1.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
2.
Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
3.
John Keats
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John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He had a significant influence on a range of poets. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keatss work was the most significant literary experience of his life, the poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular, John Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on 31 October 1795 to Thomas Keats and his wife, born Frances Jennings. There is no evidence of his exact birthplace. Although Keats and his family seem to have marked his birthday on 29 October and he was the eldest of four surviving children, his younger siblings were George, Thomas, and Frances Mary Fanny who eventually married Spanish author Valentín Llanos Gutiérrez. Another son was lost in infancy and his father first worked as a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop Inn, an establishment he later managed, and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, the Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from the modern-day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, and sent to a dame school as a child. His parents were unable to afford Eton or Harrow, so in the summer of 1803, he was sent to board at John Clarkes school in Enfield, the small school had a liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools. In the family atmosphere at Clarkes, Keats developed an interest in classics and history, the headmasters son, Charles Cowden Clarke, also became an important mentor and friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature, including Tasso, Spenser, and Chapmans translations. The young Keats was described by his friend Edward Holmes as a character, always in extremes, given to indolence. However, at 13 he began focusing his energy on reading and study, in April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died. The cause of death was a fracture, suffered when he fell from his horse while returning from a visit to Keats. Frances remarried two months later, but left her new husband soon afterwards, and the four went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings. In March 1810 when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis and she appointed two guardians, Richard Abbey and John Sandell, to take care of them. That autumn, Keats left Clarkes school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary who was a neighbour, Keats lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813
4.
The Eve of St. Agnes
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The Eve of St. Agnes is a Romantic narrative poem of 42 Spenserian stanzas set in the Middle Ages. It was written by John Keats in 1819 and published in 1820, the poem is considered to be one of his finest and was influential in 19th century literature. The title comes from the day before the feast of Saint Agnes, St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in 4th century Rome. The eve falls on 20 January, the feast day on the 21st, the divinations referred to by Keats in this poem are referred to by John Aubrey in his Miscellanies as being associated with St. Agnes night. Keats based his poem on the belief that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Then the proposed husband would appear in her dream, kiss her, in the original version of his poem, Keats emphasized the young lovers sexuality, but his publishers, who feared public reaction, forced him to tone down the eroticism. On a bitterly chill night, an ancient beadsman performs his penances while in the castle of Madelines warlike family, meanwhile, Madeline pines for the love of Porphyro, sworn enemy to her kin. The old dames have told her she may receive sweet dreams of love him if on this night, St. Agnes Eve, she retires to bed under the proper ritual of silence. Angela is persuaded only with difficulty, saying she fears damnation if Porphyro does not afterward marry the girl, Madeline wakes and sees before her the same image she has seen in her dream and, thinking Porphyro part of it, receives him into her bed. Porphyro declares his love for Madeline and promises her a home with him over the southern moors and they escape the castle past insensate revelers and flee into the night. The beadsman, after thousand aves told, / For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold, angelas death, as well as the beadsmans, is revealed in the poems final stanza. Four lines from the final stanza of Keats poem form the motto of H. P, alluded to in 2009 indie drama Cracks. St. Agnes Eve, Text of St. Agnes Eve by Keats from Bartleby, the Eve of St. Agnes at Internet Archive
5.
John Keats's 1819 odes
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In 1819, John Keats composed six odes, which are among his most famous and well-regarded poems. While the exact order in which Keats composed the poems is unknown, as a whole, the odes represent Keatss attempt to create a new type of short lyrical poem, which influenced later generations. Early in 1819, Keats left his paid position as dresser at Guys Hospital, Southwark. He decided to forsake the life of a poet for a lucrative career –. It was during the months of spring 1819 that he wrote many of his major odes, following the month of May 1819, he began to tackle other forms of poetry, including a play, some longer pieces, and a return to his unfinished epic, Hyperion. After writing Ode to Psyche, Keats sent the poem to his brother and explained his new ode form, I have been endeavouring to discover a better Sonnet stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language well, from the rhymes, the other appears too elegiac. I do not pretend to have succeeded, of these structural elements, the preface was discontinued in his next odes and the setting is reduced within the other odes until the scene is merely implied. The exact chronological and interpretive orders of the six 1819 poems are unknown, Keats simply dated the others May 1819. However, he worked on the poems together, and they form a sequence within their structures. Ode on a Grecian Urn is an ode with five stanzas containing 10 lines each. The first stanza begins with the narrator addressing an ancient urn as Thou still unravished bride of quietness, initiating a conversation between the poet and the object, which the reader is allowed to observe from a third-person point of view. With line 17, the second stanza begins to change tone as the poet shifts his focus from the urn as a whole to the individuals represented in the artwork. The two lovers, whose image the unknown artist has created through his craftsmanship, appear to the poet as a couple who cannot kiss yet do not grow old, as the poem comes to a close, the narrator once again addresses the urn as a single object. However, his tone becomes sharper as he seeks answers from the work of art that it appears unable to answer, Ode on Indolence comprises six stanzas containing ten lines each. The poem discusses a morning of laziness on the part of the narrator, the poem describes the three figures as wearing placid sandals and white robes, which alludes to the Grecian mythology that commonly appears in the 1819 odes. The images pass the three times, which causes him to compare them to images on a spinning urn. In line 10, the uses the word Phidian again as a reference to the Elgin marbles, whose creation was thought to have been overseen by Phidias
6.
Winchester
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Winchester is a city and the county town of Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a government district. It is situated 61 miles south-west of London and 13.6 miles from Southampton, at the time of the 2011 Census, Winchester had a population of 45,184. The wider City of Winchester district which includes such as Alresford. Winchester developed from the Roman town of Venta Belgarum, which in turn developed from an Iron Age oppidum. Winchesters major landmark is Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, with the distinction of having the longest nave and overall length of all Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The city is home to the University of Winchester and Winchester College, the area around Winchester has been inhabited since prehistoric times, with three Iron Age hillforts, Orams Arbour, St. Catherines Hill, and Worthy Down all in the nearby vicinity. In the Late Iron Age, an urban settlement type developed, known as an oppidum. It was overrun by the confederation of Gaulish tribes known as the Belgae sometime during the first century BCE and it seems to have been known as Wentā or Venta, from the Brittonic for town or meeting place. After the Roman conquest of Britain, the settlement served as the capital of the Belgae and was distinguished as Venta Belgarum, Venta of the Belgae. Although in the years of the Roman province it was of subsidiary importance to Silchester and Chichester. At the beginning of the century, Winchester was given protective stone walls. At around this time the city covered an area of 144 acres, there was a limited suburban area outside the walls. Like many other Roman towns however, Winchester began to decline in the fourth century. Ford identifies the community as the Cair Guinntguic listed by Nennius among the 28 cities of Britain in his History of the Britains, amid the Saxon invasions of Britain, cemeteries dating to the 6th and 7th centuries suggest a revival of settlement. The city became known as Wintan-ceastre in Old English, in 648, King Cenwalh of Wessex erected the Church of SS Peter and Paul, later known as the Old Minster. This became a cathedral in the 660s when the West Saxon bishopric was transferred from Dorchester-on-Thames, the citys first mint appears to date from this period. In the early tenth century there were two new establishments, the convent of Nunnaminster, founded by Alfreds widow Ealhswith
7.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
8.
