Romantic Poets Research Articles

Elements of Romantic Poetics in Rydbergʼs Work: Continuity and Innovation. The Motif of Journey in Viktor Rydberg’s Poetry

The article is devoted to the motif of journey in the poetry of swedish author of the second half of 19th century Viktor Rydberg (1828–1895). The way has been considered as a metaphor in mythological and folklore texts, and the motif of journey is one of the most common motifs in world literature. It has a special significance for Romanticists, in whose texts the journey symbolizes the process of individual spiritual quest. The similar approach to the metaphorisation of the path is characteristic of Rydberg’s works: the influence of Romantic tradition can be traced in them. The works of swedish poet with the motif of journey and hero-wanderer in the center were analyzed in the article. The role of the motif of journey in the formation of the spiritual apperanance of characters was revealed.

Köller's Motifs as a Style Marker: Comparative Analysis Original – Translation

The article sets the task of conducting a comparative study of the original text and its translations using the technique of supersegmental units. The latter were taken as units, which are defined as sequences or «motifs» and are formed by analyzing the order of units in the text. Motifs are a tool for analyzing the author’s style and make it possible to give a quantitative description of stylistic features, comparison and classification of the styles of various authors. These possibilities of motifs are used in this article to compare a number of stylistic features of one of the best poems by the famous romantic poet John Keats, «The Eve of St. Agnes», and two translations of this work, made by famous poets-translators Sergey Sukharev and Evgeniy Vitkovsky. Sequences of attributes of various types were used to form motives. The study is quantitative in nature and various statistical measures were used (Euclidean distance, chi-square, correlation coefficient). As a result of the analysis, a level of similarity and a number of differences in the manner of rendering the original in the translations were established.

The Verdant Canvas: An Investigation into the Significance of Nature in Romantic Poetry

This paper delves into the profound significance of nature in the works of prominent Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. It argues that nature transcends mere backdrop to become a primary character, shaping poetic themes, influencing language, and offering a canvas for exploring philosophical inquiries, spiritual connections, and emotional expression. Analysing key poems through the lens of pantheism, the role of imagination, and the symbolic potential of landscape, the paper illuminates how Romantic poets utilize nature to challenge societal norms, express personal anxieties and aspirations, and ultimately, reveal a nuanced understanding of the human condition in relation to the natural world.

Farmers’ Boys and Doomed Youths: Producing the Poet in the Print Culture of the Romantic Era

ABSTRACT Two of the ten bestselling poets of the nineteenth century were almost completely excluded from the twentieth-century canon. Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823) and Henry Kirke White (1785–1806) were huge successes in the expanding print culture of the Romantic era. Their publications were influential on many of the poets who were admitted to the canon. Nevertheless, they have become so obscure that their influence—powerful on Clare, Keats, and Shelley for example— has been almost entirely forgotten. So has their role in shaping the cultural figure of the Romantic poet and their impact upon the publishing of poetry in a period when bookselling was transforming into a sales-driven mass market. Both were from the laboring class; each was publicized commercially because it was, supposedly, amazing that they had become poets at all, considering their social origins. They happened to be excellent poets but, in an early manifestation of PR, they were as much branded as phenomena as they were advertised for excellence. In this article I shall explore how this packaging worked and what it shows about the selling of books, the construction of a cultural image of the poet, and the influence of their poetry on aspiring poets.

A Critical Analysis of Imagery in My Heart Leaps Up: Illuminating Wordsworth's Nature Poetry in the Context of Ecocriticism

This paper presents a critical analysis of the imagery used in William Wordsworth's poem My Heart Leaps Up, examining its role in the context of Ecocriticism. By offering a close reading of the poem and drawing on various eco-critical perspectives, the researcher explores the relationship between the poem's imagery and concepts such as biocentrism, anthropocentrism, eco-feminism, and deep ecology. Additionally, the researcher compares My Heart Leaps Up with other nature poems by Wordsworth and other Romantic poets, which helps us to identify particular stylistic and thematic features of the poem. This study aims to demonstrate how the use of imagery in My Heart Leaps Up connects to contemporary discourses on climate change and the anthropogenic epoch. This paper highlights the significance of My Heart Leaps Up within the broader context of Wordsworth's poetry and offers new theoretical and argumentative extensions to the reading of his nature poetry. Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of how language and imagery can be used to convey the beauty and importance of the natural world and our role in it.

