The Novel and Poetry of Romantic Age T-8

Syllabus topics (RTMNU)

• Characteristics of Romantic Poetry
• Novel in the Age of Romanticism

Characteristics of Romantic Poetry

The Romantic Age in English poetry is usually dated from 1798, when Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, to about 1832. In the Preface (1800) Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" that "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity". Major poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge (first generation); Byron, Shelley, Keats (second generation); also Southey, Scott, Blake.

• Love of nature – nature as teacher, healer, living spirit (Wordsworth); beauty (Keats); power (Shelley).
• Imagination over reason – Coleridge's theory of the imagination.
• Emotion and subjectivity – the poet's own feelings and personality ("egotistical sublime").
• Interest in the common man and simple rural life; "language really used by men".
• Supernaturalism and the strange – Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel.
• Medievalism and the exotic – Keats's The Eve of St Agnes, Scott's romances.
• Revolutionary spirit and love of liberty – inspired by the French Revolution (1789): Shelley, Byron.
• Melancholy and longing – escape from the pain of life (Keats's odes).
• Childhood and innocence – Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode", Blake.
• Lyric forms – ode, sonnet, ballad, blank verse; musical language.

The Novel in the Age of Romanticism

• Jane Austen (1775–1817) – realistic, ironic novels of manners about middle-class families and marriage: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1815). Though in the Romantic age, she mocked excessive sensibility and Gothic fancy (Northanger Abbey).
• Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) – father of the historical novel: Waverley (1814), Ivanhoe (1819), Kenilworth. Romance of the Scottish and English past.
• Gothic and terror novel continues – Ann Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), which joins Gothic horror and science.
• Novel of ideas / Jacobin novel – William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794).
• Regional/national tale – Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800).

Likely exam questions

1. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Discuss the main characteristics of Romantic poetry.
2. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Write an essay on the novel in the Romantic age.
3. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) What is the importance of Lyrical Ballads (1798)?
4. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a note on Walter Scott as a historical novelist.
5. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Explain Wordsworth's definition of poetry.

Syllabus topics (RTMNU)

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797–1851) – daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft; wife of the poet P. B. Shelley. She began Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1816 at Lake Geneva, during a ghost-story contest with Byron and Shelley. It was published in 1818.

Structure

A frame narrative: (1) letters of the explorer Robert Walton to his sister; (2) inside them, Victor Frankenstein's story; (3) inside Victor's story, the Creature's own story.

Story in brief (our own words)

1. Walton, sailing to the North Pole, rescues the weak, half-frozen Victor from the ice. Victor tells his tale.
2. Victor, a young scientist from Geneva, studies at Ingolstadt and discovers how to give life to dead matter. He builds a giant creature from body parts. When it opens its eyes he is horrified by its ugliness and runs away.
3. The Creature, alone and rejected, learns to speak and read by secretly watching the De Lacey family. When he shows himself, they flee in fear. Everywhere people attack him. He becomes bitter and vows revenge on his creator.
4. He kills Victor's little brother William; the servant Justine is wrongly hanged for it.
5. The Creature meets Victor in the Alps and asks for a female companion, promising to go away with her. Victor starts but then destroys the female creature.
6. In revenge the Creature kills Victor's friend Henry Clerval and, on the wedding night, his bride Elizabeth. Victor's father dies of grief.
7. Victor chases the Creature to the Arctic and dies on Walton's ship. The Creature appears, mourns his creator, and goes off to destroy himself.

Themes

• Dangerous ambition / limits of science – "the Modern Prometheus" who steals divine power.
• Responsibility of the creator – Victor abandons his creation.
• Isolation and rejection make the innocent Creature a monster.
• Nature vs nurture; prejudice against the different.
• Revenge and the sublime power of nature (Alps, Arctic).

Characters

• Victor – brilliant, obsessive, irresponsible; tragic overreacher.
• The Creature – not named; sensitive, intelligent, eloquent; turned evil by loneliness.
• Walton – a parallel ambitious explorer who learns to turn back.