Anthropomorphism
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Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, and intentions to non-human entities and is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions and natural forces like seasons. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters, people have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioural traits to wild as well as domestic animals. Anthropomorphism derives from its verb form anthropomorphize, itself derived from the Greek ánthrōpos and it is first attested in 1753, originally in reference to the heresy of applying a human form to the Christian God. One of the oldest known is a sculpture, the Löwenmensch figurine, Germany. It is not possible to say what these prehistoric artworks represent, in either case there is an element of anthropomorphism. This anthropomorphic art has been linked by archaeologist Steven Mithen with the emergence of more systematic hunting practices in the Upper Palaeolithic. In religion and mythology, anthropomorphism refers to the perception of a divine being or beings in human form, ancient mythologies frequently represented the divine as deities with human forms and qualities. They resemble human beings not only in appearance and personality, they exhibited many human behaviors that were used to explain phenomena, creation. The deities fell in love, married, had children, fought battles, wielded weapons and they feasted on special foods, and sometimes required sacrifices of food, beverage, and sacred objects to be made by human beings. Some anthropomorphic deities represented specific concepts, such as love, war, fertility, beauty. Anthropomorphic deities exhibited human qualities such as beauty, wisdom, and power, and sometimes human weaknesses such as greed, hatred, jealousy, Greek deities such as Zeus and Apollo often were depicted in human form exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits. Anthropomorphism in this case is referred to as anthropotheism, from the perspective of adherents to religions in which humans were created in the form of the divine, the phenomenon may be considered theomorphism, or the giving of divine qualities to humans. Anthropomorphism has cropped up as a Christian heresy, particularly prominently with the Audians in third century Syria, but also in fourth century Egypt and tenth century Italy. This often was based on an interpretation of Genesis 1,27, So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him. Some religions, scholars, and philosophers objected to anthropomorphic deities. Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed and blackThracians that they are pale and he said that the greatest god resembles man neither in form nor in mind. Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity, believing that God is beyond human comprehension, judaisms rejection of an anthropomorphic deity grew during the Hasmonean period, when Jewish belief incorporated some Greek philosophy. Judaisms rejection grew further after the Islamic Golden Age in the tenth century, hindus do not reject the concept of a deity in the abstract unmanifested, but note practical problems
9.
Allegory
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As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences. Many ancient religions are based on astrological allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the sun, in classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Platos Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. One of the examples of allegory, Platos Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in an all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israels exile to Rome. Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances, if, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ. This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition, since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. S, lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear, The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newtons head is another famous allegory and it simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. According to Henry Littlefields 1964 article, L. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that, A fairy tale is not an allegory, I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and this further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning, some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works, Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown, The Devils Staff symbolises defiance of God, the characters names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The scarlet letter symbolises many things, the characters, while developed with interiority, are allegorical in that they represent ways of seeing the world. George Orwell – Animal Farm, The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution, lászló Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies, It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government
10.
Peterloo Massacre
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The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. By the beginning of 1819, the pressure generated by economic conditions. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform, shortly after the meeting began local magistrates called on the military authorities to arrest Hunt and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the confusion,15 people were killed. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in a comparison to the Battle of Waterloo. Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the moments of its age. It also led directly to the foundation of The Manchester Guardian, in a survey conducted by The Guardian in 2006, Peterloo came second to the Putney Debates as the event from radical British history that most deserved a proper monument or a memorial. Peterloo is commemorated by a close to the site, a replacement for an earlier one that was criticised as being inadequate as it did not reflect the scale of the massacre. In 1819, Lancashire was represented by two Members of Parliament, by comparison, more than half of all MPs were returned by a total of just 154 owners of rotten or closed boroughs. These inequalities in political representation led to calls for reform, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, a brief boom in textile manufacture was followed by periods of chronic economic depression, particularly among textile weavers and spinners. Weavers who could have expected to earn 15 shillings for a week in 1803. The industrialists, who were cutting wages without offering relief, blamed market forces generated by the aftershocks of the Napoleonic Wars. Exacerbating matters were the Corn Laws, the first of which was passed in 1815, economic conditions in 1817 led to a group who became known as Blanketeers to organise a march from Manchester to London so they could petition the Prince Regent for parliamentary reform. A crowd of 25,000 including 5,000 men who intended to march gathered in St Peters Fields, after the magistrates read the Riot Act, the crowd was dispersed by the Kings Dragoon Guards. The ringleaders were arrested and subsequently released when charges against them were not forthcoming. By the beginning of 1819 pressure generated by economic conditions was at its peak and had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism among the cotton loom weavers of south Lancashire. In January 1819, a crowd of about 10,000 gathered at St Peters Fields to hear the radical orator Henry Hunt, the meeting, conducted in the presence of the cavalry, passed off without incident. Possessing no power to prevent the meetings the magistrates admitted they were at a loss as to how to stem the doctrines being disseminated, against this background, a great assembly was organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union formed by radicals from the Manchester Observer
11.
Nationalism
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Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with ones nation. It is contrasted by Anti-nationalism as a political ideology oriented towards gaining and maintaining self-governance, or full sovereignty, Nationalism therefore holds that a nation should govern itself, free from unwanted outside interference, and is linked to the concept of self-determination. Nationalism therefore seeks to preserve the nations culture and it often also involves a sense of pride in the nations achievements, and is closely linked to the concept of patriotism. In these terms, nationalism can be considered positive or negative, from a political or sociological outlook, there are three main paradigms for understanding the origins and basis of nationalism. The first, known as Primordialism or Perennialism, sees nationalism as a natural phenomenon and it holds that although the concept nationhood may be recent, nations have always existed. The third, and most dominant paradigm is Modernism, which sees nationalism as a recent phenomenon that needs the structural conditions of society in order to exist. There are various definitions for what constitutes a nation, however and this anomie results in a society or societies reinterpreting identity, retaining elements that are deemed acceptable and removing elements deemed unacceptable, in order to create a unified community. Nationalism means devotion for the nation and it is a sentiment that binds the people together. National symbols and flags, national anthems, national languages, national myths, Nationalism is a newer word, in English the term dates from 1844, although the concept is older. It became important in the 19th century, the term increasingly became negative in its connotations after 1914. Glenda Sluga notes that The twentieth century, a time of disillusionment with nationalism, was also the great age of globalism. Nationalism is the term used to characterize the modern sense of national political autonomy. For example, German nationalism emerged as a reaction against Napoleonic control of Germany as the Confederation of the Rhine around 1805–14, linda Colley in Britons, Forging the Nation 1707–1837 explores how the role of nationalism emerged about 1700 and developed in Britain reaching full form in the 1830s. The early emergence of a popular patriotic nationalism took place in the mid-18th century, National symbols, anthems, myths, flags and narratives were assiduously constructed by nationalists and widely adopted. The Union Jack was adopted in 1801 as the national one, Thomas Arne composed the patriotic song Rule, Britannia. in 1740, and the cartoonist John Arbuthnot invented the character of John Bull as the personification of the English national spirit in 1712. The political convulsions of the late 18th century associated with the American, the Prussian scholar Johann Gottfried Herder originated the term in 1772 in his Essay on the Origins of Language. Stressing the role of a common language, the political development of nationalism and the push for popular sovereignty culminated with the ethnic/national revolutions of Europe. During the 19th century nationalism became one of the most significant political and social forces in history, napoleons conquests of the German and Italian states around 1800–06 played a major role in stimulating nationalism and the demands for national unity
12.