Enlivening Wit

The birth of such innovative newspapers as The Tatler and The Spectator enables the readers to observe and join the public debate through a new intellectual lens. The use of Latin epigrams opening every issue of The Spectator emphasizes not only the close interest in classical literature and culture, but also the communicative strategy focused on the celebration of wit through the moral paradigms of ancient Roman poets, at a time of the rise of modern public opinion. The poetical and rhetorical choices of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, along with other Latin poetry enthusiasts such as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, bitingly denounce social hypocrisies and contradictions through parody and mockery. Their purpose was to rebut conventional behavior through the permeating force of Enlightenment wit inspired by cleverness, satire and sarcasm.

The Last Bastion of European Romanticism: A Quantitative Analysis of Poetry in the Romanian Literary Magazine <em>Convorbiri literare</em> (1867–1916)

The article presents a quantitative analysis of poetry published in the most popular literary periodical of modern Romania, Convorbiri literare (CL), from its founding in 1867 to 1916, when Romania entered World War I. Often seen as the last major magazine of European Romanticism, CL appeared at a time when poetry was a privileged genre in Romanian literature, and it hosted in its pages both the national poet Mihai Eminescu and nineteenth-century’s most prominent Romanian literary critic Titu Maiorescu. Arguing that the publication and theorization of poetry was an integral part of one of the last nation-building processes in Europe, the article indexes and quantitatively analyzes all forms of poetry and of what can be viewed as poetic networks in CL. By using ARCANUM’s digital archive of more than 66,000 pages of CL, three strata of poetry-related metadata are extracted and examined: the local production of poetry (who published in CL and when, and how much did they publish); poetry imports (whose poetry was translated into Romanian in CL and when, and what were the authors’ origins); and networks of influence (which foreigners were most often mentioned in relation to the two most talked-about Romanian Romantic poets of the century, Eminescu and Vasile Alecsandri). Thus, the article aims to chart the national regime of relevance that applies to Romanian modern poetry by uncovering the international network of authors who were at the center of literary debates in CL.

Byron as Others

This article argues that sympathy is the radical heart of Byron’s poetry. For sympathy, possible via the imagination for David Hume and Adam Smith, allows Byron to be someone else as far as that is possible, withal Smith’s caveats. This article posits that Byron’s potential doubles are not poor caricatures that see the Romantic poet throwing his voice. Instead, Byron creates performances that explore and exploit the limits of sympathy. Such limits co-exist with potential. And for Byron, sympathy is not an unmitigated good. Through sympathy, we might ignore our professed values or extend our sympathy to those for whom we should not feel. Byron’s sympathy opens him up to becoming other people to some degree, to living other lives, and inhabiting other selves. Byron shows us that sympathy, like selfhood, is slippery. This article argues that Byron makes us rethink sympathy and its value.

Historical and Personal Time in Mariana Marin’s Poetry

Romanian poet Mariana Marin (1956–2003) made her debut in 1981 and published her last collection in 2002, an interval that covers about one decade of communism followed by one decade of transition to democracy. Like a litmus test, her poetry, known for its existential radicalism and authentic textualism, reflects the cultural acidity of despotism and its crippling effects on individuals. Her courage to express the truth in poetry situates her among the poets interested not only in their own private aesthetic experiences, but also in the role of literature as a form of protest and a cultural instrument. Contrary to what some contemporaries living in diaspora or in Romania said about her, she did not consider herself a political dissident, but a nonconformist writer, member of the 1980s generation. She wrote against the fosilization of the communist regime, marked by limitations, oppression and imposture, trying to conceive an imaginary universe that reflects and transforms these realities by adopting a concise style accessible to any reader. This paper aims to explore the ways in which Mariana Marin combined her acute sense of history with her unique perspective of personal time in several poems published before and after 1989.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and Nature’s Divine Participation: Reverence for the One and the Many in the Scientific and Poetic Imagination

