Assignment 103: Keats, Shelley and Byron as true spirit of Romantic Literature

      This blog is written as part of assignment of semester 1, assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad, Department of English, MKBU. In this blog I am going to discuss Samuel Richardson's work 'Pamela Or Virtue Rewarded' as an Epistolary Novel.

Name:- Trushali Dodiya

Roll No:- 21

Semester:- 1(Batch 2022-24)

Enrollment number:- 4069206420220011

Paper No:- 103

Paper name:- Literature of the Romantics 

Paper code:- 22394

Topic:- Keats, Shelley and Byron as true spirit of Romantic Literature 

Submitted to:- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Email Address:- trushalidodiya84@gmail.com

Keats, Byron and Shelley as true spirit of the Romantic literature

   

Table of Content

• Introduction
• Introduction of the Romantic period
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Percy Bysshy Shelley
• John Keats
• Conclusion

★ Introduction:-

           The Age of Romanticism started with the publication of Lyrical Ballad in 1798 by William Wordsworth. It was the reaction against Neoclassicism. Literature of this age is mostly Poetry. Though prose works are also there in this period, poetry was the dominant form of literature of this period. Among the greatest poets were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshy Shelley. Many historians have tried to distinguish all these poets in various groups. Among them Keats Shelley and Byron are many times included in a single group by their life and way and style of writing poetry.

★ Introduction of the Romantic Period:-

        The first half of the nineteenth century records the triumph of Romanticism in literature and of Democracy in Government. In the Romantic era both these movements were essential in the development of English literature of the Romantic period. 

          The chief subject of romantic literature was the essential nobleness of common men and the Value of the individual. The Romantic period has two great events or we can say movements in which the brief portion of history lies:

• Declaration of Independence (1776)
• English Reform Bill of 1832

          The French revolution is the great historic movement, by which this age is called "the age of Revolution". The French Revolution, American Commonwealth,the establishment of a true democracy in England by the Reform Bill, all these are the essential part of the development of the romantic age. 

        Literature of this age is largely poetical in form, and entirely romantic in spirit. This age has complete contrast with the previous age, which was largely of prose. This age has an enthusiasm like Elizabethan age. As William J. Long in his book, The history of English literature notes, 

"The glory of that age is in the poetry of Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore and Southern." (Long)

           Many critics and literary writers have tended to classify these poets in various groups. Among one of them is the group of Keats Byron and Shelley, sometimes by their lifespan and sometimes by their way, style and themes of their poetry. Though there are many things which distinguish them from each other. So let's see how these poets are equal and different from each other and in which way. All three are considered as the Young Romantics.

"The poetry of all three asserts the supremacy of feelings and the imagination, attaches much significance to an intuitive, visionary conception of Nature, and presents Artistic endeavour as an inherently solitary activity." (Hay, Daisy. Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives.)

★ George Gordon, Lord Byron:-

         Lord Byron was born in London in 1788. There are two distinct sides of Byron and his poetry: good and bad. One side is his "Splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength" and another side is his "Gudy charlatanry, blare of brass and big bow-wowishness." (Long) He was exiled from England in 1816. Before that his poetry was shallow and insincere in thought, and declamatory in Nature. After his exile he met Shelley, whose influence made his thoughts mature. Though his characters were cynical and pessimistic, is at least honest in his unhappy outlook on society. After his exile he wrote the third and fourth canto of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'.

"In readiness Byron it is well to remember that a disappointed and embittered man, not only in his personal life, but also in his expectation of a general transformation of human society." (Long)

         Byron pours his own imagination mainly in his poetry. Aa William J. Long quotes,

"He is the most expressive writer of his age in voicing the discontent of a multitude of Europeans who were disappointed at the failure of the French Revolution to produce an entirely new form of government and society." (Long)

             He started to write lyrical poems in 1805. At Cambridge, he published his first volume of poems, 'Hours of Idleness' in 1807. In 1809, he started a trip to Europe and the Orient. This trip resulted in the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'. This is why Byron is often compared with Scott, as having given to us Europe and the just as Scott gave us Scotland and its people. While comparing these two poets Long argues that though they are compared with each other, they have many differences in many ways. Like Scott has written about his country Scotland, so he knew his country well, each and every aspect of it. But on the other side Byron didn't know Europe. As a result of it we find his own unbalanced and egotistic self in that. But one thing noted here is he remains faithful to Nature.

         He wrote many lyrics, like She walks in Beauty and To Thyrza. While explaining about the features of his poetry, Edward Albert writes, 

• He was a man of his egoistic tempor
• He is best known for his satires
• His style is different from other romantic poets. (Albert History of English Literature )

      So while looking at these three qualities of Byron, one can come to the conclusion that He never considered himself a Romantic poet; he embodied a passionate, moody man, a proud individualist. He had a great sensibility for nature and beauty. His witty, satirical;sometimes seems to descend from neoclassical models rather than earlier Romantic poets.

          He died 1824 at an early age, when he was 39 years old.

Major Works:-

• Hours of Idleness
• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
• Manfred and Cain
• Mazeppa
• The Prisoners of Chillon
• 
  
  

★ Percy Bysshy Shelley:-

        Percy Bysshy Shelley was born in Sussex in 1792. He was educated at Eton and Oxford.

