British Romantic Era Lit (2)

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Fourteener

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A verse form consisting of fourteen syllables arranged in iambs. It's most commonly used in couplets of iambic heptameter.

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Blank Verse

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Unrhymed but otherwise regular verse. Usually iambic pentameter.

Used for dramatic verse and usually longer works like epics. The freedom gained through the lack of rhyme is offset by the demands of variety.

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Heroic Couplet

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Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs.

(For the most part abandoned by Romantic era poets.)

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Sonnet

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A poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. Usually written in iambic pentameter. The Petrarchan/Italian is an octave and a sestet. The Shakespearean/English has 3 quatrains and 1 couplet.

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Epic Subject

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The subject of an epic. Usually a historical, mythical, or religious event or figure.

(Own research. Text insufficient)

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Iambic Pentameter

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Iambic Pentameter - a measure with five iambs

Iamb - a foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented. The most common rhythm in English verse.

Pentameter - a line of verse of five feet. Serious verse in English since the time of Chaucer - epic, drama, meditative, narrative - and many conventional forms - terza rima, heroic quantrain, rhyme royal, ottava rima, the Spenserian stanza, and the sonnet - have made pentameter a staple.

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Byronic Hero

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This character has two manifestations; one is the guilt-ridden, stormy-tempered, dark and brooding fellow who hates mankind no less than he despises himself. He is inordinately proud and will never do anything on anyone's terms but his own. The other side is a wanderer to whom life happens; fun at parties, a prodigious lover, never finding an adventure that satiates him, yet always searching for new thrills. - text

A model of the mysteriously brooding, bitter, vaguely northern loner, sexually polymorphous, reckless and doomed, and always dangerous. (Capable of shameless self-flattery but also just as capable of touching modesty and self-mockery.) - Harmon

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Isolato

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Byronic hero

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Terza Rima

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A 3 line stanza with rhyme scheme of aba bcb and so forth. One rhyme scheme is used for the 1st and 3rd lines of each stanza and a new rhyme is introduced for the second line, then used for the 1st and 3rd lines of the next stanza. Sometimes linked to the Trinity. Used by Byron and Shelley.

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Negative Capability

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The poet should remove his personal identity as much as possible from his work, to give it "organic" integrity (i.e., the poem "lives" outside its author). The poet's job is not really to resolve the debates but rather to raise the issues for debates and to do so vividly and faithfully.

Keats' idea set forth in a letter - "what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

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Spenserian Stanza

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A stanza of 9 iambic lines - the 1st 8 in pentameter and the ninth in hexameter. Rhyme scheme = ababbcbcc

Shelley (Adonais) Byron (Childe Harold) Keats (The Eve of St. Agnes)

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Gothic

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A term used by the romantics to suggest whatever was medieval, natural, primitive, wild, free, authentic, romantic. Gothic elements suggested to them variety, richness, mystery, and aspiration.

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Iambic Tetrameter

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Iamb - a foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented.

Tetrameter - a line consisting of four feet

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Ottava Rima

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A stanza consisting of 8 iambic pentameter (or hendecasyllabic) lines rhyming abababbcc. The couplet of the stanza, like that at the end of a Shakespearean sonnet, is often used for a pithy summary, a reversal, a sudden concentration of information, or surprise and deflation. (Byron often used the latter. Ex. Don Juan)

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The "Graveyard School"

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A group of 18th century poets who wrote long poems on death and immortality. Related to early stages of the English romantic movement. The lasting effect of their poetry was leaving elements in the Gothic aspect of romanticism.

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1817

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The year of the ghost stories and nightmares that led to Frankenstein

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1819

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Keats' recognition of weakened health likely tuberculosis (from which his brother died earlier).

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1820

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The death of George III

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1824

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Byron joined the ongoing Greek uprising against the Turks

Byron's death in Greece, after a noble attempt at raising an army

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1824

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Byron's death in Greece, after a noble attempt at raising an army