This paper considers the influence of Platonism and Neoplatonism on the British Romantic poet and theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and how they informed his reverence for nature. Coleridge did not see this reverence as merely personal but sought to call an increasingly materialist and industrializing England back to a Platonic social imagination that would better revere the created world. First, I will establish the influence of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought on his philosophical system. Second, I will show how the relationship between Platonic philosophy and scientific pursuit is worked out in Coleridge’s “Essays on Method”, wherein he attempts to synthesize Plato with Frances Bacon and poetry with science and proposes a scientific method that reverences all of creation in its individuality and participation within a spiritual whole. Third, I will briefly explore two of Coleridge’s most famous poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, as both show the destructive potential of a lack of reverence for the mysterious natural order. These poems may be read as case studies, experimental worlds where refusal to recognize nature’s order and participation with the divine results in the coming apart of those worlds and the self’s relation to them.

William Wordsworth and the French Revolution: A Study of Ideals and Realities

This research paper delves into the profound impact of the French Revolution on the poetry of William Wordsworth, one of the most eminent Romantic English poets. Through an analysis of Wordsworth's life, works, and ideological evolution, this paper explores the intersection of revolutionary fervor and poetic expression during a tumultuous period in European history. Drawing on primary sources and literary analysis, the paper investigates Wordsworth's initial enthusiasm for the Revolution, his subsequent disillusionment, and the enduring legacy of his poetic response to the transformative events of his time.

Romanticism and Nonviolence: Percy Bysshe Shelley Exhumed

This paper posits that in his prose and poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley (an English poet of the Romantic period) articulates both the philosophy and methodology of nonviolence as a response to oppression, repression and marginalisation. It also contends that although his theory significantly impacted the formation of the philosophies and socio-political campaigns of later nonviolence activists, especially the Indian Civil Rights Activist Mahatma Gandhi, Shelley has not been sufficiently credited for the ground-breaking political philosophy of nonviolence. This article thus explores Shelley’s philosophy of nonviolence in his poetry, prose, dramas and pamphlets. It compares the nonviolence philosophies of Gandhi and Shelley and brings out Shelley’s unquestionable influence on Mahatma Gandhi. The article raises questions about why Shelley was not credited with the philosophy of nonviolence and suggests possible reasons for this apparent near lack of global consideration for the English Romantic poet despite his pioneering the philosophy. Having proceeded thus and upon thorough academic investigation, the article irresistibly concludes that contrary to popular socio-political opinion, Percy Bysshe Shelley is the unrivalled father of nonviolence as an ethical and pragmatic philosophy for socio-political mutation. By this study, Shelley is given his rightful position in matters of nonviolence and thus exhumed as a poet-philosopher whose philosophy has outlived his existence and practised to date by activists to press for reform.

Sentimental Genres: The “Old English Elegy” and the Poetics of Nostalgia

ABSTRACT This study interrogates the scholarly construct known as the “Old English elegy.” This artificially formulated genre, which combines elements from eighteenth-century Classical German Elegy and nineteenth-century English nationalist nostalgia, comprises an unstable textual canon bringing together a modern perception of shared emotional, psychological, and affective discourses. To demonstrate how the pervasive influence of Romantic poetics and ethnonationalist anxieties underlies the inception and development of the discourse of “Old English elegy,” this study traces their influence across anthologies and critical editions of Old English poetry from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Close reading of a series of thematic and syntactic parallels across Old English texts further illustrates the arbitrary nature of the genre and evidences the need for a new critical terminology that acknowledges the horizontal intertextuality of Old English poetics.

