The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets

By: Willard Spiegelman, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Willard Spiegelman

Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

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, in a series of 24 incisive lectures by an honored and distinguished teacher, scholar, and author, you can grasp how England's finest Romantic voices created their masterpieces, as Professor Spiegelman illuminates poems by Byron, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, as well as by female Romantic poets like Felicia Dorothea Hemans and Charlotte Turner Smith, who were, in their time, as admired as their male counterparts.

You'll learn how the generalizations so often applied to the Romantic poets - who never even identified themselves as "Romantic" - were misleading as a group description, but that there were some common concerns among them: they wrote about Man's relationship to nature, which, with the universe, they considered active, dynamic entities. There is, though, a counter-desire to escape from nature and to deny Man's connection to it. There is a concern with society and politics, and an idealistic notion that humanity can transcend its enslaving traditions. The Romantics were conscious of consciousness itself - of the power of the mind as a force for self-glorification and a seed of self-destruction.

Professor Spiegelman's emphasis on analyzing the poems is on technique - on how a poem accomplishes its objectives - and to this end he meticulously dissects them, directing you to points of interest that deserve close observation.

And though the lectures focus on the poems themselves, they also tell the story of these great poetic souls and their impact on their age.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2002 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2002 The Great Courses

nice refreaher from ehat I studied in college

refreaher from ehat I studied in college. i plan to look at the Professors other cpurses.

Much More than a Refresher Course!

As an undergrad English major, I'd read all of the major poets covered here, but they weren't at all my primary focus. In taking this course I simply hoped for a refresher of material I already knew a little about... but came away with new information, ideas, and questions I'll enjoy following up. Prof. Spiegelman makes interesting historical/social connections to events in the poets' lives that weren't considered in my earlier studies. He also discussed the form and word choices of specific poems, not an easy task to pull off intelligibly in audio alone. Further, he makes a good job of covering some women poets of the period, whom I'll now seek out. The final lecture discusses the influence the Romantics had on a multitude of later poets, among them Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and Allen Ginsberg -- making fascinating connections both to subject matter and philosophy. The lecture style is informative without being dry. I'll be listening to this one again.

Truly a Great Course

Many Great Courses have teachers who "talk down " as if they are teaching undergraduates. That is of course what professors do, teach young people. Nice to have this extremely knowledgeable man speak as a peer. Great teacher. Great course, Bravo!

Dive in and Enjoy

If you have stumbled upon this review you are headed in the right direction / continue - elegant and superbly rendered like the poets themselves -

struggled to finish

Performance was great but content was not to my liking. If you are interested in the romantics then this is for you.