Sex, Drugs, and the Sublime

Transcription

1 Sex, Drugs, and the Sublime

2 Born to a middle class family. His father was a hosier (stockingmaker). Deeply spiritual, Blake had visions all his life. At four he saw God put his head through the window. At nine, while walking through the countryside, he saw a tree full of angels. As an adult, he would claim he saw his dying brother s spirit exit his body and rise through the ceiling clapping his hands for joy. He said Robert continued to visit him throughout his life. William Blake Thomas Phillips, 1807 As a boy, his parents tried to discourage him from telling such stories, but they realized he was different from other boys and did not make him attend school.

3 He learned to read and write at home, showing an early aptitude for drawing. He was apprenticed to an engraver when he was fourteen. Blake was an illustrator and a poet. He was deeply invested in both aspects of his art throughout his life. He drew and painted as ferociously as he wrote. One of his last purchases before his death in poverty was a package of pencils so he could continue illustrating Dante s Inferno. He privileged imagination over reason. Blake believed that poetry should be constructed not from observations of life, but from inner visions. He wanted his poetry to be read and enjoyed by common people, but he wouldn t sacrifice his own artistic vision to become popular. He was never wellknown in his lifetime, and he mostly made a meager living as an illustrator and engraver.

4 Blake abhorred slavery. He believed in racial and sexual equality. He detested the enforced chastity of women, of marriage without love, and the difficulty in women achieving financial or intellectual equality with men. His own wife, Catherine, was actually illiterate when he married her. He not only taught her to read and write, but he also trained her in his own official profession as an engraver of pictures. A Negro Hung Alive by His Ribs to the Gallows William Blake, 1797

5 He rejected all forms of imposed authority. In 1803 he was actually charged with uttering treasonable expressions against King George III. It s understandable, considering his family were dissenters those who protested the government s interference in religion and considered the established Church of England corrupt and impure. He distrusted most established social institutions the Church, the State, the Aristocracy. He thought they exploited the poor and the weak. He died in great poverty, but he was cheered even in old age by a group of younger poets and artists who admired his work. Book of Job, When The Morning Stars Shine William Blake, c. 1803

6 He was orphaned at a young age. His mother died when he was eight, his father five years later. He and his siblings were raised by uncles. He showed an aptitude for poetry very early on. After finishing college, he went on a walking tour of Europe. The natural sights and wonders he experienced there would greatly influence his later work. While on this tour, he came in contact with The French Revolution. This, and a time spent living in France, would give him a great sympathy for the troubles of the common person. William Wordworth William Shuter, 1798

7 While living in France in 1792, he fathered an illegitimate daughter with Annette Vallon. He left the country before his child was born. Later on, he supported mother and daughter as well as his financial circumstances allowed. In 1802 he married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. They had five children. His closest companion and confidante for much of his life, however, was his sister Dorothy, a well-regarded poet and writer in her own right. Some of his most important works, including Tintern Abbey, were written for her. Dorothy Wordsworth in Later Years Author unknown, c. 1845

8 Together with Samuel Coleridge, he published Lyrical Ballads in Not only is the poetry in it some of the most famous in English, but the preface to the second edition is a brilliant manifesto in favor of romantic poetry. In Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility." Title page of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, 1798

9 He became more conservative and more successful in later life, serving as Poet Laureate to England in his declining years. He died of a lung inflammation on April 23, 1850 and was buried at St. Oswald s Church in Grasmere. Gravestone of Wordworth

10 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest of fourteen children. His father, a minister, died when he was nine. His family wanted him to be a minister, but while in college at Cambridge he decided to pursue a career in writing. He also ran up huge debts at Cambridge, which his older brothers paid. He never finished his degree. Samuel Coleridge Peter Vandyke, 1795

11 During college, he became close friends with aspiring poet Robert Southey. Southey was engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker, and Coleridge proposed to her sister Sarah in But Coleridge was still obsessed with his first love, Mary Evans, who had rejected him. His marriage to Sarah was unhappy, and despite having several children together they spent large amounts of time apart. They officially separated in Sarah Coleridge Engraved from a miniature by Matilda Betham, c. 1809

