BYRON, KEATS & SHELLEY - ETERNITY

Byron, Keats and Shelley lived short lives, but the radical way they lived them would change the world. At 19, Shelley wrote The Necessity of Atheism - it was banned and burned, but it freed the Romantics from religion. Through their search for meaning in a world without God, they pioneered the notions of free love, celebrity and secular idolatry that are at the centre of modern Western culture.

For them poetry became the new religion, a way of reaching eternity. Their words are brought to life by Nicholas Shaw, Blake Ritson and Joseph Millson.

BYRON IN ITALY

Watch the video and complete the tasks in the worksheet

This video clip is taken from the BBC drama series BYRON (2003)

WORKSHEET BYRON IN ITALY

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE - ANALYSIS OF FRAGMENTS FROM BOOK III

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, MICHAEL

In this video Professors Simon Bainbridge and Sally Bushell discuss Wordsworth’s longer poem, ‘Michael’, first published in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, 1800.

Professor Bainbridge and Professor Bushell go to a particular site in the Lake District, Greenhead Gill (a gill or ghyll is a mountain stream). This site provides both the setting and inspiration for the poem as well as the place in which it is written. They consider the ways in which Wordsworth builds a sense of place into the poem ‘Michael’.

TRANSCRIPT VIDEO 1 

LORD BYRON - CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE : ONCE AGAIN UPON THE WATERS

TEXT ANALYSIS : ONCE MORE UPON THE WATERS

Fragments from CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE , Canto III , lines 5-18; 109-117; 127 -144 

 The lines below from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage provide an insight into the wild beauty of Nature and  the Romantic themes of solitude, melancholy and the transcience of life.

LINES 5 -  18

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by,

When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

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!

Swift be their guidance, wheresoe’er it lead!

Though the strain’d mast should quiver as a reed,

And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale,

Still must I on; for I am as a weed,

Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail

Where’er the surge may sweep, or tempest’s breath prevail (... )

REBELLIOUS YOUTH: THE ROMANTICS & LIBERTY

In this BBC documentary Peter Ackroyd,writer, historian and presenter,   reveals how the radical ideas of liberty that inspired the French Revolution opened up a world of possibility for great British writers such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, inspiring some of the greatest works of literature in the English language. Their ideas are the foundations of our modern notions of freedom and their words are performed by David Tennant, Dudley Sutton and David Threlfall. 

The Romantics are important because they helped to define, and indeed to create, the modern world. They helped to fashion the way in which we all now think and imagine.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE & THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

 DOWNLOAD THE POWER POINT PRESENTATION 

S.T.COLERIDGE AND THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER  

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LINKS & CONNECTIONS

  If you like heavy metal, IRON MAIDEN made a rock version of Coleridge's ballad

Video: IRON MAIDEN THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER PART 

Lyrics  

WILLIAM BLAKE - A VISIONARY ARTIST

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