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1、,英国文学选读,教学课件,Unit6 Romantic Poets (I),William Blake (1757-1827) Robert Burns (1759-1796) William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834),William Blake (1757-1827),Son of a small London tradesman, William Blake was born on November 28, 1757. He was the most independent and the most
2、 original poet of the 18th century. AS a strange and imaginative child, his soul was more at home with brooks and flowers and fairies than with the crowd of the city streets. He never went to school, but picked up his education as well as he could. His favorite writers include such giants as Shakesp
3、eare and Milton. At the age of ten, he was sent to a drawing school, and at 14, he was apprenticed to an engraver(雕刻师) and later began to earn his living as an engraver for various publishers. But he was never prosperous in this business and remained poor and obscure all his life. In 1782 he married
4、 Catherine Boucher, an illiterate girl. Blake taught her to read and to help him in his engraving and printing. At about the same time when they got married, Blake mixed with a group of bourgeois intellectuals in London. Tow of his friends among the group printed his Poetical Sketches(诗的素描) at their
5、 expense. In these poems, He showed contempt for the rule of reason then prevailing in English poetry and voiced his sympathy with the fresh spirit of Elizabethan poetry.,During the years 17881793, Blake mixed a lot with such political radicals and social reformers of the time as Thomas Paine and Ri
6、chard Price. At the same time, under the stimulus of the French Revolution, he wrote a series of long poems, which he called Prophecies, including the famous “The French Revolution, a Prophecy(预言)” (1791)describing the epoch-making attack on Bastille(监狱). In the meantime, Blake also turned to the tr
7、iumph of American Independence, which is well interpreted in “Visions of the Daughters of Albion and America, a Prophecy”(1783). In these poems, Blake was in sympathy with the political radicals in their revolt against priests and kings, against the slavery and the oppression and exploitation of the
8、 poor. However, he differed from them in that he cared more for what he considered to be inner spiritual liberty rather than their external political and social liberty. Besides this, Blake also wrote a prophetic satire mainly in proseThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), which contains “A Song of
9、 liberty” as its last section and was considered by Swinburne as the greatest of Blakes works. This prose word is great and important for its expression of Blakes spirit of rebellion against oppression. In 1789, Blake published Songs of Innocence and in 1794, Songs of Experience. In his old age, Bla
10、ke gave up poetry and devoted himself to painting and engraving. In 1827, he died in obscurity and poverty.,Robert Burns, the greatest Scottish peasant poet, was born in a clay cottage at Alloway, Scotland, in the winter of 1759. His father was an excellent Scottish peasant who toiled from dawn till
11、 dark to wrest a living for his family from the barren soil. Burns was the eldest of the seven sons. He had only two and a half years of regular schooling and after that he was chiefly taught by his father while he helped with the work on the farm. He did a lot of reading and became quite familiar w
12、ith the old Scottish songs and ballads and also some French. At 13, Burns a full peasants labour; at 16, he was a chief labourer on his fathers farm. While working in the fields, Burns often sang to himself, composing new lines in his mind to the old popular Scottish tunes which he knew.,Robert Burn
13、s (1759-1796),In 1784, the father died. They buried him ，moved to Mossgiel, and began the hard struggle with poverty. In spite of his prudence(节俭) and industry(勤劳), he couldnt support his family. In 1786, bankruptcy threatened the family. Burns decided to go abroad in search of a living. He collecte
14、d some of his early poems, hoping to sell them to get some money for the journey. The poems were published in July, 1786, under the title of Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which was well received. Burns got 20 pounds for this. He had already bought the ticket for the journey and was ready to
15、 leave when a letter from the publisher reached him. The letter encouraged him to issue a second edition of his poems. Burns gave up his plan and went to Edinburgh to arrange for another edition of his work. But at Edinburgh, he felt himself quite an alien(外乡人) in the aristocratic circle who despise
16、d him as a ploughman-poet. So he left the city in anger and disappointment and went back to the soil, where he felt more at home. The last few years of Burns life were a sad story. His public support of the French Revolution both in speech and writing brought him into confrontation with the authorit
17、ies and his position as an exciseman(英国的收税官) was endangered. Soon, a long illness strangled his great poetic genius and he died miserably in 1796 at only 37.,Burns is chiefly remembered for the songs written in the Scottish folk songs for the two anthologies(诗集), entitled respectively The Scots Muse
18、um and select Collection of Original Scottish Airs. Themes of these songs range from love and friendship to patriotism and revolution. Burns poems are divided into three groups: the first group is about love and friendship, like “A Red , Red Rose,” “Highland Mary,” and “ Auld Lang Syne.” They rank a
19、mong the best love and friendship lyrics in the English language and in world literature. The second group has to do with Scottish life, especially the rural life of the Scottish peasants. The best of this group is “My Hearts in the Highland. The third group reveals Burns attitude toward liberty, eq
20、uality and fraternity(友爱) under the impetus(推动) of French Revolution. There are also a number of poems on religion and quite a few poems on nature. Burns is the national poet of Scotland. His songs are Scottish in essence.,William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, England. In 1778, when Wordsworth
21、 was eight years old, his mother died and his family consequently dispersed(驱散): the boys were sent to a boarding school, and his sister, Dorothy, was sent to live with cousins in Halifax. Wordsworths stay in the rural surroundings of Hawkeshead, located in the lush Lake District in Northwestern Eng