"If Keats was a first love, Shelley is a mature one." (Chakrabarti 'for him, the poetic was political': How Shelley Stands Tall as a great romantic poet)

        His wife was Mary Shelley, daughter of another political radical, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, generally recognised as the mother of British feminism. 

        As a lyrical poet, Shelley is one of the supreme geniuses of our literature; and the reader will do well to begin with the poems which show him at his very best. 

            In reading Shelley's longer poems, there are two distinct qualities of him which are described in his works. One is the wanderer, seeking ideal beauty and forever unsatisfied and the other the unbalanced reformer, seeking the overthrow of pressing institutions and the establishment of universal happiness. In his work 'Alastor, or the spirit of Solitude'(1816), we find first quality as a wanderer. 'Prometheus Unbound' (1818-1820) is a lyrical drama, which contains the second quality of his works. In this there is the revolutionary enthusiasm of Shelley. Shelley's philosophy was a curious aftergrowth of the French Revolution, namely that it is only the existing tyranny of State, Church and Society which keeps man from growth into perfect happiness.(Long) His other Revolutionary works are

• Queen Mab
• The Revolt of Islam
• Hellas
• The Witch of Atlas

        All these works are against Religion, marriage, kingcraft, most impractical when considered as schemes for reform, but except it, there was abundance of exquisite beauty also. 

       He wrote 'Adonais'(1821), which is a wonderful threnody, a song of grief, written over the death of one of the poets of Romantic age, Keats. 

Shelley also died at a very early age, when he was 29 years old in 1822.

       

Major works:-

• 'Alastor, or the spirit of Solitude'
• Prometheus Unbound 
• Queen Mab
• The Revolt of Islam
• Hellas
• The Witch of Atlas
• Adonais
• Faust and Cain
• The Cloud
• The Skylark
• The West Wind
• Hymn of Intellectual Beauty
• Sensitive Plant

★ John Keats

         John Keats is the last and the most perfect of the Romanticists. While writing about John keats' quality as a romantic poet, Long notes that,

"While Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Shelley advocating impossible reforms, and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political discontent of the times, Keats lived apart from man and from all political measures, worshipping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart and ought to reflect some splendour of the natural world as he show all dream it to be." (Long)

            By this observation of Long, it seems clear that he was very much clear what he wanted to write. He is very clear of his vision and pour it into his poems. He differed completely from his contemporaries. He lived for poetry alone. As Lowell pointed out, a virtue went out of him into everything he wrote. In his works, 'we have the impression of this immense loyalty to his art and the impression of a profound satisfaction that the deed falls so far short of the splendid dream'(Long).

          Though He knew no Greek as he was poorly educated in schools, in his works we can see that in his work 'Endymion', he tended to reflect modern English the spirit of the old Greeks. He wrote four odes,

1. On a Grecian Urn
2. To a Nightingale
3. To Autumn
4. To Psyche

       In his 'Ode to Nightingale', there are four things which are characteristics of the last of the Romantic poets.

• A love for sensuous beauty
• A touch of pessimism
• A purely pagan conception of Nature
• A strong individualism

         He was bitterly criticised and condemned by the critics of his day. His works suffer by the opposite extreme of aloofness from every human interest. He is often accused of being indifferent to humanity. Three things are noted when we consider this points,

1. Keats sort to express beauty for its own sake, beauty is as essential to normal humanity as a government or law
2. Keats's letters are as much an indication of the man as his poetry, with their human sympathy, their eager interest in social problems, keen insight into life, there is no trace of effeminacy, but rather every indication of a strong and noble manhood.
3. Keats's work was done in three or four years, with small preparation as he died at an age 25, he left a body of poetry which will always be one of our most cherished possessions.

         He died at a very early age in 1821, when he was only 25 years old. It is also said that 'At 25 his work was as mature as was Tennyson at 50.' No one can replace John Keats in his poems, study of words, poetic expressions, harmony of word and thought. 

         For all these reasons, he is considered as the best poet of the Romantic Era. 

       Byron, Shelley and Keats, conventionally defined as the second generation of Romantic poets, share different personal and artistic characteristics which can be summed up as follows: 

• Individualism, restlessness, escapism
• Strong ideals and thoughts
• Early death, far from England, in Mediterranean countries
• Alienation of the artist from society 
• Reflection on the relationship between the ideal and the real 
• Longing for political and social order

        They all died young, these second-generation Romantic poets – Shelley at 29, Keats at 25, Lord Byron at 36. Thus we lose the true spirit of romantic literature at a very early age. Everyone has a kind of conception that if these poets would survive for a longer period of time, they may beat other poets of English literature.

★ Conclusion:-

           To sum up the discussion of the later Romantic poets Lord Byron, Percy Bysshy Shelley and John Keats, it seems clear why they are called as the true spirit of romantic literature. They were all born in very near years and died also at a very young age. In spite of their early death, they have made a lasting impact in romantic literature by their poems.

Words :- 1972

Images:- 4

Videos:- 4

Work cited:-

Albert , Edward. History of English Literature . Fifth ed., Oxford University Press, 1979. 

Chakrabarti, Reeta. “'For Him, the Poetic Was Political': How Shelley Stands Tall as a Great Romantic Poet.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 July 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jul/08/for-him-the-poetic-was-political-how-shelley-stands-tall-as-a-great-romantic-poet. 

Hay, Daisy. Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.

Long, William J.. English Literature. India, Copia Interactive, LLC, 2021..