Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing there mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time
Everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Everyone believes
And they're not going easily
Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching under water
You never can hit who you're trying for
Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon
For the war that's raging on inside
Everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Everyone believes
And no ones going quietly
We're never gonna win the world
We're never gonna stop the war
We're never gonna beat this
If belief is what we're fighting for
What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand
Belief can
Belief can
What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand
Belief can
Belief can
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a radical with a conservative background. He was against injustice and oppression, especially in schools. He was expelled from Oxford, for writing a pamphlet called “The Necessity of Atheism” with Thomas Jefferson Hogg. He married Harriet Westbrook even though he was against the institution of marriage. He left his wife and felt to France with Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin and invited Harriet to come live with them as a sister. Harriet drowned herself while she was pregnant by an unknown lover and Percy Shelley lost custody of his two children. He wrote best when he was in great despair. He was a radical literary hero.
William Wordsworth was a traveling French tutor. He was supporter of the French Revolution and was encouraged by William Taylor to write his poetry. He was left a friend’s inheritance with enabled his writing life. His sister Dorothy was his inspiration and confidante. He collaborated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and were believed to be “political plotters.” He was poet Laureate of Great Britain in 1943. Executors of his estate published more of his works after his death. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said Wordsworth was “the best poet of the age.” He wrote about nature and memories of youth.
Sir Walter Scott was an avid romance
reader. He was a poet and translator of
German ballads. He gave up poetry for
prose fiction. He inserted poems into
his novels. He published all of his
novel anonymously. He was “in debt when
he died due to a failure of a publishing firm.”
Scott sold 30,000 copies of one of his novels in 1830. He was internationally famous. He wrote about Scotland, medieval times, and
romance.
Robert Burns was “a democrat and religious radical.” He was a careful craftsman and debater. He wrote works of satire, epistles, and mock-heroic very far from Alexander Pope’s. He was described as a “songwriter for all English-speaking people.”
Mary Wollstonecraft had a rough
childhood, where her father was an abusive drunk. Her friend died, and her
school failed. These events haunted her
life. She “rallied her energies to write her first book.” She was suicidal when she was convinced her
lover was going to leave her and died giving birth to her daughter, Mary
Shelley who was the author of Frankenstein.
After her death, her husband published a memoir revealing her past and
published the letters she wrote. She
connected to women and people with similar backgrounds.
William Blake was great believer in the lessons of the Bible and believed that it was a “great code of art.” He believed songs are “two contrary states of the human soul.” He was an engraver who drew the monuments of the London Church. He taught his wife, Catherine to read and to help him work. His pictures to go with his writings were “something important.” His greatest love was his pictures. He was more successful in death than he was in life. He connects to artists, who were also writers. He wrote about turmoil home life and his spiritual life. His works were full of irony that mystified his liberal friends and he took a defiant pleasure in shocking readers by being deliberately outrageous.
Satire is “attacking someone in speech/ writing by making them seem ridiculous and/or a humorously piece of writing.” Satire’s three types are Horatian, Juvenile, and Menippean. Horatian satire is gentle and sympathetic, which the subject is mildly made fun of with engaging wit. The subject is not directly attacked. This form of satire tends to ask the audience to laugh at themselves as much as the players. Juvenalian satire is harsh and bitter. They condemn and hold the subject in contempt. It is more judgmental and asks the audience to respond with indignation. Menippean satires the structure of the world as well as its subject matter. It tends to mix genres, collapse categories, and intentionally ridicule everything.
Oliver Goldsmith grew up homely and idle and he studied medicine. He was successful and in the intimate society of Samuel Johnson. His audiences were probably educated people in his circle and people in poverty.
George Crabbe was studying to be a
surgeon and was a minister in the Anglican church. He answered the claims in Oliver Goldsmith’s
idealization of villagers. Crabbe had the
admiration of William Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron. His audiences were people of poverty. He grew up poor and wrote about poverty.
Thomas Gray was deeply affected by the death of Richard West in 1972, which “desolated Gray and memories of West haunt much of his verse.” He constantly was revising his poems and published very little. He believed, “The language of age is never the language of poetry.” Most of his poems ware a contemporary reaction against Alexander Pope’s elegance. Gray was referred to by Samuel Johnson as “The Common Reader.” He had a love for nature and the sublime.
William Collins’s goal was to “create more poetry, more lyrical and fanciful than that of Alexander Pope’s generation.” Collins was ahead of his time and was admired by the Romantics and people who love fantasy. Samuel Johnson described Collins, as someone who loved fairy tales and magic.John Keats had a passion for reading and medicine. He didn’t write poetry until he was 18 years old. He felt he was going to die early and “applied himself to his art with desperate urgency.” His works were brutalized by political and snobbish critics. His great promise was cut short and he could have been even more extraordinary as he stopped writing at age 24. His writing and phrases reminded his friends of William Shakespeare. He wrestled with evil and suffering in the world. He died at the age of 25 of tuberculosis.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu taught herself Latin and grew up wealthy. She feuded a lot with Alexander Pope, politically. She didn’t like Jonathan Swift because he was friends with Pope. She also “pioneered in introducing the small pox inoculation to England.” She was one of greatest writers of letter pieces and poems. Women and people from her own social circle read her work. She reveals the mind of a woman who is not willing accept stereotypes imposed on her by men.
William Hogarth‘s father was teacher
and unsuccessful writer. Hogarth himself was an engraver and a
painter. He inspired a copyright law
called “Hogarth’s Act.” He was successful
in art and writing. Charles Lamb compared
him to William Shakespeare. He love to
write satires and about art. His writing
was “a feast of interpretation that draws the reader in.” He was considered “a writer of comedy with a
pencil.”
Samuel Johnson was famous as a
talker and a “great generalizer.” He
wrote poetry to earn money, until he received a pension. He didn’t feel the need to write anymore. He grew up in poverty and wrote about the facts
of being poor, so people with a similar background would have read his work. He wrote about the power of wishful thinking
and desires that let to false expectations.
His wit is “timeless,” because it deals with human experiences anyone
can relate to.
