It would be quite untrue to equate the name Romanticism with an escapist or a past-ward yearning. Almost all the romantic writers were very aware of their environment and their best work came out of their need/desire to come to terms with it.
John Keats was the oldest of four children, born in London on the 31st of October 1795 to Frances Jenning and Thomas Keats who managed the Swan and Hoop Inn, Morgate. Out of the six romantics, Keats was the last born and the first to die. His earliest poems date from 1814 and his first volume, poems , was published in 1817.
He boarded at Rev. John Clarke's School at Enfield which had a strongly republican culture, where he enjoyed a liberal and discerning education (this was quite often shown through his poetry). He befriended the headmaster’s son Charles Cowden Clarke who encouraged Keats early learning.
Sadly, Keats became an orphan at the age of fourteen. His father was killed in a horse riding accident in 1804 and his mother died, a few years later in 1810, of tuberculosis.
Shortly after his mother’s death in 1810 (or maybe 1811) Keats became Thomas Hammond’s apprentice surgeon and occupied one of Hammond’s rooms above the surgery. Keats schooling at Enfield continued until 1814 when he left Hammond and began studying at St. Thomas’s and Guy’s Hospital and in 1816 became the appointed dresser at Guy’s.
Even at school, Keats believed highly in imagination and was highly imaginative and poetic. One time telling his friend Charles Cowden Clarke ‘the other day during the lecture there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I am off with them to Oberon and fairy-land’.
Unlike Wordsworth, who was concerned with finding God and moral lessons in nature and the natural order, Keats was most concerned with what he expressed in a letter to Bailey: ‘the truth of imagination’. “A truth of which ‘beauty’ was the assurance of the sign”. (Keats- {intro} Ed. by Ellershaw) The much looked at ‘equation’ of these terms at the end of his Ode to a Grecian Urn, ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’ shows this by BLAH BLAH BLAH! What you DAD said to me before.
Keats’s biggest aim was to translate the beauty he sensed or imagined, saw or apprehended into beautiful words, to a world full of politics, devastated by war and a drastically changing social order.
Unfortunately Keats died at a very young age of twenty-five, on 23rd February 1821, of tuberculosis. ‘I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death’. (Letter to his brother George and his wife Georgina Keats, October 1818.) Keats composed his own epitaph, it read: Here lies one whose name was writ in water. Joseph Severen, who nursed Keats during his last days, designed Keats’s tombstone with the symbol of a lyre ‘with only half the strings- to show his classical genius cut off by death before its maturity’.
William Wordsworth, born 7th April 1770 at Cockermouth on the River Derwent, in the heart of the Lake District, Cumberland. He was the second of five children to John Wordsworth who was a lawyer.
After his mother’s death in 1778, Wordsworth’s father could not handle raising children by himself so he sent Wordsworth, followed later by his three brothers, to Hawkshead in 1779.
Hawkshead was good for Wordsworth and he thrived there. In his later poems, when Wordsworth would reflect on the beneficial influence nature had on him as a child, he is mostly referring to his days at Hawkshead. A woman at Hawkshead called Ann Tyson, Wordsworth’s ‘house mother’, allowed him the freedom to explore the beautiful nature in the area. Later, in 1787 Wordsworth was enrolled at Cambridge. His first big encouragement to write poetry (also to write poetry using the theme of Nature) was Wordsworth’s schoolmaster there, a man named William Taylor. Wordsworth believed that he ‘learnt more from following his impulses and that Nature employed means towards rightful development’.
In 1783 John Wordsworth died, leaving William and his brothers orphans and with no inheritance (until later). Wordsworth then went and lived with his uncle.
Wordsworth travelled a great deal. In 1790 went on a walking tour of Europe. He and his friend from school, Robert Jones, arrived in France during the one-year celebration of the French Revolution. At this point Wordsworth was more interested in aesthetics than politics and it was not until a while later, in 1791 when he returned to France (and stayed for a full year), that the French Revolution made a big impact on him and he became a enthusiastic supporter of it. He returned just before the war between England and France in December 1792. This meant it was not possible to return across the Channel, to France, until 1802. He also visited Switzerland, Germany, Scotland and also went on a Continental tour. Many of the nature these places gave Wordsworth inspiration for his poems.
In August 1795 Wordsworth met Coleridge and the two soon became friends. Over the next couple of years the pair became very close and it is said that no person influenced Wordsworth, except Coleridge. Coleridge’s political philosophy was well developed, and he was able to make political theory more real and sound to Wordsworth because his own was based on knowledge of ‘man as man’. He seemed to appeal not only to Wordsworth’s intellect but also to the poet’s finer and deeper feelings. It was also after meeting Coleridge that Wordsworth’s ‘sense of beauty had become fully conscious’. (Selections From Wordsworth, F.B. Pinion, M.A.)
