文档介绍：English Literature
Chapters 7—8
Key Points in Chapter 7
Movement toward Romanticism
James Thomson
Edward Young
e Crabbe
William Cowper
William Blake
Introduction
Works
Robert Burns
Introduction
Works
Movement toward Romanticism
Extremes tend to provoke a reaction. With Pope and then Samuel Johnson at the helm, the 18th century raged forward with the heroic couplet and almost outlawed other forms.
However, from the very outset, some dissenting voices existed and tried to make themselves heard.
There was also the sly but steady assertion of emotion in the age of reason.
With Robert Burns and William ing forth eventually on the scene, the stage were well set for a new generation of poets, the Romantics.
James Thomson (1700-1748)
He is remembered now mostly for his The Seasons.
The Castle of Indolence with its medieval allegorical kind of story, is read occasionally as well.
The Seasons is a long poem of over 5,500 lines, composed in blank verse instead of the tyrannical heroic couplet.
Edward Young (1683-1765)
He is now known solely for his long poem of some ten thousand lines, Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, popularly known as Night Thoughts.
The work helped to move poetry forward toward the age of Romanticism: for one thing, it was written in blank verse, not in the fashionable heroic couplet; then the poem is an adequate expression of emotions.
Night Thoughts is noted for its psychological probings and its mixing of personal sentiments with religious deliberations.
William Blake (1757-1827)
Introduction
Blake was an important landmark in between two literary periods, pointing directly to that of Romanticism.
There were two factors in his life that helped to orient his thematic thrust. One was his native sensitivity that enabled him to see visions and develop a kind of mysticism. The other was his contact with some radical people.
The two major thematic strands that make up the basic fabric of his poetry include his concern w