12 Coleridge met Wordsworth soon after leaving college. Wordsworth encouraged him to write poetry in a more natural style. In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth co-authored Lyrical Ballads, which is considered a landmark work of Romantic Poetry. Lyrical Ballads contains Coleridge s seminal poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The two quarreled in 1810 and this ended their friendship and writing partnership for some years. William Wordsworth Artist unknown, c. 1800

13 Around 1802, Coleridge fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, whose sister Mary married Wordsworth. She rejected him, and this, combined with his chronic rheumatism, led to an addiction to the medicine laudanum, opium dissolved in alcohol. His poem Dejection: An Ode chronicles his unhappiness during this period. Another of his most famous poems, Kubla Khan, was inspired by an opium dream. But addiction limited his artistic output and made his personal life a misery. In 1816, he admitted to Lord Byron that he swallowed huge quantities of the drug every day. That spring, he put himself under the care of Dr. James Gillman, who helped him learn to manage his addiction. Nineteenth Century laudanum bottle

14 Coleridge was considered one of the most brilliant speakers of his age. His lectures on William Shakespeare, given in 1812, have been credited with reviving public interest in Shakespeare. His greatest non-poetic writing achievement was Biographia Literaria (1817), which was written while under Gillman s care. He also published several collections of poems during this period, which were very well received. Coleridge in Later Years Samuel Cousins, 1854

15 In 1828, Coleridge reconciled with Wordsworth and the two took a tour of Germany. During this period, he also mended fences with his wife and his grown children. He settled in London with the Gillmans and was part of the circle of poet-critics who made up the literary elite of the period. Money problems constantly worried him, but he was well respected by his peers. He died on July 24, 1834 of congestive heart failure, probably related to his longtime addiction. Coleridge s grave St. Michael s Church, London

16 Byron was extremely well born--one of his ancestors was King James I--but not wellmonied, due to his father s spendthrift ways. It s widely believed that father married his mother, a Scottish heiress, for her money and then deserted her once it was spent. Lord Byron Thomas Phillips, c. 1820

17 Like many romantic poets, he spent his youth travelling all over the place Europe and the Orient. When he returned to take up family responsibilities at 23, he proved a strong advocate of social reform. Byron often used his poetry to attack his political enemies, such as the Duke of Wellington. Lord Byron cut a sexual swath that astonishes by sheer numbers--he once bragged that he had sex with 250 women in Venice over the course of a single year. He was all-inclusive men and women of all ages and classes. These conquests probably included his own halfsister, Augusta Leigh. His reputation grew so bad that by 1816, he left England to escape the disapproval of British society.

18 He was great friends with Percy Shelley. They inspired each other s poetry, and their personal lives were messily intertwined. Byron had an illegitimate child by Claire Clairmont, Shelley s sometime mistress and sister-in-law. He was devastated at Shelley s sudden death. In the last years of his life, he moved to Greece and devoted himself to the Greeks rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. But before he could get involved in any real battle, he took ill with a violent cold. He partially recovered but was prescribed bleeding as a remedy, which weakened him further. His cold became a violent fever, and he died on April 19, 1824 at age 36.

19 Byron was described by his longtime mistress Caroline Lamb as Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. This description became synonymous with the Byronic hero, a figure who pervades much of Byron s own work. The Byronic Hero Rebellious Disdainful of social institutions Exiled from home, often because of a scandalous past Disrespectful of rank and privilege Talented Passionate but unlucky in love Self-Destructive

20 Son of a wealthy, wellconnected man. Shelley s atheism led to his expulsion from Oxford and, at 18, almost a total break with his father. Percy Shelley Amelia Curran, 1819 He eloped with his first wife, 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, when he was 19. They had two children.

21 After three years he grew tired of Harriet and left her for 16-year-old Mary Godwin. Harriet committed suicide, and their children were given to foster parents. Mary Shelley Richard Rothwell, 1840 Mary s 16-year-old stepsister, Claire Clairmont, eloped with them. Shelley had a longstanding affair with her.

22 The couple was frequently beset by personal and financial troubles, most of them stemming from Shelley s belief in free love and free spending. Two of their three children died in infancy. While sailing off the coast of Italy, Shelley died during a freak storm at the age of 29. Mary outlived him by almost thirty years, establishing a successful literary career of her own. Her most famous work is Frankenstein, the perennial horror classic.

