Dear students: When handing in work, make sure all your work has:
● YOUR NAME
● SUBJECT AND YOUR GRADE (ENGLISH 11TH)
● THE NAME OF THE ASSIGNMENT
● THE DATE THE ASSIGNMENT IS DUE
● ANSWER EVERY QUESTION WITH A COMPLETE SENTENCE.
● NEATNESS WILL BE GRADED
All work given out during this two-week period will have to be handed in to me the
day classes resume, on July 6.
Work DUE on June 23:
Below, you will find texts with information regarding the Romantic and Enlightenment periods. Use
them to answer the following questions:
1. Write a one-page summary explaining what Romanticism is.
2. Also, write a half-page summary on the differences between Romanticism and the Enlightenment
ideas.
Romanticism is an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in 18th century Western
Europe during the industrial revolution. In part a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms
of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art and literature it
stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as
trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature. It elevated folk art,
nature and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on nature, which included human
activity conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage. It was influenced by ideas of
the Enlightenment and elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the
medieval period. The name "romantic" itself comes from the term "romance" which is a prose or poetic
heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature. The ideologies and events
of the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement.
Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and
artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which
permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and
natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas.
Characteristics of Romanticism In a general sense, Romanticism refers to several groups of artists,
poets, writers, and musicians as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers and trends of the late
18th and early 19th centuries in Europe. But a precise characterization and a specific description of
Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history and literary history for all of the twentieth
century without any great measure of consensus emerging. Some scholars see romanticism as the
inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the
Enlightenment. Another definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated
neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling."
Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key moment in the Counter-Enlightenment, a
reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the
primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point
that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism. Many Romantic authors
expressed themselves through the use of lyric poems or odes.
Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment (French: Siècle des Lumières) refers to the eighteenth
century in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. It can
more narrowly refer to the historical intellectual movement The Enlightenment, which advocated
Reason as the primary basis of authority. As a movement it occurred solely in Germany, France,
Britain, and Spain, but its influence spread beyond. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States
were also heavily influenced by Enlightenment-era ideas, particularly in the religious sphere (Deism)
and, in parallel to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
Inspired by the revolution of knowledge commenced by Galileo and Newton, and in a climate of
increasing disaffection with repressive rule, Enlightenment thinkers believed that systematic thinking
might be applied to all areas of human activity, carried into the governmental sphere in their
explorations of the individual, society and the state. Its leaders believed they could lead their states to
progress after a long period of tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny which they imputed to
the Middle Ages. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French
Revolutions, Poland's Constitution of May 3, 1791, the Latin American independence movement, the
Greek national independence movement and led to the rise of classical liberalism, democracy, and
capitalism.
CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM (ca.1800-ca.1830) Here's another definition of
Romanticism (from WebMuseum, Paris: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/romanticism/); you will
see that it stresses the same characteristics already listed. Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual
movement that originated in the late 18th century and stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom
from classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions.
Romanticism was an attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature,
painting, music, [and] architecture . . . in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the
mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony,
balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century
Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against
18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual,
the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the
visionary, and the transcendental.
Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened appreciation of the
beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; . . . a
preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his
passions and inner struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative
spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an emphasis
upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth; an obsessive interest in
folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a predilection for the exotic,
the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.
Of interest is Bertrand Russell's discussion of Romanticism in History of Western Philosophy (London,
1946), p. 703-4: When, in 1815, the political world returned to tranquility, it was a tranquility so dead,
so rigid, so hostile to all vigorous life, that only terrified conservatives could endure it.