Lyric poetry
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Lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, the term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry, lyrical, dramatic and epic. Much lyric poetry depends on regular meter based either on number of syllables or on stress, the most common meters are as follows, Iambic – two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable followed by the long or stressed syllable. Trochaic – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable, in English, this metre is found almost entirely in lyric poetry. Pyrrhic – Two unstressed syllables Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed, dactylic – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed. Spondaic – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables, some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the refrain. For the ancient Greeks, lyric poetry had a technical meaning, verse that was accompanied by a lyre, cithara. Because such works were sung, it was also known as melic poetry. The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays, the writer of trochaic and iambic verses, the writer of elegies, the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed especially worthy of critical study. These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, archaic lyric was characterized by strophic composition and live musical performance. Some poets, like Pindar extended the metrical forms to a triad, including strophe, antistrophe, among the major extant Roman poets of the classical period, only Catullus and Horace wrote lyric poetry, which however was no longer meant to be sung but instead read or recited. What remained were the forms, the meters of the Greeks adapted to Latin. Catullus was influenced by both archaic and Hellenistic Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman poets called the Neoteroi who spurned epic poetry following the lead of Callimachus, instead, they composed brief, highly polished poems in various thematic and metrical genres. The varying forms of the new Chu ci provided more rhythm, originating in 10th-century Persian, a ghazal is a poetic form consisting of couplets that share a rhyme and a refrain. Formally, it consists of a short lyric composed in a meter with a single rhyme throughout. Notable authors include Hafiz, Amir Khusro, Auhadi of Maragheh, Alisher Navoi, Obeid e zakani, Khaqani Shirvani, Anvari, Farid al-Din Attar, Omar Khayyam, and Rudaki. The ghazal was introduced to European poetry in the early 19th century by the Germans Schlegel, Von Hammer-Purgstall, and Goethe, lyric in European literature of the medieval or Renaissance period means a poem written so that it could be set to music—whether or not it actually was. A poems particular structure, function, or theme might all vary, the lyric poetry of Europe in this period was created by the pioneers of courtly poetry and courtly love largely without reference to the classical past
13.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
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Ode on a Grecian Urn is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published anonymously in the January 1820, Number 15, issue of the magazine Annals of the Fine Arts. The poem is one of several Great Odes of 1819, which includes Ode on Indolence, Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale, Keats found earlier forms of poetry unsatisfactory for his purpose, and the collection represented a new development of the ode form. He was inspired to write the poem after reading two articles by English artist and writer Benjamin Haydon, divided into five stanzas of ten lines each, the ode contains a narrators discourse on a series of designs on a Grecian urn. The poem focuses on two scenes, one in which a lover eternally pursues a beloved without fulfilment, and another of villagers about to perform a sacrifice, Ode on a Grecian Urn was not well received by contemporary critics. It was only by the century that it began to be praised. A long debate over the final statement divided 20th-century critics. By the spring of 1819, Keats had left his job as dresser, or assistant house surgeon, at Guys Hospital, Southwark, London, living with his friend Charles Brown, the 23-year-old was burdened with money problems and despaired when his brother George sought his financial assistance. The poems were transcribed by Brown, who provided copies to the publisher Richard Woodhouse. Their exact date of composition is unknown, Keats simply dated Ode on a Grecian Urn May 1819, while the five poems display a unity in stanza forms and themes, the unity fails to provide clear evidence of the order in which they were composed. In the odes of 1819 Keats explores his contemplations about relationships between the soul, eternity, nature, and art and his idea of using classical Greek art as a metaphor originated in his reading of Haydons Examiner articles of 2 May and 9 May 1819. Keatss inspiration for the topic was not limited to Haydon, and he may have recalled his experience with the Elgin Marbles and their influence on his sonnet On Seeing the Elgin Marbles. Keats was also exposed to the Townley, Borghese, and Holland House vases, many contemporary essays and articles on these works shared Keatss view that classical Greek art was both idealistic and captured Greek virtues. Although he was influenced by examples of existing Greek vases, in the poem he attempted to describe an artistic type. Following the initial publication, the Examiner published Keatss ode together with Haydons two previously published articles, Keats also included the poem in his 1820 collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems. In 1819, Keats had attempted to write sonnets, but found that the form did not satisfy his purpose because the pattern of rhyme worked against the tone that he wished to achieve. When he turned to the ode form, he found that the standard Pindaric form used by such as John Dryden was inadequate for properly discussing philosophy. Keats developed his own type of ode in Ode to Psyche, Keatss creation established a new poetic tone that accorded with his aesthetic ideas about poetry. He further altered this new form in Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn by adding a voice within the ode
14.
Ode on Indolence
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The Ode on Indolence is one of five odes composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819. The others were Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Psyche. The poem describes the state of indolence, otherwise known as laziness, after finishing the spring poems, Keats wrote in June 1819 that its composition brought him more pleasure than anything else he had written that year. Unlike the other odes he wrote that year, Ode on Indolence was not published until 1848,27 years after his death, the poem is an example of Keatss break from the structure of the classical form. It follows the poets contemplation of a morning spent in idleness, three figures are presented—Ambition, Love and Poesy — dressed in placid sandals and white robes. The narrator examines each using a series of questions and statements on life, the poem concludes with the narrator giving up on having all three of the figures as part of his life. Some critics regard Ode on Indolence as inferior to the other four 1819 odes, others suggest that the poem exemplifies a continuity of themes and imagery characteristic of his more widely read works, and provides valuable biographical insight into his poetic career. By the spring of 1819, Keats had left his paid position as a surgeon at Guys Hospital, Southwark, London. On 12 May 1819, he abandoned this plan after receiving a request for assistance from his brother. Unable to help, Keats was torn by guilt and despair and it was under these circumstances that he wrote Ode on Indolence. In a letter to his brother dated 19 March 1819, Keats discussed indolence as a subject, during this period, Keatss friend Charles Armitage Brown transcribed copies of the spring odes and submitted them to publisher Richard Woodhouse. Keats wrote to his friend Sarah Jeffrey, he thing I have most enjoyed this year has been writing an ode to Indolence, despite this enjoyment, however, he was not entirely satisfied with Ode on Indolence, and it remained unpublished until 1848. Keatss notes and papers do not reveal the precise dating of the 1819 odes, literary scholars have proposed several different orders of composition, arguing that the poems form a sequence within their structures. In The Consecrated Urn, Bernard Blackstone observes that Indolence has been thought the first, second. Nevertheless, he argues that Ode on Indolence was probably composed last, Ode on Indolence relies on ten line stanzas with a rhyme scheme that begins with a Shakespearian quatrain and ends with a Miltonic sestet. This pattern is used in Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn, which further unifies the poems in their structure in addition to their themes. The poem contains a complicated use of assonance, as evident in line 19, O why did ye not melt, and leave my sense, where the pairs ye/leave and melt/sense share vowel sounds. A more disorganized use of assonance appears in line 31, A third time passd they by, and, passing, turnd, in which the pairs third/turnd, time/by, and passd/passing share vowel sounds
15.
