The Romantics

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?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Jonathan Bate 16 episodes
  Professor of English, University of Liverpool
• Rosemary Ashton 10 episodes
  Professor of English, University College London
• Nicholas Roe No other episodes
  Professor of English, University of St Andrews

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Programme ID: p00546ws

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546ws

Auto-category: 821.709 (English Romantic poetry)