Meet the English Romantics: Great British Poets of the 18th & 19th Centuries

English poetry in the late 18th and early 19th centuries began to change rapidly, fitting human emotion -- filtered through nature -- into verse. William Blake claimed that "a new heaven has begun," and Samuel Taylor Coleridge called this new style “the mediatress between, and reconciler of nature and man.” Today, we know it as Romanticism: the literary reaction against Neo-Classicism, in which emotion, imagination, and spontaneity formed the pillars of poetry. 

This three-week class will focus on the six poets who heralded this new era and who are must-reads for any high-school student. Each week will focus on two poets, and we will examine their lives, their poems, and their use of Romantic ideals. In addition, we will analyze the poems for structure, literary devices, and overall concept. Students can also expect to do compare-contrast activities and understand how these English authors interconnected and influenced one another. 

Upon enrollment, students will receive poems to read before each class (the poems supplied are not inclusive of every poem we will study). After reading the poems, students are asked to respond to a prompt posted in the classroom. 

Week 1: William Blake and William Wordsworth
Week 2: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and George Gordon Lord Byron 
Week 3: John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley