内容
Content
6.2 Romantic poems
6.2.1 Byron
1. Life
2. Works
3. Don Juan
6.2.2 Shelley
1. Life
2. Poetic works
3. Byron VS Shelly
6.2.3 Keats
1. Life
2. Early poems
3. Mature poems
Module 6-Unit 2 Romantic Poems PPT 图片来源
1. 乔治·戈登·拜伦
http://commons.wikimedia.org
2. 唐璜
http://english.dbw.cn
3. 珀西 · 比希 · 雪莱
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu
4. 约翰·济慈 1
http://baike.baidu.com/view/475963.htm?fromenter=John%20Keats&enc=utf8
5. 约翰·济慈 2
讲义
6.2 Romantic Poems
In the present lecture we will focus on three representative romantic poets. They are George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.
George Gordon Byron was one of the most important and versatile writers of the Romantic Movement. But Byron was notorious for his love affairs and unconventional life style.
Life
Byron was the son of a Captain of the Guards. He was a handsome man but unfortunately born with a misformed foot.
He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge . While a student of nineteen, he published his first collection of poems entitled Hours of Idleness. But it was severely criticized by the conservative Edinburgh Review.
In 1809 Byron started a tour of Europe and the East. He chose an unconventional and highly romantic route, which contributed to his great work Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (1812). And this successful work made Byron become famous instantly.
In 1816 his wife left him saying that no honest woman could live with a monster. Then everyone began to hate Byron, and turned against him. So Byron left England and never returned. For the rest of his short life, he attacked all the conventions, the hypocrisies, and the moral commonplaces of English society.
During his wandering life on the Continent, he made acquaintance with Shelley whose high-minded revolutionary optimism and passionate hope for a better world exerted certain influence upon Byron's later works.
At the age of 36, he died of a fever.
2. Works
In terms of his works, Byron's poetry was distinguished for the novelty of his subject matter , the exotic quality of his descriptions of oriental scenery which he got to know during his travel.
He also introduced into English poetry a new style of character, which was referred to as “ Byronic Hero” of “Satanic Spirit”.
The “Byronic hero” — who was lonely, rebellious, and brooding— first appeared in Manfred (1817).
Generally speaking, Byron's poetic works can be roughly divided into three periods.
• Before 1811, the representative works are Hours of Idleness and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage .
In Hours of Idleness, Byron reveals his dissatisfaction with the social reality of his day.
And in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , his hatred toward tyranny and his desire for freedom are shown through his passionate utterances on the national liberation movements in different countries of Europe at the time.
2) from 1812 to 1816, the representative work is Oriental Tales . In these poems we meet with the typical Byronic hero . It is a proud revolutionary figure rising single-handed against government or religion or moral society.
3) from 1816 to 1824 , there comes the world-famous Dramatic poem: (8 verse dramas): Don Juan ( 唐璜 )
The work, Don Juan, was a great epic of the early 19 th century. It was a time when Turkish people took control of Greece and brought the dreadful life to Greek people. In contrast to the freedom of ancient Greece , they suffered from enslavement. Byron wrote the poem to call for the Greek people to fight for their liberty.
As for the main character of Don Juan, he is a legendary hero originating in Spain . And his prototype is an unrepentant libertine.
Generally speaking, Don Juan is considered to be the greatest of Byron's works. It contains 16 cantos and a few stanzas of the 17 th . And it is left incomplete as a result of the poet's early death.
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter, ( 四音部诗 ) with a rhyme scheme of ababcc.
The opening canto of Don Juan delicately depicts the romantic passion and youthful enthusiasm.
The central cantos of the poem are marvelous writings. Byron mainly describes the violence and atrocity of war.
In the last cantos, Byron directs his anger to the selfish hypocrisy of the English patrician by employing a narrative skill.
Now let's appreciate an excerpt from Don Juan.
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
我苦于没有英雄可写
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
尽管当今之世，英雄迭出不穷，
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
年年有，月月有，报刊上连编累牍
The age discovers he is not the true one;
而后才有发现：他算不得真英雄
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
因此，对这些我就不人云亦云了
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
而想把我们的老友唐璜来传颂
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
我们都看过他的戏，他够短寿
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.
似乎未及天年就被小鬼给带走
Overall, Byron's poetry has great influence on the literature of the whole world, especially in Europe . Since the 1920s, his poetry also has exerted considerable influence upon the Chinese poets, and with the translation of some of his poems into the Chinese language, his name has become well known to the general reading public in China .
Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the most influential leaders of the literary movement, romanticism. He was not only a great poet, but also a great theorist of poetry.
life
Shelley was born in Sussex( 萨塞克斯 ). He was expelled from the University of Oxford because he took part in writing and circulating of a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism (1811).
Soon, the 19-year-old Shelley married his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, and moved to the Lake District of England to study and write.
Two years later, he published his first long serious work, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813), expressing the freethinking socialist philosophy of British philosopher William Godwin.
In 1816, after his wife's suicide, Shelley married his teacher, Godwin's daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft.
During the remaining four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works, including the short odes To a Skylark (1820), To the West Wind (1819), and The Cloud (1820); the sonnet Ozymandias (1818); the verse drama Prometheus Unbound (1820); and the unfinished critical work In Defence of Poetry (1822).