Ode on Melancholy
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Ode on Melancholy is one of five odes composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819, along with Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Indolence, and Ode to Psyche. While studying at Enfield, Keats attempted to gain a knowledge of Grecian art from translations of Tooke’s Pantheon, Lemprieres Classical Dictionary, although Keats attempted to learn Ancient Greek, the majority of his understanding of Grecian mythology came from the translations into English. Unlike the speaker of Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, and Ode to Psyche, the speaker of Ode on Melancholy speaks directly to the reader rather than to an object or an emotion. With only three stanzas, the poem is the shortest of the odes Keats wrote in 1819, however, according to Harold Bloom, one can presume that the “harmony was threatened if fully half of was concerned with the useless quest after “The Melancholy”. Despite its adjusted length, Keats thought the poem to be of a higher quality than Ode on Indolence, Ode on Melancholy consists of three stanzas with ten lines each. As with Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Indolence, the general meter of the poem is iambic pentameter. Keats himself fails to appear in the poem, which creates what Andrew Bennett describes as a separation between the author, the poet, and the reader. The use of the “droop-headed flowers” to describe the onset of an ill-temper, according to Bloom, but Thomas McFarland, while acknowledging the importance of the original first stanza to Keatss endeavor, openly praises the removal of the lines as an act of what he calls compression. McFarland believes that the poems strength lies in its ability to avoid the Seemingly endless wordage of Endymion and lets the final stanza push the main themes on its own. The words “burst Joy’s Grape” in line 28 lead Daniel Brass to state, The height of the joy, the moment when the world can improve no further, is both the end of joy and the beginning of melancholy. In The Masks of Keats, Thomas McFarland suggests that Keatss beautiful words and he too writes that the images of the bursting grape and the globèd peonies show an intention by the poet to bring the subject of sexuality into the discussion on melancholy
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Ode to a Nightingale
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According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest near the house Keats and Brown shared in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the song, Keats composed the poem in one day. It soon became one of his 1819 odes and was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts the following July, the poem is one of the most frequently anthologized in the English language. Ode to a Nightingale is a poem that describes Keatss journey into the state of negative capability. The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death, instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which is a fate that humans cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and that death is an part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world, the contrast between the immortal nightingale and mortal man sitting in his garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination. The presence of weather is noticeable in the poem, as spring came early in 1819, of Keatss six major odes of 1819, Ode to Psyche, was probably written first and To Autumn written last. Sometime between these two, he wrote Ode to a Nightingale, the poem was composed at the Hampstead house Keats shared with Brown, possibly while sitting beneath a plum tree in the garden. According to Keats friend Brown, Keats finished the ode in just one morning, Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song, and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand, on inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feelings on the song of the nightingale. Browns account is personal, as he claimed the poem was influenced by his house. However, Keats relied on both his own imagination and other literature as sources for his depiction of the nightingale. The exact date of Ode to a Nightingale, as well as Ode on Indolence, Ode on Melancholy, however, he worked on the four poems together, and there is a unity in both their stanza forms and their themes. The exact order the poems were written in is also unknown, while Keats was writing Ode on a Grecian Urn and the other poems, Brown transcribed copies of the poems and submitted them to Richard Woodhouse. During this time, Benjamin Haydon, Keats friend, was given a copy of Ode to a Nightingale, Elmes paid Keats a small sum of money, and the poem was published in the July issue. The poem was included in Keats 1820 collection of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes. Ode to a Nightingale was probably the first of the set of four odes that Keats wrote following Ode to Psyche
17.
Ode to Psyche
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Ode to Psyche is a poem by John Keats written in spring 1819. The poem is the first of his 1819 odes, which include Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche is an experiment in the ode genre, and Keatss attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes a dramatic scene. The poem serves as an important departure from Keatss early poems, Keats uses the imagination to show the narrators intent to resurrect Psyche and reincarnate himself into Eros. Keats attempts this by dedicating an untrodden region of his mind to the worship of the neglected goddess, Keats was never a professional writer. Instead, he supported himself with an income that he earned as a surgeon for Guys Hospital. At the age of 23, Keats left the hospital, losing his source of income and he lived with Charles Brown, a friend who collected Keatss poetry while supporting him, during spring 1819 and composed poetry. The early products of this effort included La Belle Dame sans Merci and Ode to Psyche, Keats was exposed to a few sources of the Psyche myth. His contemporary sources for the myth included Lemprieres Classical Dictionary and Mary Tighes Psyche, Keats wrote to his brother George, just a few months before writing Ode to Psyche, to say that he was no longer delighted by Tighes writing. Dissatisfied, he turned to Apuleiuss Golden Ass, translated by William Adlington in 1566, Ode to Psyche, Keatss 67 line ode, was the first of his major odes of 1819. As such, the poem is an experiment in the ode structure that he was to rely on for his next five odes. Although Keats spent time considering the language of the poem, the choice of wording and phrasing is below that found within his later works, including Hyperion or the odes that followed. Ode to Psyche is important because it is Keatss first attempt at a sonnet form that would include longer more lines. Also, he did not want the poem to be based simply around that message, so he incorporated elements, such as plot and characters. Of these additions, the use of a preface was discontinued in his next odes along with the removal of details that describe setting within the poems, they would only be implied within later odes. H. W. Garrod, in his analysis of Keatss sonnet form, believes that Keats took various aspects of sonnet forms, in particular, Keats relies on Petrarchs sonnet structure and the pouncing rhymes that are found within Petrarchs octave stanzas. However, M. R. Ridley disputes that Keats favours Petrarch, regardless of which sonnet structure was favoured over the other, Keats wanted to avoid the downsides of both forms. Ode to Psyche begins with an altered Shakespearean rhyme scheme of ababcdcdeffeef, the use of rhyme does not continue throughout the poem, and the lines that follow are divided into different groups, a quatrain, couplets, and a line on its own. These are then followed by a series of lines that are modelled after the Shakespearean sonnet form
18.
