Try free for 30 days

A 30-day trial plus your first audiobook free.
1 credit/month after trial—to buy any title you like, yours to keep.
Listen all you want to a selection of thousands of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets cover art

The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets

By: Willard Spiegelman, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Willard Spiegelman
Free with 30-day trial

$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $40.99

Buy Now for $40.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

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

What listeners say about The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Another great collection of lectures

Great Courses has delivered again with a great overview of popular poets. Interesting background information on the poets as well as analysis of some of the more famous poems.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.