Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideals, exponents and legacy of Romanticism. In the space of a few years around the start of the nineteenth century the Romantic period gave us: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Burns, two Shelleys, Keats, De Quincey, Carlyle, Byron, Scott… the list goes on and on. And the poems: The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Ode to a Nightingale, Tintern Abbey, Ozymandias, Don Juan… they make up some of the best known and most enjoyed works of literature in the English language. How do we explain what seems to be an extraordinary explosion of talent? Were the Romantics really a movement with their own philosphy and ideals? And when its adherents often died so tragically young, and its poems often seem so steeped in nostalgia and so wrapped in the transcendental, is Romanticism really good for you in a modern world? With Jonathan Bate, Professor of English, University of Liverpool; Rosemary Ashton, Professor of English, University College London; Nicholas Roe, Professor of English, University of St Andrews.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:48.4 | Hello in the space of a few years around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The romantic period gave us |
| 0:54.3 | Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Burns, two shallies, Keats, De Quincy, Carlisle, Byron, |
| 0:59.4 | Scott. The list goes on and on and the poems, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, owed to a nightingale, Tintan Abbey, Osmondayas, Don Juan, |
| 1:07.2 | they make up some of the best known and most enjoyed works of literature in the English |
| 1:11.0 | language. |
| 1:12.0 | How do we explain what seems to be a quite extraordinary |
| 1:14.8 | explosion of talent? Were the romantics really a movement with their own |
| 1:18.4 | philosophy and ideals and are they still an influence? With me to discuss the culture of the romantics is Jonathan |
| 1:24.5 | Bait, professor of English at University of Liverpool and author recently of the genius of |
| 1:28.7 | Shakespeare and even more recently of Song of the Earth, and Roseme Ashton, Coleridge's biographer and professor of English at University College London, |
| 1:37.0 | and also with us is Nicholas Rowe, author of John Keats and the Culture of Descent, |
| 1:40.0 | and professor of English at the University of St Andrews. |
| 1:43.8 | Jonathan Bade, to start with, we can think of many attitudes associated with |
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