Nature, of all things was Wordsworth’s biggest influence for his poetry. This influence was not only sensuous but moral too. He felt there was a spirit in nature that guided him ‘by beauty and by fear’. Wordsworth love of nature could be considered religious and he was a pantheist. He also believed nature played a vital role in his education.
Wordsworth died on the 28th April 1850 at the age of eighty and was largely considered the greatest poet in the world. Matthew Arnold solemnly announced that ‘the last poetic voice is dumb’.
Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn has many features of typical romantic poetry. The poem in iambic pentameter. It is in ode form with five 10-line stanzas and no couplets. Ode on a Grecian Urn has an abab(cdecde) rhyme scheme. (The last six lines vary from stanza to stanza.)
This ode is about a Grecian Urn which Keats is looking upon. He describes his reactions and feelings towards the urn explaining in detail the images of maidens, pipers, temples and trees in forests. All these images are forever frozen in their peak when their beauty is best and they are most perfect. This is also highly imaginative. Keats is picturing what the people and even the environment, on the urn, are thinking.
One part, in the second stanza, Keats is describing a ‘bold lover’ frozen just as he is about to kiss his fair maiden. Keats is envious of the lover for even though he will never kiss his love, she will always be in her essence: young and fair and their love will remain forever. The trees on the urn will also, for eternity, be bountiful of green leaves- never losing them no matter what the season in real life. Even though Keats is talking of a few other subjects as well, he is still mainly talking of beauty- beauty of the forever fair maiden and beauty of the ‘happy boughs’ of the forever green tree.
Keats associates truth with beauty which is expressed in this ode. They are also noted several times in Keats's letters: "What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth" (Nov. 22, 1817); ". . . in close relationship of Beauty and Truth" (December 21, 1817); "I can never feel certain of a truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty" (December 31, 1818).
The ode also show readers the fine line between pleasure and pain. The youth is caught between the anxiety preceding the kiss and won’t experience the actual kiss itself but they will always contain the excitement of the build up to it.
In regard to the tree it says ‘…nor ever bid the spring adieu’ So the trees are full of young, Spring leaves; but a trees prime is in Summer so this tree, even though always having plentiful leaves will never experience full maturity. So the tree is on the border of youth to maturity- once again that fine line. Another typical context of Romanticism is the seasons and the symbolism they contain: Spring meaning birth or new life; Summer (as said above) the best days or when something is in its prime; Autumn growing old; and Winter symbolising death. This is all to do with one of Keats’ distinctive theme of mortality (or time) and also immortality.
Mortality is also mentioned when Keats tells the urn when he, and the people of his time, dies, the Urn, with its beautiful paintings, will remain (it has no winter): ‘When old age shall this generation waste, thou shalt remain…’ and carry on the message (his famous and much debated line): “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”.
While the melody of modern day pipes may be sweet, Keats finds the painted pipes sweeter. They are not mere sensual pleasure, but guide one to a higher sense of ideal beauty.
Commentary Keats articulates a common Romantic belief that beauty is the path to truth--to higher knowledge and the proper basis of democratic society. The urn, like other art (including the poet's), functions to remind man of this basic truth, urging him to establish the most just of social realities.
Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality is very much about himself and how he saw nature as a child in comparison to when he matured and grew up. He tells readers how when he was a child everything in nature seemed extraordinary but as he grew he saw things differently, still beautifully just more realistically. He also felt like everything external in life that he was a part of became like a part of him. As a youth he was unaware of death as he was so far away from it and it wasn’t a part of his clear and simple perception on life and nature but as he grew it became very real to him (maybe to do with death of parents?) and asks his child self why he wanted to grow up and have all these problems lain on them? Wordsworth talks of his experiences with nature as a child and that he is happy to have all his childhood memories of nature- he rejoices and acquires strength from them. He also discusses his experiences with nature as an adult.
The English romantic genre has certain features which distinguish it from other genres. The poets Keats and Wordsworth typify or provide examples of this genre. Keat’s Ode on a Grecian Urn and Wordswoth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality both demonstrate the Romantic genre, but in different ways.
Romanticism is a genre with certain features which Keats and Wordsworth typify by the style and content of their poems. The poems I have used to show this are Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn and Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality. Their poems are both very emotive and beautifully written and outline the genre well.