Robert Burton (scholar)
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Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford and he was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, Robert Burton was the son of Ralph and Dorothy Burton and the brother of William Burton the antiquary. Burton spent most of his life at Oxford, first as a pupil at Brasenose College and he studied a large number of diverse subjects, many of which informed the study of melancholia, for which he is chiefly famous. He was appointed vicar of St Thomas Church in Oxford in 1616, Burton was a mathematician and dabbled in astrology. When not depressed he was a companion, very merry, facete, and juvenile, and a person of great honesty, plain dealing. Merry, indeed, Burton had favourite sources for laughter, there was a rumour that Burton hanged himself in his chambers at Christ Church, supposedly so that his death would match his prediction. Burton was buried at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, Burtons Melancholy focuses sharply on the self, unlike Bacon, Burton assumes that knowledge of psychology, not natural science, is humankinds greatest need. He wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy largely to himself out of being a lifelong sufferer from depression. As he described his condition in the preface Democritus Junior to the Reader, for I had gravidum cor, foetum caput, a kind of imposthume in my head, therefore, the treatise itself was intended as treatment. Again, from the preface, I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy, there is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no better cure than business. However, this sentence may also be interpreted ironically, as Burton is citing a well-known adage of the time, the parenthetical aside is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. The work, published under the pseudonym Democritus Junior in 1621, was quite popular, in the words of Thomas Warton, the authors variety of learning, his quotations from rare and curious books, his pedantry sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance. Have rendered it a repertory of amusement and information, many later writers were deeply influenced by the books odd mix of pan-scholarship, humour, linguistic skill, and creative insights. This influence was so strong that later writers sometimes drew from the work without acknowledgment, samuel Johnson considered it one of his favourite books, being the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. The book has continued as a favourite among many twentieth and twenty-first-century authors, such as Anthony Burgess, William H. Gass, apart from The Anatomy of Melancholy Burtons only other published work is Philosophaster, a satirical Latin comedy. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Cousin, John William. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, london, J. M. Dent & Sons. The Gilded Pill, The Reader-Writer Relationship in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, review and quotes at complete review Entry at the Columbia Encyclopedia The BBCs In Our Time discusses The Anatomy of Melancholy
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The Anatomy of Melancholy
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The Anatomy of Melancholy is a book by Robert Burton, first published in 1621, but republished four more times over the next seventeen years with massive alterations and expansions. On its surface, the book is presented as a textbook in which Burton applies his vast and varied learning, in the scholastic manner. It is encyclopedic in its range and reference, in his satirical preface to the reader, Burtons persona and psuedonym Democritus Junior explains, I write of melancholy by being busy to avoid melancholy. This is characteristic of the style, which often supersedes the books strengths as a medical text or historical document as its main source of appeal to admirers. Burton was an obsessive rewriter of his work and published five revised and expanded editions of The Anatomy of Melancholy during his lifetime and it has often been out of print, most notably between 1676 and 1800. Because no original manuscript of the Anatomy has survived, later reprints have drawn more or less faithfully from the editions published during Burtons life, early editions are now in the public domain, with several available in their entirety from a number of online sources such as Project Gutenberg. Burton defined his subject as follows, Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or in habit. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy, Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality. Much of the consists of quotations from various ancient and medieval medical authorities, beginning with Hippocrates, Aristotle. Hence the Anatomy is filled more or less pertinent references to the works of others. A competent Latinist, Burton also included a deal of Latin poetry in the Anatomy. The Anatomy of Melancholy is a lengthy book, the first edition being a single quarto volume nearly 900 pages long. The text is divided into three major sections plus an introduction, the written in Burtons sprawling style. The Anatomy concludes with an extensive index, most modern editions include many explanatory notes, and translate most of the Latin. According to The Guardian literary critic Nick Lezard, the Anatomy survives among the cognoscenti, washington Irving uses a quote from the book on the title page of The Sketch Book. Burtons solemn tone and his endeavour to prove indisputable facts by weighty quotations were ridiculed by Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy, Sterne also mocked Burtons divisions in the titles of his chapters, and parodied his grave and sober account of Ciceros grief for the death of his daughter Tullia. Ferriar, John Illustrations of Sterne Petrie, Graham A Rhetorical Topic in Tristram Shandy, Modern Language Review, Vol.65,2, April 1970, pp. 261–66 Edward W. Adams. Robert Burton and the Anatomy of Melancholy, The Gentlemans Magazine, Vol. CCLXXXI, remedial Reading, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, introduction by William H. Gass
20.
Thomas Chatterton
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Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He became a tragic figure in Romantic art. Although fatherless and raised in poverty, he was a studious child. His unusual life and death attracted much interest among the romantic poets, the oil painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis has enjoyed lasting fame. Chatterton was born in Bristol where the office of sexton of St Mary Redcliffe had long held by the Chatterton family. The poets father, also named Thomas Chatterton, was a musician, a poet, a numismatist, and he had been a sub-chanter at Bristol Cathedral and master of the Pyle Street free school, near Redcliffe church. After Chattertons birth, his mother established a school and took in sewing. Chatterton was admitted to Edward Colstons Charity, a Bristol charity school, in which the curriculum was limited to reading, writing, arithmetic, Chatterton, however, was always fascinated with his uncle the sexton and the church of St Mary Redcliffe. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries on its altar tombs became familiar to him. Then he found a fresh interest in oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch on the side of the nave. Chatterton learned his first letters from the capitals of an old musical folio. He did not like, his sister said, reading out of small books, wayward from his earliest years, and uninterested in the games of other children, he was thought to be educationally backward. His sister related that on being asked what device he would like painted on a bowl that was to be his, he replied, Paint me an angel, with wings, and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world. From his earliest years he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in what seemed like a trance and his lonely circumstances helped foster his natural reserve, and to create the love of mystery which exercised such an influence on the development of his poetry. His confirmation inspired him to some religious poems published in that paper. In 1763 a cross which had adorned the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries was destroyed by a churchwarden, the spirit of veneration was strong in Chatterton, and he sent to the local journal on 7 January 1764 a satire on the parish vandal. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colstons Hospital for more than six years, three of Chattertons companions are named as youths whom Phillipss taste for poetry stimulated to rivalry, but Chatterton told no one about his own more daring literary adventures. At some point he came across Elizabeth Coopers anthology of verse, Chattertons Rowleian jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kerseys Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and it seems his knowledge even of Chaucer was very slight
21.
Leigh Hunt
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James Henry Leigh Hunt, best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet, and writer. James Henry Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, London, where his parents had settled after leaving the United States, Hunts father took holy orders and became a popular preacher, but he was unsuccessful in obtaining a permanent living. Hunts father was employed by James Brydges, 3rd Duke of Chandos, as tutor to his nephew, James Henry Leigh. Leigh Hunt was educated at Christs Hospital from 1791 to 1799 and he entered the school shortly after Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb had both left, Thomas Barnes, however, was a school friend of his. One of the current boarding houses at Christs Hospital is named after him, as a boy, he was an ardent admirer of Thomas Gray and William Collins, writing many verses in imitation of them. A speech impediment, later cured, prevented his going to university, for some time after I left school, he says, I did nothing but visit my school-fellows, haunt the book-stalls and write verses. His poems were published in 1801 under the title of Juvenilia and he began to write for the newspapers, and published in 1807 a volume of theatre criticism, and a series of Classic Tales with critical essays on the authors. Hunts early essays were published by Edward Quin, editor and owner of The Traveller, in 1809, Leigh Hunt married Marianne Kent. Marianne, who had been in ill health for most of her life, died 26 January 1857, Leigh Hunt made little mention of his family in his autobiography. Mariannes sister, Elizabeth Kent, became his amanuensis, in 1808 he left the War Office, where he had been working as a clerk, to become editor of the Examiner, a newspaper founded by his brother, John. Blakes response included Leigh Hunt, who aside from publishing the vitriolic reviews of 1808 and 1809 had added Blakes name on a list of quacks. This journal soon acquired a reputation for political independence, it would attack any worthy target, from a principle of taste. Leigh Hunts visitors in prison included Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, Lord Brougham, Charles Lamb and others, the stoicism with which Leigh Hunt bore his imprisonment attracted general attention and sympathy. His imprisonment allowed him many luxuries and access to friends and family, when Jeremy Bentham called on him, he was found playing battledore. Twelve of the essays were by Hunt, the rest by Hazlitt. In 1810–1811 he edited a magazine, the Reflector, for his brother John. He wrote The Feast of the Poets for this, a satire, in 1819–1821, Hunt edited The Indicator, a weekly literary periodical published by Joseph Appleyard. Hunt probably wrote much of the content as well, which included reviews, essays, stories, in 1828 from January to July, Hunt edited The Companion, a weekly literary periodical published by Hunt and Clarke
22.
