I poeti romantici inglesi di prima e seconda generazione

POETI ROMANTICI INGLESI: PRIMA E SECONDA GENERAZIONE

Romantic poetry.

During the Romantic period, poetry became one of the most vital forms of literary expression. The poetry of Romanticism signalled a profound change in sensibility. Politically speaking, it was influenced by the revolutions which took place in America and in France. The main characteristics of Romanticism are intensity and imagination. These themes recur in Romantic writings and include the tension between innocence and experience, country and city, youth and age, man and nature, language and expression. We generally divide the Romantic poets into two groups: the first generation and the the second generation.
The first generation: Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth.
They wrote much of their work around the time of the French Revolution.
Characteristics of Romanticism.
Compare the characteristics of the Romantic poets to those of the Augustan poets who came before them:
Augustan: importance of reason and order; control of emotion and imagination, rational thinking; children must be disciplined to conform with the dictates of society; sophisticated and artificial language; classical themes and allusions. Romantic: importance of feelings and intuition; free play of imagination, poetic vision; children are sacred, being the closest creatures to God; language more typical of common usage; heightened observation of nature and everyday situations.
The second generation: Byron, Shelley and Keats.
They were all quite different from one another, both in terms of aesthetic style and in their preoccupations.

I poeti romantici inglesi: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley e Keats

ROMANTICISMO INGLESE AUTORI: WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake. THE LAMB
The poem, written by William Blake, belongs to the collection the “Songs of Innocence”.
The poem consists of 2 stanzas which are related to each other, because the first is a question about the creation, while the second is the answer. The theme of the poem is the identity of the creator of the lamb and the poet speaks directly with the animal, and he presents various actions of the lamb. The first stanza opens with 2 questions: Blake asks the lamb if it knows who made it but it isn’t the lamb which answers, the poet himself does it. The lamb is described as the animal of innocence, like the creature in which there are no troubles, no tensions. The lamb could stand both as a real animal as a symbol, in fact some natural details make you think of the real animal. So the lamb is the symbol of God’s innocence and God’s love for his creatures. In the second stanza the poet says that the creator is the lamb because he’s sweet and innocent and he’s a little child (Jesus). The poet uses a simple language, lexis and syntax.

WILLIAM BLAKE: THE TYGER

The Tyger. The poem, written by William Blake, belongs to the collection the “Song of Experience”.
The tyger, which expresses the idea of absolute evil better, is usually associated with “The lamb” which expressed the idea of absoluted good. In really, for Blake, absolute evil and absolute good don’t exist alone, but together; they co-exist in man’s soul and is the man who can decide to follow goodness or evil. The tiger is divided into six stanzas and the first and the last ones are equal, and the only difference is the word “could” which change in “dare”. The rhytm is not sweet like in the lamb, but hammering and speedy. Blake gives both positive or negative connotation of the tyger: it is violent and bad, but also beautiful, full of energy, elegant. The tyger’s terror may also contain innocence. Some critics have seen this “innocent terror” as a symbol of the French Revolution and all the revolutions in general, which contain a spontaneous childlike energy but which can be very destructive as well.

WORDSWORTH

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD. The poem, written by William Wordsworth, was inspired by the sight of a field full of golden daffodils waving in the wind. The key of the poem is joy, as we can see from the many words which express pleasure and delight: in fact the daffodils are golden, waving in a sprightly dance and outdoing the waves in glee. The flowers are set in a natural environment made up of land, air and water.