BIOGRAPHIES

POEMS BY BLAKE & OTHER ROMANTICS

ANALYSED AND SET TO MUSIC BY J. M. SCHROEDER

* William Wordsworth (1770-1850) *
* Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824) *
* Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) *

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William Blake (1757-1827)

WILLIAM
BLAKE
1757-1827

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born in  Soho as a hosier’s son, 1 of 5 children
early love of arts, attended drawing school at 10
received premium,
served apprenticeship in engraving
1779 Royal Academy
1783 Poetical Sketches, his early poems,
worked as a journeyman (engraver)
intellectual self-training in philosophy and literature,
poetry & art aiming to become "a complete artist"
1789 Songs of Innocence... on copper-plates
allegorical & mythological epics
The Four Zoas (& their Emanations):
Urizen, Luvah, Urthona , Tharmas

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IMAGINATION ... is spiritual sensation.
And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision...
Why is the bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book?
Is it not because [it is] addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation,[& only] mediately to the understanding or reason?

WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH
1770-1850

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solicitor’s son, 1 of 5 children
tumultuous childhood, motherless at 5, orphan at 13
devoted sister: Dorothy who "gave him eyes and ears"
loved learning & walking in the countryside
Cambridge education (finished in1792)
1790 visit to France full of revolutionary hopes
inheritance and financial independence
sharing Dorset home with his sister Dorothy
1797 ff. friendship with Coleridge
1798 Lyrical Ballads; Preface
1802 ff. marriage, 6 children,
1812 Grasmere; financial worries,
human losses (children) & tragedies (Coleridge)
sudden fame: Poet Laureate

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[MY] principal object [...] was to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate them [...] in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination...
from PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS, the "manifesto" of Romantic Poetry

GORDON
LORD
BYRON
1788-1824

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a "rakehell’s" son , 1 sister, neurotic mother
fatherless at 3, seduced by his governess
Trinity College, Cambridge
1807 lyrics: Hours of Idleness - publically criticised
retaliation in: "English bards & Scotch reviewers"
1809 tour of Greece
1812 satirical verse diary: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
fame and love affairs in High Society,
left-wing political life as a Whig (Liberal Party)
unhappy marriage, separation, scandal
1816 Geneva (CH), friendship with Shelley
1817 orgiastic season in Venice,
tracing "Don Juan" in life and poetry
1823 died as tragic hero of the Greek revolution

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Once more upon the waters yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!
CHILDE HAROLD, III, II
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore... I love not Man the less, but Nature more...
CHILDE HAROLD, IV, CLXXVIII

SAMUEL
TAYLOR>
COLERIDGE
1772-1834

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clergyman’s son, 1 of 14 children, fatherless at 9
Christ’s School London, Jesus College, Cambridge
reader of (oriental) travel literature,
failed cavalrycareer; penniless poet
friend of Southey’s (Poet Laureate),
radical social ideas: "Pantisocracy"
1795 ff. friendship with Wordsworth
1798 Lyrical Ballads, "melted ideas";
ballad: Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
1798 Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight,
1799 language and philosophy studies in Germany
1802 marriage. - psycho-somatic troubles,
addicted to pain-killer opium,
separation from his wife
1817 Biographia Literaria – career as lecturer, editor

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[MY] endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural or at least romantic ; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspense of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
from BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA