Romanticism in Context: Shelley’s and Keats’s Verse and Prose: Keats’s Letters and Ode to a Nightingale, Shelley’s Defense of Poetry and Skylark

Abstract

This paper argues it is probably unavoidable perceiving the works of Shelley and Keats without putting these works in the context of the age and in the context of Romanticism. On the whole the selected pieces of prose and verse of the poets represent their postulations in an era which witnessed great revolutions, political and industrial bringing about new trends in literature and in society. From the personal perspective of the two poets, the birds in the poems represent ideals reflecting the treatment of imagination, nature and ideology of their time and their individual experience, knowledge of the world and of prosody. Thus the treatment of this topic as such opens an old and new interpretation of the poets’ work since the topics in their poetry can apply to their age and ours.