Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular novels in the English language. Over 200 years after its publication, it continues to win the hearts and minds of readers around the world, thanks to its delightful heroine, unforgettable cast of comic characters, witty dialogue, and satisfying romantic plot.
Read here.
"Bright Star" is a sonnet written by the Romantic poet John Keats as a homage to his beloved Fanny Brawne.
It is primarily made up of two analogies. The first analogy is a negative one, where the poet describes the aspect of the star that he doesn’t wish to resemble. The second analogy is a positive one, where the poet explains the aspect of the star that he aspires to be like — namely, steadfast loyalty to his beloved.
https://www.eminentediting.com/post/bright-star-by-john-keats-analysis
Jane Austen, novelist, observer of human nature, and enduring voice of wit, romance, and social insight, was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England on 16 December 1775 and birthday celebrations have been taking place across the United Kingdom and the United States for months. Here are some ways to celebrate the birth of one of England's most beloved authors.
Jane Austen’s novels are unrivalled for their success in
combining two sorts of excellence that all too seldom coexist. Meticulously
conscious of her artistry, she is also constantly attentive to the realities of
ordinary human existence. From the
first, her works unite subtlety and common sense, good humour and acute moral
judgment, charm and conciseness, deftly marshalled incidents and carefully
rounded characters.
Jane Austen’s critics have spoken of her as a “limited” novelist, one who, writing in an age of great men and important events, portrays small towns and petty concerns, who knows (or reveals) nothing of masculine occupations and ideas, and who reduces the range of feminine thought and deed to matrimonial scheming and social pleasantry. Read here.
The first Gothic fiction appeared with
works like Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765), Ann
Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk (1796),
which opposed 18th-century “rationalism” with scenes of mystery, horror, and
wonder. Gothic was a designation derived from architecture, and it carried connotations of rough and primitive grandeur.
The atmosphere of a Gothic novel was expected to be dark,
tempestuous, ghostly, full of madness, outrage, superstition, and the spirit of
revenge. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which maintains its original
popularity and even notoriety, has in overplus the traditional Gothic
ingredients, with its weird God-defying experiments and its monster.
Easy targets for satire, the early Gothic romances died
of their own extravagances of plot, but Gothic atmospheric devices continued to haunt the fiction of such major writers as the Brontë
sisters, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and even Charles Dickens in Bleak House and Great
Expectations. In the second half of the 20th century, the term was applied
to paperback romances having the same kind of themes and trappings similar to
the originals.
Gothic fiction asks to be
considered as ingenious entertainment; the pity and terror are not aspects of
a cathartic process, but transient emotions to be enjoyed for their own sake.
Read here.
https://research.dom.edu/gothicliterature/historyandkeyelements
https://www.invaluable.com/blog/elements-of-gothic-literature/
"One thought fills immensity."
William Blake
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
John Keats Here you can find an analysis of this handsome ballad which is considered an English classic. It is a narrative of an encounter that causes both pleasure and pain. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite simplicity of structure. Composed of twelve stanzas, of only four lines each, with a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, the poem is full of enigmas, and has been the subject of numerous interpretations.Read here.
The Romantic period began roughly around 1798 and lasted until 1837. The political and economic atmosphere at the time heavily influenced this period, with many writers finding inspiration from the French Revolution. There was a lot of social change during this period. Calls for the abolition of slavery became louder during this time, with more writing openly about their objections. After the Agricultural Revolution people moved away from the countryside and farmland and into the cities, where the Industrial Revolution provided jobs and technological innovations. Romanticism was a reaction against this spread of industrialism, as well as a criticism of the aristocratic social and political norms and a call for more attention to nature.
Click here to read my previous post about the Romantic Age.
"A method of printing which combines the painter and
the poet." William Blake
Read here.
https://www.skoletorget.no/abb/eng/blake/ill_print.html