The Modern Man as Represented in Eliot’s the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Alfred Prufrock's poetry incorporates modernist elements such as objective correlative, fragmentation, free verse, and irregular rhyme. It marks a marked split from romantic English poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth. Eliot wants to explain the essence of life, and the content represents current day-to-day living rather than an escape from reality's grind. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" T.S. maintains Eliot's hold over today's man. The poem's narrator, c. Alfred Prufrock, represents Eliot's vision of modern man. Eliot explains his motivation for writing on this issue as follows: "Poetry may also help to destroy the traditional patterns of appreciation and evaluation that are constantly formed, and make people see the world anew, or a new phase of it." It can also remind us of the value of poetry on occasion. Deeper, unnamed sentiments that constitute the foundation of our existence are rarely explored since our entire life is a regular flight from ourselves, an escape from the visible and good world. The poem focuses on a difficulty caused by modern metropolitan culture. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate how Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock portrays the modern man.

Romanticism After Black Studies

This course emerges from my individual research and seeks to bring students into an experimental project of co-reading. The course reading plan is structured by pairing canonical Romantic poets with writing by Black theorists from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This course is designed for the graduate level and would also be appropriate for upper-level undergraduate students.

The Motif of Freedom as a Reflection of the National Identity of Brazil through the Prism Romantic Era Poetry

The article is devoted to the study of the process of the formation of Brazilian national identity through the prism of poetry as one of the most important elements of the nation's identity and maturity. The relevance of this topic is connected not only with the growing interest of Russian humanitarian science in the ‘Other West’, but also with application to the task of successful interaction with representatives of a particular culture requiring familiarity with the meanings that determine their self-identification. It is necessary to have a holistic understanding of the process of national identity formation and social factors behind its transformation. The characteristic features of the rich culture of the Luso-Brazilian world nevertheless suggest a high degree of differentiation in the identity of the people of Portugal and its former colonies. The aim of the study is to analyze how the motif of freedom manifests itself in the works of Brazilian Romantic poets, reflecting the gradual conceptualization of Brazilian national and cultural identity. To achieve this goal, the following objectives were set: first, to systematize the existing works on the national identity of Brazilians; second, to identify the motif of freedom in specific poems by prominent poets of the studied era and trace how this motif reveals identity of a Brazilian. The materials of the study are the corpus of works by Brazilian Romantic poets, comprising both the original works and their translations into Russian (including translations made by the author of this article). The leading research method was culturalhistorical; the corpus study was conducted by means of content analysis. The novelty of the study was determined by the fact of addressing the motif of freedom, considered as a key factor of Brazilian identity. As a result, it is shown how this motif was formed in the work of Brazilian Romantic poets of the 19th century, branching out into many conceptualizations of freedom. The study of the corpus of Brazilian poetic texts provides convincing evidence that the motif of freedom was one of the first steps for Brazilian society to realize its unique identity. The author concludes that the beginning of this process in the 19th century is associated with such vectors of comprehension of freedom as the desire of Brazilians to return to their homeland from foreign lands, escape from reality/life, freedom in the choice of Christian religion and freedom from sin, the desire to show strength, awareness of the important role of indigenous peoples and praise of the Indian struggle against oppression and despotism, resistance to slavery and colonizers. Gradually, however, the ontology of freedom from is complemented by an ontology of freedom for: Brazilian poets find imaginative solutions that reveal the identity of their people as a cultural search for a counterpart of communication.

AGAINST BIAS IN THE STUDY OF THE ZBRUCH IDOL (regarding the psychology of pseudoscientific populism)