River Itchen, Hampshire
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The River Itchen is a river in Hampshire, England. It flows from mid-Hampshire to join with Southampton Water below the Itchen Bridge in the city of Southampton, the river has a total length of 28 miles, and is noted as one of the worlds premier chalk streams for fly fishing, especially using dry fly or nymphing techniques. The river is managed by the Environment Agency, whilst the Port of Southampton is the authority for the tidal section below Swaythling. During Roman Britain, the river may have associated with the Celtic goddess Ancasta. The origin of the name is thought to be ancient and pre-Celtic, the settlement of Itchen Abbas on the river is given as Icene in the Domesday Book of 1086. The source of the Itchen is situated just south of the village of Kilmeston ], initially the river flows north, through the villages of Cheriton and Tichborne, before joining up with its tributaries the River Alre and the Candover Brook, just below the town of New Alresford. The river then flows west down the upper Itchen Valley passing the villages of Avington, Itchen Stoke, Itchen Abbas, Martyr Worthy, Easton, before entering the historic city of Winchester it crosses Winnall Moors. The main channel flows through Winchester City Mill and to the east of the citys Roman walls, between Winchester and Mansbridge, sections of the river were once deepened or widened as part of the long disused Itchen Navigation, and the former towpath forms part of the Itchen Way. Monks Brook flows into the Itchen at Swaythling, and the river passes under Woodmill Bridge. Four further bridges cross the river before its confluence with the River Test estuary in Southampton Water, Cobden Bridge, the bridge carrying the Southampton – Portsmouth railway line. Northam Bridge, a bridge carrying the A3024 road from Bitterne Manor to Northam. The Itchen Bridge, a toll road bridge connecting the docks area with Woolston. This replaced the Woolston Floating Bridge which had crossed the river at this point. Between the latter two bridges, the river passes St Marys Stadium, the home of Southampton F. C, as the river joins onto Southampton Water it passes the major mixed-development on the eastern side of the river in Woolston, called Centenary Quay. In recent years there have been attempts to reduce possible phosphate pollution from commercial businesses such as Vitacress Salads. There is an ambition for compliance by 2016, rivers of the United Kingdom Map source for the source and mouth River Itchen Archaeology Project Home Page Pictures from around the river itchen from source to its mouth
23.
Endymion (poem)
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Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. It begins with the line A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, Endymion is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. Keats based the poem on the Greek myth of Endymion, the shepherd beloved by the moon goddess Selene, the poem elaborates on the original story and renames Selene Cynthia. It starts by painting a scene of trees, rivers, shepherds. The shepherds gather around an altar and pray to Pan, god of shepherds, as the youths sing and dance, the elder men sit and talk about what life would be like in the shades of Elysium. However, Endymion, the brain-sick shepherd-prince of Mt. Latmos, is in a trancelike state and his sister, Peona, takes him away and brings him to her resting place where he sleeps. After he wakes, he tells Peona of his encounter with Cynthia, the poem is divided into four books, each approximately 1000 lines long. Book I gives Endymions account of his dreams and experiences, as related to Peona, in Book II, Endymion ventures into the underworld in search of his love. He encounters Adonis and Venus—a pairing of mortal and immortal—apparently foreshadowing a similar destiny for the mortal Endymion, Book III reveals Endymions enduring love, and he begs the Moon not to torment him any longer as he journeys through a watery void on the sea floor. There he meets Glaucus, freeing the god from a years of imprisonment by the witch Circe. Book IV, And so he groand, as one by beauty slain, Endymion falls in love with a beautiful Indian maiden. Both ride winged black steeds to Mount Olympus where Cynthia awaits, only for Endymion to forsake the goddess for his new, mortal, Endymion and the Indian girl return to earth, the latter saying she cannot be his love. He is miserable, till quite suddenly he comes upon the Indian maiden again and she then tells him of how she tried to forget him, to move on, but that in the end, There is not one, / No, no, not one/ But thee. Endymion received scathing criticism after its release, and Keats himself noted its diffuse, however, he did express regret in its publishing, saying it is not without a feeling of regret that I make public. Not all critics disliked the work, the poet Thomas Hood wrote Written in Keats Endymion, in which the Muse. charming the air to music. gave back Endymion in a dreamlike tale. Henry Morley said, The song of Endymion throbs throughout with a noble poets sense of all that his art means for him, what mechanical defects there are in it may even serve to quicken our sense of the youth and freshness of this voice of aspiration. This poem is quoted by Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplins homonymous film and our feet were soft in flowers. Briggs, Harold E. Keatss Conscious and Unconscious Reactions to Criticism of Endymion, PMLA,60, pp. 1106–29
24.
Metaphor
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A metaphor is a figure of speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning another thing. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas, antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy and simile are all types of metaphor. The Philosophy of Rhetoric by rhetorician I. A. Richards describes a metaphor as having two parts, the tenor and the vehicle, the tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed, other writers employ the general terms ground and figure to denote the tenor and the vehicle. Cognitive linguistics uses the target and source, respectively. Metaphors are most frequently compared with similes, a simile is a specific type of metaphor that uses the words like or as in comparing two objects, whereas what is commonly referred to as a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A. What is usually referred to as a metaphor asserts the two objects in the comparison are identical on the point of comparison, a simile merely asserts a similarity, for this reason a common-type metaphor is generally considered more forceful than a simile. The metaphor category also contains these types, Allegory, An extended metaphor wherein a story illustrates an important attribute of the subject. Antithesis, A rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences Catachresis, A mixed metaphor used by design and accident. Hyperbole, Excessive exaggeration to illustrate a point Metonymy, A figure of speech using the name of one thing in reference to a different thing of which the first is associated, example, in lands belonging to the crown the word crown is metonymy for ruler or monarch. Parable, An extended metaphor narrated as an anecdote illustrating and teaching such as in Aesops fables, pun, Similar to a metaphor, a pun alludes to another term. However, the difference is that a pun is a frivolous allusion between two different things whereas a metaphor is a purposeful allusion between two different things. Metaphor, like other types of analogy, can usefully be distinguished from metonymy as one of two modes of thought. Thus, a metaphor creates new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas a metonymy relies on the links within them. A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of an image has become absent. Examples, to grasp a concept and to gather what youve understood use physical action as a metaphor for understanding, the audience does not need to visualize the action, dead metaphors normally go unnoticed. Some people distinguish between a dead metaphor and a cliché, others use dead metaphor to denote both. A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one identification to a second identification inconsistent with the first, e. g. Checkmate
25.
