ROMANCING ROMANTICISM: SECOND CANTO
(1816 – 1836)
10.1. Второе поколение английских романтиков. Джордж Байрон как поэт радикального революционного романтизма. Четыре периода в творчестве поэта. Политические мотивы в поэмах Байрона. Жанровые особенности «Дон Жуана», сатирический пафос поэмы.
The second generation of Romanticists includesGeorge G. Byron, Percy B. Shelley,andJohn Keats. Lord Byron was one of the most important and versatile writers of the Romantic Movement. Shelley is considered by many to be one of the most influential leaders of the movement. Throughout his life, Shelley lived by a radically nonconformist moral code. His beliefs concerning love, marriage, revolution, and politics caused him to be considered a dangerous immoralist by some. John Keats's lyrical poetry is among the best loved in the language.
10.1.1. George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), known as Lord Byron, was born in London and educated at Harrow School and the University of Cambridge. He succeeded to the title and estates of his granduncle.
The first volume of Byron's poems, Hours of Idleness, was published when he was 19. Two years later Byron took his seat in the House of Lords. He also began two years of travel in Portugal, Spain, and Greece.
The publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a poem narrating travels in Europe, brought Byron fame. The hero of the poem, Childe Harold, was the first example of what came to be known as the Byronic hero, the young man of stormy emotions who shuns humanity and wanders through life weighed down by a sense of guilt for mysterious sins of his past. The Byronic hero is, to some extent, modeled on the life and personality of Byron himself. In a way, he behaved in a most unconventional manner – just like his characters. In 1812, delivering his first speech at the House of Lords, a 24-year-old peer spoke in defense of the revolting workers in the north of England!
The subject now submitted to your lordships, for the first time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of persons long before its introduction to the notice of that legislature whose interference alone could be of real service. As a person in some degree connected with the suffering county, though a stranger not only to this House in general but to almost every individual whose attention I presume to solicit, I must claim some portion of your lordships' indulgence, whilst I offer a few observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply interested.
To enter into any detail of these riots would be superfluous; the House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the frames obnoxious to the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently passed in Notts, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on the day I left the county, I was informed that forty frames had been broken the preceding evening as usual, without resistance and without detection. Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment.
But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress. The perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large and once honest and industrious body of the people into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community. At the time to which I allude, the town and county were burdened with large detachments of the military; the police was in motion, the magistrates assembled (…) The police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime of poverty; men who had been nefariously guilty of lawfully begetting several children, whom, thanks to the times, they were unable to maintain.
10.1.2. The Byron hero we meet again in his narrative poems of the following two years, which include The Corsair and Lara. In 1815 his Hebrew Melodies was published, and in the same year Byron was married to Anna Isabella Milbanke. After giving birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada, Byron's only legitimate child, Lady Byron left her husband. Byron agreed to legal separation from his wife. Rumors about his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta and doubts about his sanity led to his being ostracized by society. Deeply embittered, Byron left England in 1816 and never returned. In was then that he met the poet Percy B. Shelley, and their friendship began.
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When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on his head for his labours.
To do good to mankind is a chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted
In Geneva, Byron wrote the narrative poem The Prisoner of Chillon. He next established residence in Venice, where he produced, among other works, the verse drama Manfred, the first two cantos of Don Juan, and the fourth and final canto of Childe Harold. For two years Byron traveled around Italy.
Don Juan, a mock epic in 16 cantos, encompasses a brilliant satire on contemporary English society. Often regarded as Byron's greatest work, it was completed in 1823.
At the news of the revolt of the Greeks against the Turks, Byron joined the Greek insurgents at Missolonghi. He not only recruited a regiment for the cause of Greek independence but contributed large sums of money to it. The Greeks made him commander in chief of their forces in January 1824. The poet died at Mesolуngion three months later.
10.2. Своеобразие творческой манеры Перси Б. Шелли. Становление эстетических взглядов («Защита поэзии»). Тираноборческие мотивы его поэзии. Метафоричность, символика в его произведениях.
10.2.1. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) waseducated at Eton College and, until his expulsion at the end of one year, the University of Oxford. With another student, Shelley had written and circulated a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, of which the university authorities disapproved. Shortly after his expulsion, the 19-year-old Shelley married his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, and moved to the Lake District of England to study and write. Two years later, he published his first long serious work.
The poem was one result of Shelley's friendship with the British philosopher William Godwin, expressing Godwin's freethinking Socialist philosophy. Another result of their friendship was Shelley's relationship with Godwin's daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft. After separating from his wife, Shelley briefly toured Europe with Mary.
During the last four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works. Traveling and living in various Italian cities. Many critics regard Shelley as one of the greatest of all English poets. They point especially to his lyrics, including the familiar short odes “To a Skylark”, “To the West Wind”, and “The Cloud”. His love poetry is essentially tragic. One of the best known examples is the poem below.