Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets (Audiobook)

The verse of the English Romantic poets is as daunting in its scope and complexity as it is dazzling in its technique and beautiful in its language. Now, Professor Willard Spiegelman illuminates masterpieces of English literature by poets Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, as well as the women Romantic poets. As with his first course, How to Read and Understand Poetry, his emphasis is on technique, on how a poem accomplishes its objectives, on "how it means." To this end, he meticulously dissects the poems, directing you to points of interest that deserve close observation. A much-abused term, Romanticism has at times been shorthand for "wild," "irregular," "gothic," and "modern." It has been associated with: love of the exotic; revolt against reason; vindication and defense of the individual; liberation of the unconscious; reaction against science; worship of the emotions; return to nature and so on. Not only are these generalizations not considered particularly helpful, but the Romantic poets never even identified themselves as "Romantic." What we can say is that some common concerns among the poets emerge: These lectures focus on the poems themselves, and they also tell the story of six great poetic souls and the impact of their personae upon their age.

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