements
• Non Fiction: W. Blake – W. Wordsworth → Topics and Peculiar Romantic Elements
• Fiction: M. Shelley – W. Scott → Topics and Peculiar Romantic Elements
•