Likely exam questions

1. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Discuss Frankenstein as a Gothic novel / as a warning against unchecked scientific ambition.
2. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) "The Creature is more sinned against than sinning." Discuss.
3. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Explain the subtitle "The Modern Prometheus".
4. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a note on the narrative structure of Frankenstein.
5. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write a short note on Robert Walton.

Syllabus topics (RTMNU)

• William Wordsworth – The Solitary Reaper
• S. T. Coleridge – Work Without Hope
• John Keats – Ode to Autumn
• P. B. Shelley – Ode to the West Wind
• G. G. Byron – She Walks in Beauty
• Robert Southey – His Books

William Wordsworth – "The Solitary Reaper" (1807)

The poet sees a young Highland girl reaping alone in a field and singing a sad song. Her song fills the valley. It is more welcome than the nightingale's song to tired travellers in Arabian sands, or the cuckoo's in spring among the far Hebrides. He does not understand her language (Gaelic) and wonders whether she sings of old, unhappy battles or of everyday sorrow. He listens, then climbs the hill, and carries the music in his heart long after. Themes: power of music, nature and the common person, memory ("emotion recollected in tranquillity"). Devices: comparison with nightingale and cuckoo, rhetorical questions, simple diction.

S. T. Coleridge – "Work Without Hope" (1825)

In early spring all nature is busy – bees, birds, even winter seems to dream of spring – but the poet alone is idle and unproductive. He knows where the "banks" of amaranths (flowers that never fade) blow, but they are not for him. With "lips unbrightened, wreathless brow" he wanders sadly. The famous closing lines say that work without hope is like drawing nectar in a sieve, and hope without an object cannot live. Theme: despair, loss of creative power in old age. A sonnet-like poem of 14 lines.

John Keats – "To Autumn" (1819)

Keats's last great ode, in three stanzas. Stanza 1: Autumn is the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness", a friend of the sun, filling fruits with ripeness. Stanza 2: Autumn is personified as a harvester – sitting on a granary floor, asleep in a half-reaped field, watching the cider-press. Stanza 3: Autumn too has its music – gnats, lambs, crickets, robins and gathering swallows. Themes: beauty of the passing season, ripeness and acceptance of change and death. Devices: rich sensuous imagery (sight, taste, sound), personification, apostrophe.

P. B. Shelley – "Ode to the West Wind" (1819)

Written near Florence. In five sections (terza rima sonnets) the poet addresses the wild West Wind as "destroyer and preserver". It drives dead leaves (Canto 1), storm clouds (Canto 2) and the waves of the Mediterranean and Atlantic (Canto 3). The poet wishes to be lifted like a leaf, a cloud or a wave, for he is chained by life's troubles: "I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!" (Canto 4). He asks the Wind to make him its lyre and to scatter his words like ashes and sparks among mankind. It ends with hope: "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" Themes: destruction and regeneration, poet as prophet of change, revolutionary hope. Form: terza rima (aba bcb…) with a couplet in each section.

Lord Byron – "She Walks in Beauty" (1814; Hebrew Melodies, 1815)

Inspired by seeing his cousin by marriage, Mrs Wilmot, in a black mourning dress with spangles. Her beauty is like a cloudless starry night; the best of dark and bright meet in her face and eyes. Her looks show a calm mind, a pure heart and days spent in goodness. Theme: harmony of outer beauty and inner goodness. Devices: simile, contrast of light and dark, smooth iambic tetrameter.

Robert Southey – "His Books" ("My Days among the Dead Are Past")

Robert Southey (1774–1843), Poet Laureate from 1813, a friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. In this poem the scholar-poet says his days are spent among "the mighty minds of old" – the dead authors in his library. They are his true friends; he talks with them, shares their joys and sorrows, and learns humility from them. His thoughts are with the dead, and he hopes soon to join them and leave a name that will live among the future. Theme: love of books and learning; companionship of great minds; calm view of death.

Likely exam questions

1. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Critically appreciate Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind".
2. (Long, Long answer (about 16 marks)) Discuss the Romantic features in the poems prescribed for you.
3. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Explain the imagery in Keats's "To Autumn".
4. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) What does Coleridge mean by "work without hope"?
5. (Short, Short note (about 4 marks)) Write the central idea of "She Walks in Beauty".