Consequently . . . nineteenth-century revolt . . . took two forms. On the one hand, there was the revolt
of industrialism . . . . Quite different from this was the romantic revolt, which was in part reactionary,
in part revolutionary. The romantics did not aim at peace and quiet, but at vigorous and passionate
individual life. They had no sympathy with industrialism because it was ugly, because moneygrubbing seemed to them unworthy of an immortal soul, and because the growth of modern economic
organizations interfered with individual liberty. . . . The romantic movement is characterized, as a
whole, by the substitution of aesthetic for utilitarian standards. The earth-worm is useful, but not
beautiful; the tiger is beautiful, but not useful. Darwin (who was not a romantic) praised the earthworm; Blake praised the tiger. But in order to characterize the romantics, it is necessary to take
account, not only of the importance of aesthetic motives, but also of the change of taste which made
their sense of beauty different from that of their predecessors. Of this, their preference for Gothic
architecture is one of the most obvious examples. Another is their taste in scenery. Dr. Johnson
preferred Fleet Street to any rural landscape, and maintained that a man who is tired of London must be
tired of life. If anything in the country was admired by Rousseau's predecessors, it was a scene of
fertility, with rich pastures and lowing kine. Rousseau, being Swiss, naturally admired the Alps. In his
disciples' novels and stories, we find wild torrents, fearful precipices, pathless forests, thunder-storms,
tempests at sea, and generally what is useless, destructive, and violent. This change seems to be more
or less permanent: almost everybody, nowadays, prefers Niagara and the Grand Canyon to lush
meadows and fields of waving corn.
Characteristics of Romanticism
1. THE CULTIVATION OF SENSIBILITY, EMOTION, PASSION, in opposition to classic rationality
[and] common sense . . . . (The opposition appears clearly in the title of Jane Austen's novel Sense and
Sensibility, 1811.) The Romantics believed that the emotions, spontaneously released, conduce to good
conduct.
2. A REVIVED INTEREST IN AND APPRECIATION OF Christianity in general and in particular of
CATHOLICISM, now valued for its ritual drama and emotional power.
3. RELISH OF MEDIEVALISM. The eighteenth century had admired classical Greece and Rome, and
used the term "Gothic" in derision. The Romantics rediscovered the Middle Ages; indeed, they turned
it into a rich costume drama which still imposes itself on the historic picture of that time.
4. ACCLAIM OF THE EXCEPTIONAL MAN, THE TRAGIC HERO, the individual genius/rebel who
defies society's conventions--the type soon to be known as "Byronic." The experiences of the
exceptional man were bound to be exceptional; hence the Romantic writers favored plots of violent
melodrama.
5. TASTE FOR THE MYSTERIOUS, THE FANTASTIC, THE SUPERNATURAL (AND THE NONEUROPEAN). The rationalist mood of the early eighteenth century had sought scientific clarity and
had [had contempt for] the miraculous, in faith and life. The Romantics restored the miraculous,
perhaps more for its artistic opportunities than out of conviction. Romanticism gives birth to the
"Gothic novel"--for example, Frankenstein.
6. APPRECIATION OF NATURE, on philosophical as well as aesthetic grounds. Eighteenthcentury literature, even poetry, had been predominantly an urban literature. The predecessors of the
Romantics, the pre-Romantics, opened their eyes to the beauty of wild nature, and described it with
loving exactness. They found a harmony between nature and man; nature is good, and man is good
insofar as he cleaves to her. . . .
7. RESPECT FOR THE SIMPLE, PRIMITIVE MAN, representative of "THE FOLK." Rejecting
the aristocratism of the past, the pre-Romantics and the Romantics found inspiration in the virtues,
sufferings, and emotional dramas of the common man, and in those of "the noble savage," uncorrupted
by civilization. A mystical regard for DAS VOLK, especially in Germany, encouraged folkloristic
studies, by which the Romantic writers profited.
8. CONTEMPT FOR THE BOURGEOIS, THE MIDDLE CLASS man, who is by definition
money-grubbing and materialistic, lacking the defiantly unconventional high-mindedness admired by
the romantics.
