John Dryden 1631-1700 “A prose writer with kind of Aeolian attachment” “I confess,” says Dryden, “that my chief endeavors are to delight the age in which I live. If the humor of this be for low comedy, small accidents, and railery, I will force my genius to obey it.” His maxim was “He who lives … Read more
Essay on Flood Floods occur in rivers. Floods occur when a river becomes so full of water that it overflows its banks. During a flood, the normally dry area of the ground is submerged in water. Simply put, a flood is too much water in the “wrong” place. A flood is a dreadful natural calamity … Read more
Emily Dickinson 1830-1886 An American poetess born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a prominent lawyer, treasurer of Amherst College and a two term United States Congressman. Well-educated, Emily attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and Amherst College. Apart from a few trips to Boston for medical treatment she never travelled outside the Amherst community. Only … Read more
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “Of all the poets who helped to usher in the Romantic movement, none was more original and brilliant than Coleridge” so wrote Charles Gayley. He was born at Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, on October 21, 1772. His father died when he was nine years old leaving the … Read more
William Blake ( 1757-1827 ) It is the last act of the Romantic Era, and a poetic Renascence opens center stage with a new and different character; that character is William Blake. In poetry and art, Blake was aggressive, violent, backed by both physical and mental courage; the forerunner of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, … Read more
Wystan Hugh Auden 1907-1973 Wystan Hugh Auden or “Uncle Wiz” as he was more affectionately called, was a third son of a York physician. He was a not-quite modernist; not quite socialist; a Freudian; leaning toward the northern Germanic Volksmarchen and Kunstmarchen not Southern European Romanticism; “more at home with Goethe that with Baudelaire; a … Read more
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) Matthew Arnold’s early life follows a path of most poets of the time: traditional schooling steeped in classical studies, Greek and Latin, French and German, frequent traveling at home and abroad. There is one difference: while other poets considered poetry their profession, Arnold was, for the greater part of his life, a … Read more
Percy Bysshe Shelley In 1812 Southey, disillusioned by the “failure” of the French Revolution, wrote to a friend: “Here is a man at Keswick, who acts upon me as my own ghost would do. He is just what I was in 1794. His name is Shelley, son of the member for Shore-ham; with 6000 pounds … Read more
William Langland’s Piers Plowman Langland’s Life: Langland is a literary figure about whom little is known. He was probably born in Malvern, in Worcestershire, the son of a poor freeman, and spent his childhood as a shepherd in the fields. Later, he moved to London with his wife and children, where he made a meagre … Read more
Geoffrey Chaucer Well on in the pilgrims’ famous journey to Canterbury, Harry Bailey, the host of the Tabard and master of ceremonies, called on Chaucer for his story. The poet had hitherto kept in the background, though before they had set out, he had made a point of speaking with each of his fellow travellers. … Read more
Out of the Northern revival emerges a figure more shadowy than that of Alcuin, but greater. It is the one Old English poet to any extent identified by his English works. A poem called Elene, of 1300 lines, was found in an Old English manuscript which had strangely made its way to Vercelli in Italy. Into this poem were curiously wrought old forms of letters called runes, which when deciphered in order revealed the name of the poet–Cynewulf.
William Blake was born on November 28, 1757, in Soho in London; he had a grounded and happy upbringing. Although always a well-read and intelligent man, Blake left school at the early age of ten to attend the Henry Pars Drawing Academy for five years. The artists he admired as a child such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio, Romano
and Dürer.
