curriculum guide british romantic poetry - artstor · curriculum guide british romantic poetry hugh...

C U R R I C U L U M G U I D E

British Romantic PoetryHugh Roberts Associate Professor of EnglishUniversity of California Irvine

This curriculum guide explores some ways into thinking about themes and developments in British Romantic Poetry through images I use images in teaching Romantic poetry both as a way of giving students alternative cognitive routes into the conceptual arguments Irsquom making and to help them visualize the worldsmdashboth historical and geographicalmdashin which the poetry theyrsquore reading was written and set This guide is not organized to follow the actual sequence of a particular course but to provide instructors with some starting points for deploying images related to major themes and writers in the period

C A S PA R DAV I D F R I E D R I C H T R E E W I T H R AV E N S A N D PR E H I S TO R I C

T U M U LU S O N T H E B A LT I C COA S T C 18 22

I m a g e a n d o r i g i n a l d a t a p rov i d e d by E r i c h L e s s i n g C u l t u r e a n d F i n e A r t s

A rc h i ve s A R T R E S O U R C E N Y a r t r e s co m

1 The French RevolutionNo historical event in our period is so important for understanding the emergence of Romanticism and the ideas which animated it These images help to convey both the original liberatory promise of the Revolution and the descent into brutal violence and regicide that spurred a generation to question the ideals of Enlighten-ment rationality which they had thought the Revolution embodied A revolutionary playing card with a figure of a sans-culottes replacing the traditional (royalist) face cards shows the profound sweep of the Revolutionrsquos cultural changes The ldquoBal de la Bastillerdquo shows the Parisian crowds dancing atop the ruins of the Bastille one year after its fall signaled the start of the Revolution A Gillray caricature of 1793 shows the horror that swept Europe in the wake of the September Massacres

View the images in the Artstor Digital Library

2 NapoleonNapoleon is the ldquoworld historical figurerdquo who bestrides our period like a colossus both as hero and as bogeyman He is a useful figure for thinking about Romantic conceptions of genius and the power (and danger) of the individual will He is also a figure whose artistic representations capture both the emerging artistic language of Romanticism (as in Davidrsquos famous portrait of the crossing of the alps) and the persistence of neoclassical imagery and aesthetics through the Romantic period The English war first with Revolutionary France and then with Napoleonrsquos Imperial France is a constant backdrop to the poetry of our period That war also produces other ldquoGreat Menrdquo such as Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington


3 Regency EnglandIn this section I have gathered some images which convey some sense of ordinary life in our period Fashions architecture furniture These all help students con-jure up some sense of the material culture of the world in which our authors moved and wrote


4 The GothicThe taste for ldquoGothicrdquo art design and literature precedes the emergence of Roman-ticism but is also one of the hallmarks of the Romantic period From Coleridgersquos ldquoChristabelrdquo to Byronrsquos ldquoManfredrdquo to Shelleyrsquos ldquoThe Cencirdquo it profoundly marks British Romantic Poetry This period overlap from the mid-eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century makes the Gothic particularly useful for thinking about the continuities and discontinuities from the age of the Enlightenment into the Ro-mantic era How does the ldquounreasonrdquo of the Gothic function in an age of Reason and how does that change in an era that is calling into question the value of Enlighten-ment rationality


5 Romanticism in ArtIn this group of images we offer students a chance to explore the emergence of Ro-manticism in the visual arts We begin with Joseph Wrightrsquos ldquoExperiment on a Bird in the Air Pumprdquo in which the scientist is at once the hero of rationality bringing the light of reason into darkness and a Gothic villain torturing a helpless animal whose fate wrings tears from the young girl wiser than the adults around her Works by JMW Turner John Constable Caspar David Friedrich and Eugene Delacroix allow students to explore the Europe-wide spread of Romantic ideas to which they will find ready analogues in the poetry theyrsquore reading Compare Turnerrsquos Venice with Shelleyrsquos in ldquoJulian and Maddalordquo Wordsworth on top of Mt Snowdon in his ldquoPreluderdquo with Caspar David Friedrichrsquos The Wanderer above the Sea of Mist Delacroixrsquos Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missalonghi with Byronrsquos ldquoThe Isles of