23 Shelley s radical beliefs--atheism, free love, vegetarianism, the innate corruption of the English upper classes, and the need for political and social equality for all people--are present in his poetry. Perhaps because of his dangerous politics, Shelley was not widely published during his lifetime. Until the late 19 th Century, he was considered something of a minor figure in British Literature.

24 John Keats William Hilton, c The son of prosperous middle-class parents who died young, he was raised by relatives and apprenticed as an apothecary. He would earn his license but never practiced the trade, choosing instead to become a poet.

25 Soon after leaving his profession, Keats met Leigh Hunt, an influential magazine editor who liked Keats work. Hunt also introduced Keats to a circle of literary men, including Percy Shelley and William Wordsworth. The group's influence enabled Keats to see his first volume of poetry published in Keats nursed his brother through tuberculosis in the fall of During that time he met and fell in love with a woman named Fanny Brawne. He wrote some of his finest verse in this period. That same autumn he contracted tuberculosis himself, and by February of 1819 felt he was living a posthumous existence.

26 Keats produced some of what would become his bestknown work during the spring and summer of 1819, including Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and To Autumn. This series of odes is nearly universally considered to be among the most important poetry ever written in the English language, ranking with the best of Shakespeare and Milton. He continued a correspondence with Fanny Brawne, but his failing health and literary ambitions prevented them from marrying. He went to seek a warmer climate for the winter of , but fell ill in Rome and died there in February. His last request was followed, and thus he was buried under a tombstone reading, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

27 Ode on a Grecian Urn Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? --John Keats, May 1819 Sketch of a grecian urn by John Keats, c. 1819

28 Robert Browning Juliet Cameron, 1865 Born in Camberwell, England, son of prosperous middle-class dissenters. His father Robert was a clerk for the Bank of England. His mother Sarah was a woman of powerful personality who dominated the household. Browning had one sister, Sarianna, born in 1814.

29 Browning inherited his father s strong physical constitution and his mother s nervous temperament. He attended a neighborhood school as a boy. While gifted in music and literature from an early age, Browning did not have much formal education after the age of fourteen. Because he was not Anglican, he was barred from attending Oxford or Cambridge. He attended the University of London but left after a year. Much of his learning was self-taught.

30 Browning became interested in poetry in his teens. He was particularly attracted to the work of Percy Shelly, whom he admired throughout his life. Browning published Pauline, his first collection of poetry, when he was twenty. It received mixed reviews. This volume was followed by Paracelus (1835) and Sordello (1840). In these works, Browning began developing a stylistic obsession with the dramatic monologue, which would dominate his work for the rest of his life. From Browning wrote a number of plays, none of which were successful. Though a master of the dramatic monologue, he had difficulty portraying realistic action on stage.

31 Browning was very close to his parents, particularly his strong-willed mother, Sarah. After her death in 1840, Browning was devastated. In 1846, he married the strongwilled but semi-invalid Elizabeth Barrett, at the time a much better-known writer. Because of Barrett s uncertain health, they lived in Italy for most of their marriage. They had one son, Pen, born in His domestic responsibilities limited Browning s artistic output until after Barrett s death in Elizabeth Barrett Browning Macaire Havre, 1859.

32 Much of Browning s most famous work was published in his later life. The Ring and the Book, a series of dramatic monologues all focusing on the same murder case, was published in 1864, as was Dramatis Personae. Men and Women, a two-volume series of poems that had been published in 1855 to not much acclaim, gained more attention during this period, as did his early work Bells and Pomegranates ( ). The latter contains some of his best-known poetry, including Porphyria s Lover, My Last Duchess. The formation of the Browning Society in 1881, an association devoted to the appreciation of his work, cemented his reputation as a major Victorian poet.

33 Browning traveled extensively during the last years of life, publishing more acclaimed poetry. He died at his son s home in Venice in He is buried in Poet s Corner in Westminster Abbey, his grave next to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Grave of Robert Browning at Westminster Abbey, photographer unknown.

34 Poetic monologue based on an actual historical personage, Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. He was married to Lucrezia de Medici, who died at age 17 in 1561, reportedly poisoned. He remarried Barbara, niece of the Count of Tyrol, three years later. Browning meant the poem as a meditation on arrogance and selfdeception, and also the pernicious workings of power. The Duke addresses his remarks to an emissary from the Count of Tyrol. His monologue is meant to show both his abuses of power and his self-deception about his true evil nature. Lucrezia de Medici Bronzino, c. 1560