22、land, proved to be fruitful. It was there that he first developed the love for the outdoors. He eagerly learned much from the natural surroundings, but he equally enjoyed his formal education and showed his talent for writing poetry. However, some six years later, his father passed away, marring thi
23、s tranquility(平静，宁静) and pleasure. In 1787, William Wordsworth left his beloved Lake District and started his study at St. Johns College, Cambridge, putting an end to the first of four periods of a long and uneventful(太平无事的) life.,William Wordsworth (1770-1850),His enrollment in St. Johns marked the
24、 beginning of a period of uncertainty, storm and stress from 1787 to 1797. This included his university years at Cambridge, his travels abroad, and his revolutionary experience. In his last vacation and after his graduation in 1791, he made two trips to the Continent and was greatly influenced by th
25、e French Revolution. Although he previously showed little interest in politics, Wordsworth was kindled with zeal and was ready to engage himself in the struggle for his dreams and hopes lf an ideal republic. However, after his allowance was cut off, he was obliged to return to England in 1793. The n
26、ext several years turned out to be a time of uncertainty and anxiety. He became moue and moue conservative in politics, assuming the role of the leading passive romanticist. However, the publication of his two volumes of poetry, Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, written in a conventional eig
27、hteenth-century style, helped raise his spirits. In 1795, Wordsworth returned with his sister Dorothy to the Lake District. He devoted himself to reading and writing while his sister managed the household. During his first tear there he witnessed the publication of a verse drama The Borderers. But w
28、hat occurred next proved to be more important. He met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797 and they started a friendship considered by many critics as one of the most extraordinary in English literature. In this intellectually stimulating atmosphere, Wordsworth entered a period of remarkable creativity a
29、nd introspection, which lasted from 1797 to 1799.,1798 saw the publication of Lyrical Ballads which firmly established Wordsworths fame as a poet and marked the beginning of the Romantic revival. Anonymously published, this collection of experimental poems is the result of the two friends collaborat
30、ion. The majority of the pieces are written by Wordsworth, including the famous “Preface”, in which he exphasizes the important of “an unadorned style” and demonstrates his “distaste for the gaudiness of eighteenth-century poetic diction”, claiming that there exists no “essential difference between
31、the language of prose and metrical composition”. Wordsworth adopts a simple and powerfully direct style for the depiction of the passions of man and the beauties of nature.,With profits from the book, Wordsworth had a journey to Germany in 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge. The “Lucy” poems and
32、the first two books of The Prelude were composed during the trip. After the journey, Wordsworth returned to England and embarked on the fourth period of his life, a long period of retirement in the northern lake region where he had a serene life so close to nature that her influence is reflected in
33、all his poetry. In the following years, Wordsworth published a series of works, including the Poems of 1807, The Excursion (1814), the Poems of 1815, there long narrative poemsThe White Doe of Rylstone (1815), Peter Bell (1819) and The Waggoner (1819), Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems (1835) and The
34、 Sonnets of William Wordsworth (1838). All these works made him a highly respectable literary figure in the 1830s, and in 1843, he was named Poet Laureate. When he died in 1850, he was one of Englands best-loved poets.,Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the 3 Lake Poets. But Southeys reputation has
35、greatly declined, and today he is rarely read. But Wordsworth and Coleridge are still important in the history of English Romanticism not only for what they wrote but for what they did. Coleridges theories of literature not only did much to promote the spirit of Romanticism but they also have had co
36、nsiderable influence on later writes and critics. Many people today think that Coleridge is the most provocative of all English critics. He is, of course, known to everyone as the author of that experiment in the ballad manner (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,and his Cubla Khan have always have many
37、 admirers.) Of all Romantic Poets, Coleridge was the most successful in creating a sense of awe and wonder in his work and in ways that had never seen before, for the characters and events were products of his imagination.,Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834),Born in the rural area in 1772, Coleridge
38、 inherited his bookish tastes from his father, a learned clergymen. Coleridge as a boy lived almost entirely in a world of books and ideas. After his fathers death, he was sent, in 1782 to a famous charity school in London, known as Christs Hospital. It was in this school that he meet Charles Lamb,
39、they received a good education though life there was never pleasant for them. For example, Coleridge here became a first-class student of Latin and Greek classics and also read widely in the early English authors. Next Coleridge won a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he studied at Jesus Co
40、llege. There he began to exhibit a certain instability of character that was to show itself throughout the rest of his life. Finding himself desperately in debt, he rushed off to London and enlisted in the army. But he didnt like army life at all so with the help of his brothers he managed to go bac
41、k to Cambridge. Shortly afterwards he visited Oxford and met Southey. Both wild-eyed young idealists, aflame with the revolutionary spirit worked on a scheme which they called “Pantisocracy”-a utopian society in which the power of the government were to be shared by all. The plan came to nothing. Throughout his life Coleridge was better at drawing up plans than at putting them into practice.,Thank you for learning,