英国文学史及选读二

第 1 页 共 1 页 英国文学史及选读（第二册）

The Romantic Period----Individualism

Romanticism: A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music and art in western

culture during most of the nineteenth century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. It

emphasize the special qualities of each individual`s mind. Many of the ideas of English

Romanticism were first expressed by the poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor

Coleridge.

Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey

Poet laureate：William Wordsworth, Southey, Tennyson

Representatives：William Wordsworth，George Gordon, Lord Byron, Shelley, John Keats, Walter

Scott, Jane Austen

The beginning and the end of Romanticism:

The English Romanticism is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of

Wordsworth and Coleridge‟s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott‟s

death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the parliament.

Features of Romanticism:

1. Romanticists expressed the ideology and sentiment of those classes and social stratum that were

discontent with and opposed to the development of capitalism.

2. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance,

idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century

Neoclassicism in particular.

3. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the

personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.

William Wordsworth

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud / The Daffodils

William Wordsworth in his poem I wandered Lonely as a Cloud is possibly making an

attempt to show the reader the essence of life in nature, and what kind of a role a memory from

childhood can play on us as adults. In his poem William Wordsworth is using daffodils as a

metaphor for living, perhaps even eternal life, or life after death.

The theme of this poem is harmony between humanity and nature.

The Solitary Reaper

It is an iambic verse. Most of the lines in the poem are octosyllabics. The rhyme-scheme for

each stanza is ababccdd.

The Solitary Reaper use rural figures to suggest the timeless mystery of sorrowful humanity

and its radiant beauty.

It describes a nameless listener's delight in a young woman's melancholy song in an unknown

language as, working by herself in a Scottish valley, she swings a sickle, reaping grain.

第 2 页 共 2 页 Wordsworth may deliberately impoverish(使贫穷) his speaker's language so as to contrast it

with the reaper's song.

The Solitary Reaper‟s “song”, like a found poem, springs directly from nature, without

literary context. Her "music" runs like water ("overflowing" the valley) and surpasses the beauty

of two celebrated English song-birds, the nightingale and the cuckoo.

The Solitary Reaper relates an ecstatic moment in which a passer-by transcends the

limitations of mortality. Both the song and he go on together.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Byronic heroes: In his works appear the “Byronic heroes”, Who are men of noble origin with

fiery passions and unbending will and express the poet‟s own ideal of freedom. These heroes rise

against tyranny and injustice, but they are merely lone fighters striving for personal freedom and

some individualistic ends.

When We Two Parted

It is a poem speaking about unity and separation within the couple.

She Walks in Beauty

The first couple of lines can be confusing if not read properly. Too often readers stop at the

end of the first line where there is no punctuation. This is an enjambed line, meaning that it

continues without pause onto the second line.

That “she walks in beauty like the night” may not make sense as night represents darkness.

However, as the line continues, the night is a cloudless one with bright stars to create a beautiful

mellow(圆润的,柔美的 ) glow.

The first two lines bring together the opposing qualities of darkness and light that are at play

throughout the three verses.The remaining lines of the first verse employ another set of enjambed

lines that tell us that her face and eyes combine all best of dark and bright.

No mention is made here or elsewhere in the poem of any other physical features of the lady.

The focus of the vision is upon the details of the lady’s face and eyes which reflect the

mellowed and tender light. She has a remarkable quality of being able to contain the opposites of

dark and bright.

The third and fourth lines are not only enjambed, but the fourth line begins with an

irregularity in the meter called a metrical（韵律） substitution. The fourth line starts with an