In 1822, shortly before his 30th birthday, Shelley was drowned in a storm while sailing.
Since Shelley was such an important poet in Romantic period, we will centre on his poetic works. Actually his poetic works can be divided into two periods.
• First is the Early period from 1813 to 1818. The representative works are Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam. Queen Mab is his first long poem; The Revolt of Islam is a synthesis of all Shelley's early poetry, for it contains all his social, political and aesthetic ideas up to that time
• Second is the Italian period from 1818 to 1822. In this period, Shelly lived in Italy , which marked the mature years of his poetic career. Most of his best and best-known poems were created in this period, such as Prometheus Unbound .
• Prometheus Unbound has generally been considered as one of Shelley's most important works, because it represents Shelley's intense hatred for tyranny and his great admiration for revolutionary fighters for freedom.
• Another famous work is The Mask of Anarchy. It is an allegorical poem( 寓言诗 ) showing a forceful protest against political oppression as well as economic exploitation.
• Moreover, Shelley also created some political poems and Lyrical poems such as Ode to the West Wind , To a Skylark, etc. The greatest of Shelley's political poems is his Song to the Men of England : （致英格兰人）
Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap
播种吧—但不让暴君收；
Find wealth, — let no imposter heap;
发现财富—不准骗子们占有；
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear;
制作衣袍—不让懒汉穿；
Forge arms, — in your defense to bear.
锻造武器—为了自卫握在手。
Shelley was not only a great poet, but also a great theorist of poetry. A Defense of Poetry lays emphasis on the social educative role of poetry
The differences between the Byron and Shelley:
Firstly, Byron only attacked political tyranny, but Shelley also saw the cruel relations of economic exploitation in the feudal-bourgeois world.
Secondly, Shelley had faith in the collective strength of the people. Therefore, he dedicated to the interests of the masses. However, Byron thought more of one's personal happiness and sorrow. And he believed in the power of individual heroes and had contempt for the common people.
John Keats
Life
• John Keats (1795-1821), was born in London .
• In 1816 he became a licensed druggist, but he never practiced the profession.
• Keats's first book was Poems by John Keats published in 1817.
• In 1820 Keats contracted tuberculosis. His book Lamia , Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems appeared that year. The three title poems, which explore mythical and legendary themes of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times, are rich in imagery and phrasing.
• The volume also contains three odes considered among the finest in the English language: Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, and Ode to a Nightingale .
• And in late 1820, taking his doctor's advice, Keats went to Rome , where he died.
In terms of Keat's poetic works, it can be roughly divided into two periods: early poems and mature poems.
The first period is before 1818. The most important during this period is On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.
The second period is from 1819 to 1820. Keats reached his maturity in poem writing in this period. Some of his best-known poems were published after his death, including “Eve of St. Mark” (1848). Keats's letters, praised by many critics as among the finest written in English, were published in 1931.
Keats' odes have generally been considered as his most important works, particularly: Ode on a Grecian Urn , Ode to a Nightingale , Ode to Autumn , Ode on Melancholy .
The general themes of his Odes are: the world of nature is beautiful, the realms of art and poetry and imagination are wonderful, but the existing human society contains inescapable and irremediable misery.
Among all his odes, Ode to a Nightingale is one of the most poignant expressions of Keats' intense personal yearning for freedom from human misery as he fell under the magic of the nightingale's song.
Ode to a Nightingale
夜莺颂
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
我的心在痛，困顿和麻木
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk…
刺进了感官，有如饮过毒鸠
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
噫，这是个幻觉，还是梦寐
Fled is that music: -- Do I wake or sleep?
那歌声去了，我是睡？是醒？
In Ode to a Nightingale , the nightingale's song symbolizes the beauty of nature and art. In fact, Keats was fascinated by the difference between life and art. He thought Human beings die, but the art they make lives on.
• Apart from that, his skill with poetic imagery and sound reproduces this sensuous experience for his readers.
• And most importantly he gave voice to the spirit of Romanticism in literature. He once wrote, “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.”
Although his life ended at the age of 25, John Keats is remembered for his never-give-up attitude toward reactionary criticism, his sympathy for the poor and the miserable, and his belief of the poet to work for the welfare of the people. No doubt he was one of the greatest English poets in English literature.
Appreciation of Love's philosophy
Love's Philosophy
爱的哲理
The fountains mingle with the river
泉水注入江河
And the rivers with the ocean,
江河汇入大海，
The winds of heaven mix for ever
习习微风吹来
With a sweet emotion;
温柔甜美情怀；
Nothing in the world is single,
万物从不孤独，
All things by a law divine
遵循神圣法度
In one another's being mingle—
它们亲密共处 ——
Why not I with thine?
我们形同陌路？
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
高山亲吻天空，
And the waves clasp one another;
浪花比肩接踵，
No sister-flower would be forgiven
并蒂花开正浓，
If it disdain'd its brother;
彼此热情相拥；
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
日光普照大地
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
月色倒影海里，
What is all this sweet work worth
若是你无情意
If thou kiss not me?
美景有何意义？
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Direction : Please translate the following poem into Chinese.
Song to the Men of England
Sow seed, -- but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, -- let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, -- let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, -- in your defence to bear.