Virgil
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Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil /ˈvɜːrdʒᵻl/ in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin literature, the Eclogues, the Georgics, a number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him. Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Romes greatest poets and his Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its composition to the present day. Virgils work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dantes Divine Comedy, in which Virgil appears as Dantes guide through Hell, the tradition holds that Virgil was born in the village of Andes, near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul. Analysis of his name has led to beliefs that he descended from earlier Roman colonists, modern speculation ultimately is not supported by narrative evidence either from his own writings or his later biographers. Macrobius says that Virgils father was of a background, however. He attended schools in Cremona, Mediolanum, Rome and Naples, after considering briefly a career in rhetoric and law, the young Virgil turned his talents to poetry. From Virgils admiring references to the neoteric writers Pollio and Cinna, it has been inferred that he was, for a time, according to Servius, schoolmates considered Virgil extremely shy and reserved, and he was nicknamed Parthenias or maiden because of his social aloofness. Virgil also seems to have suffered bad health throughout his life, according to the Catalepton, he began to write poetry while in the Epicurean school of Siro the Epicurean at Naples. A group of works attributed to the youthful Virgil by the commentators survive collected under the title Appendix Vergiliana. One, the Catalepton, consists of fourteen poems, some of which may be Virgils, and another. The biographical tradition asserts that Virgil began the hexameter Eclogues in 42 BC and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC, the Eclogues are a group of ten poems roughly modeled on the bucolic hexameter poetry of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus. The loss of his farm and the attempt through poetic petitions to regain his property have traditionally been seen as Virgils motives in the composition of the Eclogues. This is now thought to be an unsupported inference from interpretations of the Eclogues, the ten Eclogues present traditional pastoral themes with a fresh perspective. Eclogues 1 and 9 address the land confiscations and their effects on the Italian countryside,2 and 3 are pastoral and erotic, discussing both homosexual love and attraction toward people of any gender. Eclogue 4, addressed to Asinius Pollio, the so-called Messianic Eclogue uses the imagery of the age in connection with the birth of a child. Virgil came to many of the other leading literary figures of the time, including Horace, in whose poetry he is often mentioned, and Varius Rufus. At Maecenas insistence Virgil spent the years on the long didactic hexameter poem called the Georgics which he dedicated to Maecenas
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Georgics
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The Georgics is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BC. As the name suggests the subject of the poem is agriculture, the Georgics is considered Virgils second major work, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. The poem draws on a variety of sources, and has influenced many later authors from antiquity to the present. The work consists of 2,188 hexametric verses divided into four books, the yearly timings by the rising and setting of particular stars were valid for the precession epoch of Virgils time, and so are not always valid now. Virgil begins his poem with a summary of the four books and it takes as its model the work on farming by Varro, but differs from it in important ways. Numerous technical passages fill out the first half of Book 1, of particular interest are lines 160–175, where Virgil describes the plow. In the succession of ages, whose model is ultimately Hesiod, the age of Jupiter and its relation to the golden age, of chief importance is the contribution of labor to the success or failure of mankind’s endeavors, agricultural or otherwise. The book comes to one climax with the description of a storm in lines 311–50. After detailing various weather-signs, Virgil ends with an enumeration of the associated with Caesar’s assassination and civil war. Prominent themes of the book include agriculture as mans struggle against a hostile natural world, often described in violent terms. Like the first book, it begins with a poem addressing the divinities associated with the matters about to be discussed, viticulture, trees, in the next hundred lines Virgil treats forest and fruit trees. Their propagation and growth are described in detail, with a contrast drawn between methods that are natural and those that require human intervention. Three sections on grafting are of particular interest, presented as marvels of man’s alteration of nature, also included is a catalogue of the worlds trees, set forth in rapid succession, and other products of various lands. A point of cultural interest is a reference to Ascra in line 176 and these depict the growth and beauty that accompany springs arrival. The poet then returns to didactic narrative with yet more on vines, emphasizing their fragility, a warning about animal damage provides occasion for an explanation of why goats are sacrificed to Bacchus. The olive tree is presented in contrast to the vine. The next subject, at last turning away from the vine, is other kinds of trees, those that produce fruit, then Virgil again returns to grapevines, recalling the myth of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs in a passage known as the Vituperation of Vines. The remainder of the book is devoted to extolling the simple country life over the corruptness of the city, the third book is chiefly and ostensibly concerned with animal husbandry
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Edmund Spenser
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Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse. He was deeply affected by Irish faerie mythology, which he knew from his home at Kilcolman and his genocidal tracts against Gaelic culture were war propaganda. His house was burned to the ground during the war, causing him to flee Ireland, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552, though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors School, while at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. In 1578, he became for a time secretary to John Young. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender and around the time married his first wife. They had two children, Sylvanus and Katherine, in July 1580, Spenser went to Ireland in service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. Spenser served under Lord Gray with Walter Raleigh at the Siege of Smerwick massacre, when Lord Grey was recalled to England, Spenser stayed on in Ireland, having acquired other official posts and lands in the Munster Plantation. Raleigh acquired other nearby Munster estates confiscated in the Second Desmond Rebellion, some time between 1587 and 1589, Spenser acquired his main estate at Kilcolman, near Doneraile in North Cork. He later bought a second holding to the south, at Rennie and its ruins are still visible today. A short distance away grew a tree, locally known as Spensers Oak until it was destroyed in a strike in the 1960s. Local legend has it that he penned some of The Faerie Queene under this tree. In 1590, Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The Faerie Queene, having travelled to London to publish and promote the work and he was successful enough to obtain a life pension of £50 a year from the Queen. By 1594, Spensers first wife had died, and in that year he married Elizabeth Boyle, the marriage itself was celebrated in Epithalamion. They had a son named Peregrine, in 1596, Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland. This piece, in the form of a dialogue, circulated in manuscript and it is probable that it was kept out of print during the authors lifetime because of its inflammatory content. The pamphlet argued that Ireland would never be totally pacified by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, in 1598, during the Nine Years War, Spenser was driven from his home by the native Irish forces of Aodh Ó Néill
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan and his critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was an influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression, it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder and he was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction, Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squiers School in South Molton, Devon, John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridges second wife, Anne Bowden, probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, Coleridge suggests that he took no pleasure in boyish sports but instead read incessantly and played by himself. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, in fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp. Pen and ink, boy, you mean, oh aye. the cloister-pump, I suppose. Be this as it may, there was one custom of our masters and he would often permit our theme exercises. To accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over, throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during the term. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight, With unclosed lids, from 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade, afterwards, he was rumoured to have had a bout of severe depression. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of insanity and he was readmitted to Jesus College, at Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian society, called Pantisocracy
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Frost at Midnight