Greecerdquo Above all we see the common fascination with naturersquos sublime power and the promise of a spiritual reward in a proper appreciation of nature


6 NeoclassicismAs with the Gothic it is important to consider the aesthetic continuities with the past as well as the innovations of the period That ldquoRomantic Artrdquo embraces such appar-ent extremes as say Delacroix and Ingres can help students understand some of the profound aesthetic differences among British Romantic writers When Wordsworth famously dismissed Keatsrsquos ldquoHymn to Panrdquo as a ldquopretty piece of paganismrdquo or when Byron lashed out at the ldquoLakersrdquo for undervaluing Pope and Dryden we see the same tensions at play


7 OrientalismNapoleonrsquos campaign in Egypt and Syria spurred a Europe-wide fascination with the Near East Mingling with the Romantic obsession with the ldquoprimitiverdquo (and other states that free us from the trammels of over-rational ldquocivilizationrdquo) this fostered the creation of an imaginary world of dark-eyed beauties and ldquosavagerdquo but proud men From Byronrsquos youthful romances to his crowning achievement Don Juan from Southeyrsquos ldquoThe Curse of Kehamardquo through Coleridgersquos ldquoKubla Khanrdquo Shelleyrsquos ldquoHellasrdquo Keatsrsquos ldquoEndymionrdquo Felicia Hemansrsquos ldquoThe Siege of Valenciardquo and beyond we see this construction of an imagined ldquoOtherrdquo which allows a critical or satiri-cal distance from Western cultural values while unfortunately often perpetuating reductive stereotypes of the ldquoOrientalrdquo world


8 SlaveryThe fight against the slave trade was one of the signature liberal causes in late eighteenth century England The massive conservative reaction against all kinds of ldquoradicalrdquo initiatives caused by Englandrsquos war with Revolutionary France set that cause back years longer than would otherwise have been the case Exploring late eighteenth century and Romantic responses to slavery and the slave trade is a useful way again to think through continuities and discontinuities between Romantic period literature and its precursors (especially the late eighteenth century literature of Sensibility)


9 Victorian ReinventionsVictorian artists frequently drew on the works of Romantic poets for inspiration Just as it is interesting to think about Romanticismrsquos historical continuities with the past it can be useful to think about what it bequeaths to those who came after It is

also often revealing for students to think about how a visual artist translates a poetrsquos language into an image what visual information does the poet actually give Where does the artist follow the poet to the letter and where not What interpretation of the poem is the artist working with in creating his or her image


10 BlakeIn this and the remaining sections I gather together images specifically relating to the ldquoBig Sixrdquo of major British Romantic poets Blake was a great artist as well as a great poet and students should be shown a representative selection of his artwork I have chosen a small selection here which allows students to understand how startlingly different each individual hand-colored version of any one of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience was from any other It also includes some of the great color prints of 1795 which allow students to see Blake working through the ideas he explores in his poetry in a purely visual medium


11 WordsworthHere we find images illustrating aspects of Wordsworthrsquos life (a portrait his house at Rydal Mount the interior of his beloved Dove Cottage) as well as images relating to his poetry Edward Learrsquos charming illustrations of the Lake District where so much of Wordsworthrsquos poetry was written and set images from Turnerrsquos Simplon Pass sketchbook Tintern Abbey and the Wye River and Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain


12 ColeridgeIn this group we have some portraits of the poet an illustration of a linden or ldquolime treerdquo which helps students picture Coleridgersquos famous ldquobowerrdquo some modern interpretations of the ldquoeolian harprdquo which is such a crucial metaphor in Coleridgersquos writing the first page of an MS version of Coleridgersquos ldquoDejectionrdquo an image of Kubla Khan and some of Gustave Dorersquos great illustrations of ldquoThe Rime of the Ancient Marinerrdquo


13 ByronByron is the only British Romantic poet whose reputation and influence was truly pan-European in the early nineteenth century The numerous illustrations of his work by Delacroix help to convey that More than that though the tempestuous drama of these images their sublime landscapes and Orientalist costumes and set-tings help students understand Byronrsquos centrality to so much of what defined the Romantic era to those living in it


