Thеmе: english romanticism and its development content introduction chapter I. Romanticsim in english literature

John Keats (1795 – 1821) came from a solid, friendly middle-bourgeois urban family, over which, however, fate seemed to weigh. Keats was still in his Teens when his parents died: his father, who ran a livery stable in the city, was killed by a fall from a horse; his mother died of tuberculosis. In the autumn of 1820 Keats, accompanied by a loyal friend, went to Italy, where he died in early 1821. A year later, the ashes of the drowned Shelley were buried in the same cemetery. In his short, marred by illness, the life of Keats managed to publish almost all the main they created. In less than four years from the time it was published, he published three books – two collections (1817, 1820), which included sonnets, odes, ballads, poems "Lamia", "Isabella", and a separate edition of the poem "Endymion" (1817); a number of poems, including "the Lady without mercy", appeared in the press. The poetic tragedy "the Great Otto" and some of the lyrics remained unpublished. In the late 40s of the XIX century, everything was published, including letters and biographies. Keats's lyrics are, as with other romantics, States of mind and heart captured in verse. The reasons can be very diverse, the objects are innumerable, deliberately random, they are brought to the surface by the course of life. Reading the Iliad, the cricket, the singing of the Nightingale, a visit to burns ' house, getting a friendly letter or a Laurel wreath, a change of mood, like the weather – all gives the reason for writing poetry. Keats takes the next step in poetry to the direct reflection of feelings, achieving the effect of presence in the movement of emotions and the pen, capturing them on the fly. Poetic introspection is sometimes explicitly declared the subject, the task, of a poem, as, for example, in a sonnet written "on the occasion of the first reading of Homer in Chapman's translation." Keats seeks to convey his sense of belonging to the Homeric world, which hitherto remained closed to him. The sonnet does not explain what the poet has read, but only the uniqueness of the experience, which is similar to a revelation: the experience, and not the object that caused it, becomes the main thing. In the sonnet "the Grasshopper and the cricket" the poet again gives a sketch of his condition: a winter half-dream, through which he hears the chirping of a cricket and remembers the summer crackling of a grasshopper. Several of the odic poems included in Keats's second collection, which are respectively called "Ode to melancholy," "Ode to psyche," and so on, are in turn extended psychological studies. Dreams, dreams, the work of the imagination, the course of creativity are represented here by a scattering of unexpected pictures, images, symbols evoked in the mind of the poet by the Nightingale's song.


Walter Scott as a developer in English romanticism. Walter Scott (1771 – 1832), English poet, novelist, and historian. At the request of his father, Scott chose a career as a lawyer, from 1786 helped his father in business, and in 1792 became a barrister. Although over time literary work became the main source of his wealth, he considered it a hobby. Scott's first publications were translations from G. A. Burger (1796) and I. V. Goethe. Many of his works show the influence of the Gothic school with its "horror novels", but fortunately, in the 1790s, Scott became interested in Scottish ballads. In 1802, he published selected ballads under the title Songs of the Scottish border. This book brought him fame. Scott's book, with a substantial introduction, a number of interesting notes and detailed commentary, and sometimes also a recording of the melodies to which a particular ballad was performed, became an event not only in European literature, but also in science at the beginning of the XIX century. He, in fact, finally defeated the old classic epic, represented in English literature at the end of the XVIII century by the vast production of artisan poets.
“In 1805, a poem of his own composition – "the Song of the last minstrel", which met the tastes of the time and quickly won the sympathy of the public. The " Song... "was followed by the poems" Marmion "(1808)," the maiden of the lake "(1810)," the Vision of don Roderick "(1811)," Rokeby "(1813), and Scott's last great poem" the Lord of the Isles " (1815). Scott's poems are a whole epic world, rich not only in content and poetic skill, stanzas, bold rhyme, innovative metrics, enriched with folk verse classes, but also genres. For example, the poem "the Song of the last minstrel" embodies the genre of a chivalrous fairy tale, saturated with the trends of European courtly poetry, of which Scott was a great expert. The poem "the maiden of the lake" is a sample of a historical poem, full of realities and authentic facts. It is based on an actual event, the end of the house of Douglas, broken after a long struggle by the harsh hand of king James II, the main character of Scott's poem. This genre of historical poem, rich in realistic paintings and lively landscapes, is most fully embodied in the poem "Marmion", which, like "the Lord of the Isles", tells about the struggle of the Scots against the English conquerors, and especially in the poem "Rokeby". From "Rokeby" opens a direct path to Scott's historical novel. Several insert songs from this poem are placed in the present volume and give an idea of the polyphonic, deeply poetic sound of "Rokeby". In 1830, Scott reissued his collection of Songs of the Scottish border, with a lengthy Preface entitled " Introductory remarks on folk poetry and on various collections of British (mostly Scottish) ballads." With the publication of Scott's first novel, Waverly (1814), a new stage in his life began. All novels were printed without his signature, even after 1827, when Scott announced his authorship. Part of the success of "Waverley "was due to the same qualities that distinguished" the Song of the last minstrel " – the novelty of style and the vividness of descriptions of Scottish customs” [15; 23].
Scott's poetry is also an important initial period of his development, covering a total of about twenty years, if we consider that the first experiments of Scott were published in the early 1790s, and "Waverley", conceived in 1805, was completed only in 1814; this is an important aspect of the entire creative development of Scott as a whole. The aesthetics of Scott's novels are closely connected with the aesthetics of his poetry, developing it and integrating it into the complex structure of his artistic means. This is why the present collection of Scott's works pays such attention to his poetry. There is every reason to assume that Scott's interest in national poetic antiquity was also influenced by German poetry of the end of the XVIII century, under the influence of herder's ideas.