English Literature 36 - John Keats: life and works

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was a British peer, who was a poet and politician.
He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as one of the greatest British poets.

John Keats (London, 31 October 1795 – Rome, 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In this video we analyse his the main features of his poetry, with special attention to "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci".

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.

He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse, and widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written.

History and development of the English language.
Indoeupean languages - West Germanic sub-group - the Germanic branch.
The Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon dialects play an important role in determining the Old English (449/1100), while Chaucer's evolution of the West Saxon leads to the Middle English (1100/1500). The Modern English is divided into two steps: Shakespeare's Early Modern English (1500/1700)and Modern English (1700/today).

Anglo Saxon Literature

Let's talk about Christmas using literary quotations, from Shakespeare to Hemingway, from the Grinch to A Christmas Carol, from Laura Ingalls Wilder to George Eliot.
At the end of the video we'll analize together a beautiful poem by Robert Luis Stevenson: Winter Time.

The Modernist writer Edward Morgan Forster expressed in his masterpiece "A Passage to India" the clash between the Indian and the British culture, when India was a colony of the Empire during the Victorian imperialism.

Samuel Beckett, one of the most representative playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd, has deeply influenced the Modern Literature in Europe during the 20th century.
His major works, Waiting for Godot and Endgame, are a metaphor of the meaningless and hopeless nature of human existence.

Wilfred Owen belonged to that group of War Poets who denounced the horrors of the First World War and especially "the old Lie" of propaganda: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which means that dying for the motherland is sweet and glorious.
In this video we analyze Owen's work and we compare it to Rupert Brooke's opposite perspective (see my video about War Poets, part 1, Rupert Brook and his sonnet "The Soldier").

Rupert Brooke belongs to the so-called "War Poets", who conveyed through poetry their own ideals, perspectives, experiences concerning the First World War.
These authors belong to two juxtaposed groups: one of them denounces the horrors of the war (like for example Wilfred Owen) and the other celebrates the heroic, rethoric and idealized concept of war, permeated by patriotism and national pride. Brooke belongs to this last group and in this video I'll analyze his most popular sonnet "The Soldier".