Revolution, Reaction, & Reform: Romantic British Poetry

Readings:

• Robert Burns:
  • “To a Mouse”
  • “Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation”
  • “Scots Wha Hae”
  • “For a’ that and a’ that”
• William Blake:
  • Songs of Innocence
    • “Introduction”
    • “The Shepherd”
    • “The Lamb”
    • “The Little Black Boy”
    • “The Chimney Sweeper”
    • “The Divine Image”
    • “Holy Thursday”
  • Songs of Experience
    • “Introduction”
    • “Earth’s Answer”
    • “The Clod and the Pebble”
    • “Holy Thursday”
    • “The Chimney Sweeper”
    • “The Tyger”
    • “London”
    • “The Human Abstract”
    • “A Poison Tree”
    • “A Divine Image”

Discussion Questions:

1. How would you characterize the attitude toward Scottish national identity as expressed in two poems by Burns and the relationship between Scotland and England? Quote specific passages from the works to support your claims.
2. How would you describe the speaker in “To A Mouse?” What is his reaction to what he’s done to the mouse? In what ways does he sympathize with the unhoused rodent, and what differences does he emphasize? What is the poem suggesting about the status of the rural laborer?
3. Select from one set of the following poems: “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”; “Holy Thursday” (Innocence) and “Holy Thursday” (Experience); “The Chimney Sweeper” (Innocence) and “The Chimney Sweeper” (Experience); “The Divine Image” and “A Divine Image.” Compare and contrast the two poems: what common and disparate themes do they explore? How do their tones, images, and attitudes overlap and differ? Do they seem to be making different points, or the same points in different ways?
4. How do any 1-2 of Blake’s poems (apart from those listed in the question above) represent human nature? For example, do the poems suggest an innate goodness to man, or do they hint at (or yell about) man’s fallen nature? What threatens or endangers the goodness our nature may have?

Readings:

• Richard Price:
  • From A Discourse on the Love of Our Country
• Edmund Burke:
  • From Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Helen Maria Williams:
  • A Farewell, for Two Years, to England
• William Wordsworth:
  • From The Prelude (1805, X.309-383, 693-795; 1850, VII.512-543)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
  • “France: An Ode”

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does Williams support the French Revolution in A Farewell, for Two Years, to England? According to her, why should the English support it? What bolder or deeper hopes does she have for the future of England?
2. Choose from one of the poems listed below. What is the poet’s attitude looking at the Revolution in retrospect? What events changed his mind? What conclusions or lessons does he draw from the events in France?
   1.  Wordsworth, The Prelude
   2. Coleridge, “France: An Ode”

Readings:

• Walter Scott:
  • “Lochinvar”
• Wordsworth:
  • “I grieved for Buonaparte”
• Lord Byron:
  • From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Canto the Third, Stanzas 36-52),
  • “Prometheus”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley:
  • “Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte”
• Felicia Hemans:
  • “The Bride of the Greek Isle”
  • “The Switzer’s Wife”
  • “Joan of Arc, in Rheims”

Discussion Questions:

1. How does Byron describe Napoleon? What strengths led to Napoleon’s rise, and what weaknesses led to his downfall? Does the passage offer any insights into human nature more generally? How do the stanzas about nature (46-52) contrast with those about Napoleon?
2. Compare and contrast how Wordsworth and Shelley depict Napoleon in their sonnets. Does either poet see anything admirable about Napoleon? What did they fear or dislike about him? What larger point do they try to make based on his life? What larger ideas or concepts or did they believe Napoleon represented? (Select from two of the poems from this week’s readings.)
3. Choose from two of the Hemans poems assigned for today’s session. What makes the central characters of these poems heroic, exactly? That is, what virtues do they possess, what traits make them exceptional, and/or what actions make them notable? Do the share common traits or virtues? Are they different in significant ways? What larger causes do they represent?

Readings:

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld:
  • Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem
• Shelley:
  • “To Wordsworth”
  • The Mask of Anarchy
  • “Ode to the West Wind”
  • “England in 1819”
• John Keats:
  • “To Autumn”
• Hemans:
  • “The Homes of England”

Discussion Questions:

1. In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem, what challenges is the war abroad creating in England? What is the speaker’s attitude toward her nation and its cause—patriotic? Critical? What influence does Britain have around the world? What future does Barbauld envision for Britain and for freedom around the world?
2. Based on two Shelley poems assigned for this week, how would you characterize the poet’s attitude toward social and political change? Why are such changes necessary? Who or what will be the force behind the changes? Does he provide a clear sense of how the changes will be implemented, exactly?

Readings:

• Burke:
  • From A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime (Part Two, Sections 1-5, 7-8)
• Coleridge:
  • “Chamouny; the Hour Before Sunrise. A Hymn”
• Wordsworth:
  • From The Prelude (1805, XIII.1-184)
• Shelley:
  • “Mont Blanc”
• Keats:
  • “Ode to a Nightingale”
  • “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Discussion Questions:

1. Selecting from one of the poems below, discuss: What power does the sublime have on the poem’s speaker? To what external force does the sublime object point—God? Nature? Man? To what degree does the poet’s vision of the sublime correspond to what Burke lays out in A Philosophical Enquiry?
   1. Coleridge, “Chamouny”
   2. Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805, XIII.1-184)
   3. Shelley, “Mont Blanc”
2. Choosing between “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” discuss how Keats’s speakers respond to the title object. What effect does the object have on his senses? What ideas about art and mortality does the object conjure? How does the speaker resolve these ideas at the end of the poem (if at all)?