Work DUE on June 24:
Below, you will find a text with information regarding the 18th century English Romantic poet, John
Keats. Use them to answer the questions following the text:
JOHN KEATS
Bryant John Keats was born in 1795 in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler
(innkeeper). Keats lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles
occurred in 1804, when his father died from a fractured skull after falling from his horse. His mother,
Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved
herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats' grandmother. There, Keats
attended a school that first instilled in him a love of literature. In 1810, however, his mother died of
tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother. The grandmother
appointed two guardians to take care of her new "charges", and these guardians removed Keats from
his old school to become a surgeon's apprentice. This continued until 1814, when, after a fight with his
master, he left his apprenticeship and became a student at a local hospital. During that year, he devoted
more and more of his time to the study of literature.
He soon found his brother, Tom Keats, entrusted to his care. Tom was suffering, as his mother had,
from tuberculosis. Finishing his epic poem "Endymion", Keats left to stay and walk in Scotland and
Ireland with his friend Charles Brown. However, he too began to show signs of tuberculosis infection
on that trip, and returned prematurely. When he did, he found that Tom's condition had deteriorated,
and that Endymion had, as had Poems before it, been the target of much abuse from the critics. On 1
December 1818, Tom Keats died from his disease, and John Keats moved again, to live in Brown's
house in Hampstead. There he lived next door to Fanny Brawne, where she had been staying with her
mother. He then quickly fell in love with Fanny. However, it was overall an unhappy affair for the poet;
Keats' ardour for her seemed to bring him more vexation than comfort.
This relationship was cut short when, by 1820, Keats began showing worse signs of the disease that
had plagued his family. On the suggestion of his doctors, he left the cold airs of London behind and
moved to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. Keats moved into a house on the Spanish Steps, in Rome,
where despite attentive care from Severn and Dr. John Clark, the poet's health rapidly deteriorated. He
died in 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was followed, and thus
he was buried under a tomb stone reading, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." His name
does not appear on the stone. (Fame, and indeed life, is fleeting.)
THIS GRAVE CONTAINS
ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF
A YOUNG ENGLISH POET
WHO
ON HIS DEATH-BED
IN THE BITTERNESS OF HIS HEART
at the malicious power of his enemies
desired these words to be engraved
on his tombstone
"HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME
WAS WRIT IN WATER"
FEB 24 1821
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:
1. Why did John Keats die?
2. What literary movement did Keats belong to?
3. Name 4 characteristics of this movement.
4. What sentiment or emotions do you think Keats' poems will have? Of happiness, sorrow, or other?
Explain your answer.
5. In your opinion, what does the epitaph on Keats´ tombstome mean?
Work DUE on June 25:
Read the following poem from John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale. Find the definition for each word in
the poem you do not understand.
Ode to a Nightingale
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
5
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
10
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
20
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 palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
30
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
35
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
40
45
50
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d 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,
55
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
60
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
70
65
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
75
80
Work DUE on June 26:
Give a definition for each of the following words: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole,
apostrophe, onomatopoeia and oxymoron. For each word, find an example of it in the poem.
Work DUE on June 29:
Explain in your own words each stanza. For each stanza provide a separate explanation of no more than
4 lines.
Work DUE on June 30:
Using the text on Romanticism, provide 10 examples from the poem that demonstrate romantic
characteristics. Write down these parts of the poem and explain what type of romantic characteristic
they each represent.
Work DUE on July 1:
Answer the following questtions regarding the poem.
1. How does the author describe the bird, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the
poem?
2. How does the author (narrator) feel about nature?
3. What is the mood of the narrator?
4. In stanza 7, the narrator says the bird takes him to places other than the present. What does he
mean by this?
5. According to the narrator, what is the mortality of the bird?
Work DUE on July 2:
Read the following poem from John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn. Find the definition for each word in
the poem you do not understand.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
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?
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!
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.
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.
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."
Work DUE on July 3:
For each of the following words, find an example of it in the poem: simile, metaphor, personification,
hyperbole, apostrophe, onomatopoeia and oxymoron.