Romanticism – Page 18 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of William Wordsworth’s ‘London, 1802’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour’. With this opening line, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) begins one of his most famous sonnets. Although he’s best-known in the popular consciousness as the poet who praised daffodils and wandered lonely as a cloud, ‘London, 1802’ shows a Wordsworth who is very critical of England and its people, and looking back nostalgically to a happier time in English (literary) history. Here is ‘London, 1802’ with some notes towards an analysis of the poem.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!

A Summary and Analysis of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818, ‘Ozymandias’ is perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated and best-known poem. Given its status as a great poem, a few words by way of analysis might help to elucidate some of its features and effects, as well as its meaning – what exactly is Shelley saying about great empires and civilisations?

What follows is our summary and analysis of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, our attempt to get to grips with this challenging and haunting poem.

Five Fascinating Facts about Thomas Chatterton

The life and work of the poet Thomas Chatterton, told through five bits of trivia

1. Chatterton was, in effect, the first English Romantic poet. Before William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Thomas Chatterton (1752-177o) was laying the groundwork for a revolution in English verse. Chatterton was perhaps the most precocious English poet who has ever lived. In his early teens, he fell in love with all things medieval, and invented the figure of the fifteenth-century monk Thomas Rowley, who would become the teenage boy’s alter ego. Thereafter, Chatterton would write the majority of his poems as Rowley, and even succeeded in passing them off as genuine medieval poems … for a while, at least.

Interesting Facts about William Wordsworth

The life of William Wordsworth told through some intriguing biographical facts

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth in the Lake District. He went to the same school, the Cockermouth Free School, as Fletcher Christian, the man who would lead the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. Christian was six years senior to Wordsworth.

Famously, Wordsworth had anosmia. As the poet’s nephew wrote in his Memoirs of William Wordsworth, ‘With regard to fragrance, Mr. Wordsworth spoke from the testimony of others: he himself had no sense of smell. The single instance of his enjoying such a perception, which is recorded of him in Southey’s life, was, in fact, imaginary. The incident occurred at Racedown, when he was walking with Miss H––, who coming suddenly upon a parterre of sweet flowers, expressed her pleasure at their fragrance, – a pleasure which he caught from her lips, and then fancied to be his own.’

Guest Blog: Medical Case Studies and Nineteenth-Century Literature

By Kimberly Robinson, The University of Arkansas – Fort Smith The rise of the asylum is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, and, in the absence of facts, the Romantics obsessed over wrongful institutionalization, but the bureaucracy that handled the treatment of the insane is more tangible than most people might expect. Culturally speaking, the Romantics … Read more