Romanticism: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake; exercises from Amazing Minds, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Romanticism: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake; exercises from Amazing Minds e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! 22.09.2020 ROMANTICISM Wanderer above the sea fog It makes us feel scared. We can call it sublime, because it attracts us, but it scares us. Copia le cose dalla scheda. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Amazing Minds 1, pag. 332) I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. First stanza: description of the landscape. Second stanza: description of the flowers. Third stanza: description of the relationship between the poet and daffodils. Forth stanza: we see the present tense, which signals that it is a recollection of the moment he had while wandering in front of the daffodils. The poet is recollecting the emotion he had in front of the show. This is called emotion recollected in tranquility. The most important rhetorical figure is personification. We also see repetition, gazed and gazed, to emphasize the contemplation of nature, the creative process starts. The manifest of the English romanticism is The preface of lyrical ballads. The poem consists of four stanzas. Line 18 there is the inversion of the word order because he wants to emphasize the word wealth. The poem talks about nature, the subject matter is nature. The language is simple and clear. The situation is an ordinary one. Everything is being transformed by imagination. Pag.333 COMPREHENSION 1. At the beginning the poet is wandering around. 2. All of a sudden, he sees a host of daffodils. 3. They are ten thousand. 4. He feels gay and happy. 5. He is on his couch. 6. It provokes him pleasure fills. ANALYSIS Ex.4 The scheme is ABABCC.g Ex. 5 1. It describes a past event. 2. To a lonely cloud that floats on vales hills. 3. He’s having a positive experience because he’s quite and unworried, wandering around which was typical of romanticism. 4. It is unexpected because he has been lonely before and because they were hidden. 5. They flatter and dance in the breeze. 6. Personification. Ex.6 1. To stars in the milky way. 2. Er the sunrise as a dress. The tone of the octave is solemn and emphatic. The city of London is at one with nature. Instead in the sestet the poet shows his emotional experience in which he uses hyperboles. He also states/claims, always using hyperboles, that the city becomes part of nature, so it becomes even more beautiful than valleys, hills, rivers…The poet, thanks to his sensitiveness, is the only one able to appreciate nature. The poem is et early in the morning, whereas the poem London is set at midnight. The poet is gazing at London form above, whereas Blake is inside the city. The atmosphere is different because on Blake’s poem is dark, characterized by sights of sorrow, we have visual and auditory images, whereas in Upon Westminster Bridge the atmosphere is characterized by quietness, peace. Mainly William Blake wanted to portrait in his poem the real life of London at that time characterized by poverty and exploitation given by institutions which imprison man’s freedom, which were created by man himself thanks to rationality, reason. Renunciation to enlightenment, William Blake stress on imagination. William Blake He is a poet of the first generation of romantic’s poets. He wrote London in 1794, taken from Songs of experience. He also wrote Songs of experience. He wrote London went there were 7000.000 inhabitants, a very high figure at that time. It was a bustling and thriving commercial city, but it also had extensive slum areas. London I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear How the Chimney-sweepers cry Every blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse While Wordsworth gives the idea of an idyllic London, where architectural structures are fused with the nature, Blake only talks about negative aspects, weakness, woe, cry, semantic area related to sadness, desperation and so on. Wordsworth is hyperbolic, while Blake is realistic. The use of anaphora and repetition: we have the repetition of the word chartered which suggest a society dominated by commercial profit, where even nature is exploited and dominated by economic interest. The repetition of marks, the word every to stress the fact that it is something universal. We have the word cry. Words related to the semantic area of sadness, despair and sorrow. We have harsh sounds, for example mind forged manacles, weakness and woe which is an alliteration. The atmosphere is mournful. We have another important element: in stanza number three there is an acrostic, hear, the poet refers to the senses, mainly the hearing. The words related to hearing are cry, hear… The words related to sight are marks of weakness, marks of woe, blood on the Palace. The poem was published in 1794 after the outbreak of the French Revolution and one year after the execution of Louis XV. At that time the city of London was suffering political and social unrest due to the marked social inequalities of the time. The mind forged manacles in Blake’s poem may represent the deep respect for tradition and institutions that stopped the people of London from following the example of revolutionary Paris and overthrowing their oppressors in Church and State. He was a fierce critic of his time in which people were put and kept in prison without a trial. He also attacked the Church of England considering it indifferent to the suffering of the poor. Blake agrees with Rousseau that Man is born free and yet everywhere he lives in chains. The state of experience is a state in which imagination is repressed and people are selfish, the social system exploits the weak; this is a state in which god is no more our benevolent father but he’s the god that punishes man as in Bible. Blake said the mainly the state of innocence and the state of experience are complementary, they exist, you can’t have innocence without experience, they are two complementary states of human soul and progress is given by these two states that coexist. The state of childhood is usually associated with the state of innocence, but it might be also that an adult man be associated with the state of innocence as well because it depends on your own situation. Childhood in Blake and childhood in Wordsworth are very important themes. Childhood associated with the state of innocence. Purity, joy, imagination, liberty. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Rime of the Ancient Mariner Published in 1798 with the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads. It is the first poem of the Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge does the opposite of Wordsworth: he starts from supernatural events and tries to make it real. Wordsworth starts from everyday life situations, while Coleridge starts from supernatural elements and try to make it real for the reader. A ballad is a narrative poem; written in an archaic form and it is Coleridge’s contribution to the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. It is made up of 7 parts and each part is introduced by a short summary of the following story. The first part is introduced by an “argument” which briefly summarizes the whole ballad. There are two levels of narration: there is an external narrator that narrates about an old mariner who, forced to wander around the world repeating his tale, tells his story to a wedding guest at a wedding feast. The mariner tells about his adventures on the ocean. He sets off a sea voyage with his crew towards the southern hemisphere.