Starting from 2011, the idea of Oleksiy Komar and Nataliya Khamaiko that the Zbruch Idol is not a medieval monument, but owes its appearance to the creative imagination of the Polish romantic poet of the first quarter of the 19th century Tymon Zaborowsky. He lived near the place where the idol was found, and was known, in particular, for a number of works related to Slavic paganism. Among many arguments, researchers put forward, for example, the alleged inconsistency of the images on the sides of the idol to the ancient epoch, and their reproduction according to T. Zaborowsky’s idea of antiquity. In particular, the saber, in their opinion, copies the coronation saber of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire called the «Sabre of Charlemagne», although the two sabres show a difference, in particular, in the shape of the cross-guards. The saber on the Zbruch Idol is straight, while Charlemagne’s Saber is bent. The figures of the upper tier are said to be copied from the iconography of Boris and Gleb. In the same way, another argument of the authors regarding the material attributes of the idol — a cornucopia or a wedding ring — demonstrates that they do not so much see, as do not want to see, their antiquity. The thesis about the unpunished throwing of the idol, weighing about 1 ton, into the Zbruch River, along which the Russian-Austrian border passed, or about the poet’s installation of the idol not on his own land, but on a neighbor’s land, cannot withstand criticism. The greatly exaggerated influence of paganism on the work of Tymon Zaborowsky, who remains a supporter of Christianity in his works. None of his works mentions the stone Zbruch Idol or its alleged «prototype» — the four-headed wooden Swiatowit of the Western Slavs. Although our criticism of the authors’ idea of an «idolatrous poet» has been ongoing for 12 years, they have never once mentioned it, in particular, in the Polish reprint of their first article. They do not mention critical articles by other authors, in particular, Polish ones, who at one time accepted the conclusions of Ukrainian scientists with interest. Against the background of this silencing and ignoring of criticism, at least one of the co-authors, Nataliya Khamaiko, regularly continues to spread in his public interviews a contradictory narrative about the exalted poet-author of the Zbruch Idol, due to which the true cultural significance of this monument is leveled. In our opinion, the authors’ constant rebroadcasting of this dubious idea to the general public, while ignoring their many years of reasoned professional criticism, contradicts scientific ethics.

Lucretius and the neural consequences of traumatic amputation: the role of descending inhibition?

Geoffrey Schott explores the writings of the Roman poet Lucretius on some of the remarkable phenomena associated with sudden amputation of a limb, and considers what those observations can tell us about the brain mechanisms that might underpin those phenomena.

The Portrayal of Spring in English and Arabic Poetry: A Comparative Stylistic Study of Selected Poems

This comparative study highlights many romantic affinities in some poems by modern and classic English and Arabic poets. These romantic poets represent spring similarly as a source of pleasure, peace, and comfort. They see spring as their place of sharing compassion, love, and happiness. The study is mainly based on the Parallelism theory of the American School of Comparative Literature which focuses on the parallel themes, linguistic devices, and images of different authors whose social, historical, traditional, and linguistic aspects are different (Bressler, 2011, p. 42). It also adopts the New Criticism’s methodology of analyzing poetic metaphors, symbols, structures, and similes. Their romantic compositions connect spring spiritually, aesthetically, and invisibly with these poets’ souls. They glorify and adopt spring and its influence on them as a symbol of pleasure and comfort.

The Evolution of Female Characters From Antiquity to Modernity: An Examination of Marinna Carr's and Carol Lashof's Adaptations of Classical Mythology

Literature relies heavily on mythology. Myths are stories of deities, monsters or immortals which are transformed from one generation to the other. In addition to documenting the religious and cultural experiences of a specific community, myths also outline the consequent literary, artistic and dramatic customs. Some Greek myths have survived for thousands of years because they accurately depict historical events, cultural values, and trends. Among the most famous classical myths are the myths of Medusa and Medea. As for the myth of Medusa, the earliest known record was found in Theogony (700BC) by Hesiod (8 th-7th century BC). A later version of the Medusa myth was made by the Roman poet Ovid (43BC –17/18AD), in his “Metamorphoses” (3-8 AD). Then again, Medea is a tragedy produced in 431 BC by the Greek playwright Euripides(480–406BC) based on the myth of Jason and Medea. Both Medusa and Medea are among the most fascinating and complex female protagonists in Greek mythology which have captivated many writers and playwrights for ages. In the twentieth century, there were many adaptations of both mythological figures; among these adaptations were those made by contemporary American and Irish women playwrights like Carol Lashof (1956-) and Marinna Carr (1964-). This paper examines the myths of Medusa and Medea and analyses the ways these myths are borrowed, refashioned and exploited in Lashof’s Medusa’s Tale (1991) and Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (1998). Both playwrights explore hidden dimensions of the traditional myths, combining elements from the old and modern worlds.