14 ShelleyIn addition to some Shelley portraits this section includes images which help students visualize some important scenes and figures in Shelleyrsquos poems Above all we have the portrait of Beatrice Cenci (attributed to Guido Reni) which Shelley de-scribed as a major influence on his play about her Turnerrsquos paintings of Venice can be usefully compared to Shelleyrsquos descriptions in ldquoJulian and Maddalordquo and elsewhere The image of the tomb of ldquoOzymandiasrdquo (Ramesses II) helps students think about the relationship of Shelleyrsquos famous sonnet to the Orientalist images which were flooding into Europe at this time The maenad figures in Shelleyrsquos ldquoOde to the West Windrdquo (and elsewhere) Scenes of Chamounix and the Mer de Glace glacier help to place Shelleyrsquos ldquoMont Blancrdquo in the context of Romantic tourism and the quest for sublime landscapes


15 KeatsIt is always fruitful to approach Keats through images as it helps students focus on the richly sensuous nature of his poetry The many many Victorian illustrations of his poems get a varied representation here In addition there are artistic approaches to subjects like the myth of Cupid and Psyche by artists who are contemporary to Keats which help frame his turn to classical mythology as part of a broader neoclas-sical impulse within Romantic art Finally we have some portraits Keatsrsquos death mask and some images of Hampstead Heath which help students to think about the kind of ldquosuburbanrdquo experience of ldquonaturerdquo which characterizes much of Keatsrsquos poetry (and which is the focus of many of the early attacks on Keats)


artstororg

2 NapoleonNapoleon is the ldquoworld historical figurerdquo who bestrides our period like a colossus both as hero and as bogeyman He is a useful figure for thinking about Romantic conceptions of genius and the power (and danger) of the individual will He is also a figure whose artistic representations capture both the emerging artistic language of Romanticism (as in Davidrsquos famous portrait of the crossing of the alps) and the persistence of neoclassical imagery and aesthetics through the Romantic period The English war first with Revolutionary France and then with Napoleonrsquos Imperial France is a constant backdrop to the poetry of our period That war also produces other ldquoGreat Menrdquo such as Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington


3 Regency EnglandIn this section I have gathered some images which convey some sense of ordinary life in our period Fashions architecture furniture These all help students con-jure up some sense of the material culture of the world in which our authors moved and wrote


4 The GothicThe taste for ldquoGothicrdquo art design and literature precedes the emergence of Roman-ticism but is also one of the hallmarks of the Romantic period From Coleridgersquos ldquoChristabelrdquo to Byronrsquos ldquoManfredrdquo to Shelleyrsquos ldquoThe Cencirdquo it profoundly marks British Romantic Poetry This period overlap from the mid-eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century makes the Gothic particularly useful for thinking about the continuities and discontinuities from the age of the Enlightenment into the Ro-mantic era How does the ldquounreasonrdquo of the Gothic function in an age of Reason and how does that change in an era that is calling into question the value of Enlighten-ment rationality


5 Romanticism in ArtIn this group of images we offer students a chance to explore the emergence of Ro-manticism in the visual arts We begin with Joseph Wrightrsquos ldquoExperiment on a Bird in the Air Pumprdquo in which the scientist is at once the hero of rationality bringing the light of reason into darkness and a Gothic villain torturing a helpless animal whose fate wrings tears from the young girl wiser than the adults around her Works by JMW Turner John Constable Caspar David Friedrich and Eugene Delacroix allow students to explore the Europe-wide spread of Romantic ideas to which they will find ready analogues in the poetry theyrsquore reading Compare Turnerrsquos Venice with Shelleyrsquos in ldquoJulian and Maddalordquo Wordsworth on top of Mt Snowdon in his ldquoPreluderdquo with Caspar David Friedrichrsquos The Wanderer above the Sea of Mist Delacroixrsquos Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missalonghi with Byronrsquos ldquoThe Isles of
























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curriculum guide british romantic poetry - artstor · curriculum guide british romantic poetry hugh...

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