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Frost at Midnight is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in February 1798. Part of the poems, the poem discusses Coleridges childhood experience in a negative manner. The poem expresses hope that Coleridges son, Hartley, would be able to experience a childhood that his father could not, Frost at Midnight has been well received by critics, and is seen as the best of the conversation poems. Frost at Midnight was written in February 1798 when he described to Thomas Poole aspects of his childhood at Christs Hospital school that are similar to the content of the poem, the rest comes from Coleridges experience with his friend, William Wordsworth. It was Wordsworth who provided Coleridge with a description of the Lake District which served as a basis for Coleridges description of the place. The relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth was a friendship, and Coleridge helped rewrite many of Wordsworths poems during this time. Frost at Midnight was later connected to many of Wordsworths poems, the poem was published in a small work containing his other poems France, An Ode and Fears in Solitude. The poem was intended to be added to Coleridges third edition of his poems, but a dispute with Charles Lloyd, a fellow writer. The poem was later collected in Sibylline Leaves, published in 1817 and it was rewritten many times, and seven different versions were printed. Of these revisions, the 1798 edition differs from the others in the six lines. Of this removal, Coleridge explains in George Beaumonts copy of the poems, The last six lines I omit because they destroy the rondo, Poems of this kind & length ought to lie coiled with its tail round its head. The image of soot in a grate in the lines of the poem is a sign that a stranger would appear. The narrator believes that his child will experience a life than his own, For I was reared In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky. The narrator comes to an understanding of nature after being isolated, nature becomes a comforter, but the narrator remembers his loneliness during childhood. During his final year at Christs Hospital, Coleridge completed a poem he titled On Quitting School for College for a school exercise, in the poem, he describes his time at the school as a pleasant experience. However, Frost at Midnight redefines the experience as one that deprived him of the countryside, there is another quality to Coleridges retelling of his childhood experience, he adds supernatural descriptions to the common scenes of his youth. In particular, the bells are able to make a promise of a better life. This is similar to what Coleridges friend William Wordsworth does with the narrator of Tintern Abbey, many of the feelings of the narrator for his child are connected to Coleridges sonnet To a Friend Who Asked, How I Felt When the Nurse Presented My Infant to Me
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Walter Jackson Bate
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Walter Jackson Bate was an American literary critic and biographer. He is known for Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography-winning biographies of Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson also won the 1978 U. S. National Book Award in Biography. Bate was born in Mankato, Minnesota and he studied and later taught at Harvard University. His critical work, especially The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, responds to and his biographies of Keats and Johnson have enjoyed extraordinary reputations both as scholarly resources and as works of literature in their own right. Severn straightened the body on the bed, and cut three dampened curls from Keatss head and he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1957. Bate retired from teaching at Harvard in 1986, and died on July 26,1999, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a brief memoir appeared in 2013. Negative Capability, The Intuitive Approach in Keats, from Classic to Romantic, Premises of Taste in Eighteenth-century England. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, extensive biography from the Harvard University Gazette
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Richard Marggraf Turley
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Richard Marggraf Turley is a British author and literary critic. In 2013, he was appointed Professor for Engagement with the Public Imagination at Aberystwyth University and he works in the universitys Department of English and Creative Writing. Marggraf Turley was born in the Forest of Dean and his first collection of poetry The Fossil Box was published by Cinnamon Press in 2007. Robert Minhinnick, editor of Poetry Wales, praised its rare, the poems are concerned with the urgency of place and origins. He is also co-author, with Damian Walford Davies, of Whiteout, in 2008, Marggraf Turley signed with Salt, who published a new collection entitled Wan-Hus Flying Chair in March 2009. In 2007, he won first prize in the tenth-anniversary Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry and his poem, Elisions, was written on the competition theme of slavery. He has made appearances on Radio 3s The Verb, presented by Ian McMillan and he performed with Damian Walford Davies at the 2009 Guardian Hay Festival. Both read at the 2010 Hay Festival, over 50 million images were recorded, amounting to five terabytes of data. Also in 2010, he won the Wales Book of the Year Peoples Choice award for Wan-Hus Flying Chair. In March 2012, new research on Keatss ode To Autumn, co-authored with Dr Jayne Archer and Professor Howard Thomas, was featured on BBC Radio 4s Today programme and in UK newspapers. The part of St Giless Hill in question now lies under a car park. He is Co-Director of the Centre for Romantic Studies, Aberystwyth and he writes a blog on topics related to Romantic literature. He was one of the three English-panel judges for the Wales Book of the Year 2013
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Ubi sunt
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Ubi sunt is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt. Meaning Where are those who were before us, Ubi nunc. is a common variant. Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality, where are those who, before us, existed in the world. The theme was the property of medieval Latin poets, Cicero may not have been available. The medieval French poet François Villon famously echoes the sentiment in the Ballade des dames du temps jadis with his question, wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr. Another famous medieval French writer, Rutebeuf, wrote a poem called Poèmes de linfortune which contains those verses, roughly, Where are my friends I used to embrace so close and loved so much. In the second half of the 20th century, the singer Léo Ferré made this poem famous by adding music, the song was called Pauvre Rutebeuf. In Coplas por la muerte de su padre, the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique wrote equally famous stanzas about contemporaries that death had taken away, los infantes de Aragón ¿qué se ficieron. ¿Qué fue de tanto galán, qué fue de tanta invención como trujeron, las justas y los torneos, paramentos, bordaduras y cimeras, ¿fueron sino devaneos. ¿qué fueron sino verduras de las eras, in medieval Persian poetry, Ubi sunt. is a pervasive theme in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say, Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday. And this first Summer month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshyd, a general feeling of ubi sunt radiates from the text of Beowulf. The Anglo-Saxons, at the point in their evolution in which Beowulf was written, experienced an inescapable feeling of doom. By conquering the Romanized Britons, they were faced with stone works. Prominent ubi sunt Anglo-Saxon poems are The Wanderer, Deor, The Ruin, the Wanderer most exemplifies Ubi sunt poetry in its use of erotema, In Anglo-Saxon, this passage – from lines 92–96 of the poem – reads as follows, Hwær cwom mearg. Hu seo þrag gewat, genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære, one modern English translation of this passage is given below, Where is the horse gone. Where are the seats at the feast, where are the revels in the hall. How that time has passed away, grown dark under cover of night, Þe riche leuedies in hoere bour, Þat wereden gold in hoere tressour Wiþ hoere briȝtte rode. Which roughly translates to, Where are those who were before us, the rich ladies in their chambers, Who wore gold in their hair, With their bright faces
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Sonnet
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A sonnet is a poem in a specific form which originated in Italy, Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto, by the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history, writers of sonnets are sometimes called sonneteers, although the term can be used derisively. The sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Emperor Frederick II, guittone dArezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he founded the Siculo-Tuscan School, or Guittonian school of poetry. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti, wrote sonnets, other fine examples were written by Michelangelo. The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the included two parts that together formed a compact form of argument. First, the octave, forms the proposition, which describes a problem, or question, followed by a sestet, typically, the ninth line initiates what is called the turn, or volta, which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that dont strictly follow the structure, the ninth line still often marks a turn by signaling a change in the tone, mood. Later, the abba, abba pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets, for the sestet there were two different possibilities, cde, cde and cdc, cdc. In time, other variants on this scheme were introduced. Petrarch typically used an abba, abba pattern for the octave, in English, both the English or Shakespearean sonnet, and the Italian Petrarchan sonnet are traditionally written in iambic pentameter. Early twentieth-century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also wrote mostly Petrarchan sonnets, on His Blindness by Milton, gives a sense of the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, Most Sonnets in Dantes La Vita Nuova are Petrarchan. Chapter VII gives sonnet O voi che per la via, with two sestets and two quatrains, and Ch. VIII, Morte villana, with two sestets and two quatrains and it was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon. It employs the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d and this poem is historically interesting for its information on north Italian perspectives concerning the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the conflict between the Angevins and Aragonese for Sicily. It congratulates Robert of Naples on his recent victory, there are also two poorly regarded sonnets by the Italian Dante de Maiano. By the late 17th century poets on increasingly relied on stanza forms incorporating rhymed couplets, and by the 18th century fixed-form poems – and, in particular, the resulting versification – less constrained by meter and rhyme patterns than Renaissance poetry – more closely mirrored prose. The Romantics were responsible for a return to many of the poems used during the 15th and 16th centuries. The sonnet however was used until the Parnassians brought it back into favor
