The Calendar of Nature

Last updated

The Calendar of Nature is a series of articles by Leigh Hunt about aspects of various months and seasons published throughout 1819 in the Examiner. It is also included in his Literary Pocket-Book and published on its own as The Months. The work places emphasis on the season of autumn as a time for justice and prosperity, and influenced John Keats's poem "To Autumn". The emphasis on both works is on a temperate landscape and the positive political aspects of living in such a place. The work also stresses the sickness that is connected to a temperate landscape, which is related to the physical problems that Keats was suffering from at the time.

Contents

Background

In 1819, Hunt's The Calendar of Nature was printed in his periodical the Examiner. The poem describes the artistic connections to each of the months, descriptions of festivals, and a discussion about nature. Hunt also included the calendar in his collection the Literary Pocket-Book, a combination of poems and other material by Hunt and others. The work was first printed in January 1819, and, [1] by 1823, there were five collections under the title. [2] The work was later published in 1821 under the title The Months. The 1821 edition contained a preface which declared, "The good-nature with which this Calendar was received on its appearance in 1819 ... has induced its republication in a separate form, with considerable additions". [3] The 1821 edition also included the final two stanzas of John Keats's poem "To Autumn" with the claim that "A living poet has happily personified autumn in some of the pleasantest shapes under which her servants appear". [3]

Months

The work quotes Percy Bysshe Shelley and discusses the works of Edmund Spenser. [4] The calendar also refers to Shelley regarding autumn when it states: "The poet still takes advantage of the exuberance of harvest and the sign of the Zodiac in this month, to read us a lesson on justice". [5] For September and autumn, Hunt connected the harvest and the month's zodiac symbol, Libra, in order to discuss justice. In particular, he said that autumn had "a certain festive abundance for the supply of all creation". [6] Additionally, Hunt brings up Shelley's poems Convito and The Revolt of Islam in order to discuss autumn, abundance of crops, and revolution. The plenty that comes from the time period is supposed to bring peace to warring people. [7]

Hunt also describes the natural events that take place during autumn: "This is the month of the migration of birds, of the finished harvest, of nut-gathering, of cyder and merry-making, and, towards the conclusion, of the change of colour in trees. The swallows, and many other soft-billed birds that feed on insects, disappear for the warmer climates, leaving behind only a few stragglers, probably from weakness or sickness, who hide themselves in caverns and other sheltered places, and occasionally appear upon warm days." [8]

Themes

September, for instance, was used to promote the ideas of the commonwealth along with Hunt's views on Justice. The specific discussion on September came between a discussion of the Peterloo Massacre and a discussion of people on trial for sedition. Hunt wished to promote peace and liberty, with a direct connection to nature. This view influenced Keats's "To Autumn", with its emphasis on "Merry Old England" and the reaction against the political violence of the time. [9] The works are similar in that they emphasize the same images, such as the animals and activities found during autumn. [10] When Hunt republished parts of Keats's poem, he added an emphasis on justice through association with Hunt's own claims about autumn. [11]

Keats, like Hunt, emphasized a temperate landscape in his works. Hunt's description of autumn suggests vitality, though he also describes sickness. In turn, he is commenting on the dietary habits and other aspects of the land. It is possible that the temperate landscape is in opposition to the tropical, and that the political implications are that tropical countries are less free while temperate ones are more so. As such, the extremes in the tropical climate reflect the political extremes that cause problems. The descriptions of temperate climates are also connected to medical aspects of British life, possibly representing various illnesses that befall people during autumn. People like Keats sought other climates in order to try to overcome their sicknesses. However, Keats and Hunt reveal a preference for the British landscape, and this influenced the construction of "To Autumn". [12]

Notes

  1. ↑ Roe 2005 pp. 308, 313
  2. ↑ Holden 2005 p. 134
  3. 1 2 Roe 1997 qtd. p. 266
  4. ↑ Roe 1995 pp. 203–204
  5. ↑ Roe 1995 qtd. pp. 203–204
  6. ↑ Roe 2005 qtd. p. 321
  7. ↑ Roe 1995 p. 205
  8. ↑ Bewell 1999 qtd. p. 178
  9. ↑ Roe 2005 pp. 321–322
  10. ↑ Roe 1995 p. 203
  11. ↑ Roe 1997 p. 266
  12. ↑ Bewell 1999 pp. 178–182

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Severn</span> English painter

Joseph Severn was an English portrait and subject painter and a personal friend of the English poet John Keats. He exhibited portraits, Italian genre, literary and biblical subjects, and a selection of his paintings can today be found in some of the most important museums in London, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Keats</span> English Romantic poet (1795–1821)

John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leigh Hunt</span> English critic, essayist and poet (1784–1859)

James Henry Leigh Hunt, best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Autumn</span> Poem by English Romantic poet John Keats

"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats. The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year after the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode to a Nightingale</span> Poem by John Keats

"Ode to a Nightingale" is a poem by John Keats written either in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, London or, according to Keats' friend Charles Armitage Brown, under a plum tree in the garden of Keats' house at Wentworth Place, also in Hampstead. According to Brown, a nightingale had built its nest near the house that he shared with Keats in the spring of 1819. Inspired by the bird's song, Keats composed the poem in one day. It soon became one of his 1819 odes and was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts the following July. The poem is one of the most frequently anthologized in the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode on a Grecian Urn</span> 1819 poem by John Keats

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819, first published anonymously in Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819.

<i>Adonais</i> 1821 poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and best-known works. The poem, which is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after 11 April, when Shelley heard of Keats' death. It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's Lycidas. Shelley had studied and translated classical elegies. The title of the poem is modelled on ancient works, such as Achilleis, an epic poem by the 1st-century AD Roman poet Statius, and refers to the untimely death of the Greek Adonis, a god of fertility. Some critics suggest that Shelley used Virgil's tenth Eclogue, in praise of Cornelius Gallus, as a model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ode: Intimations of Immortality</span> Poem by William Wordsworth

"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a poem by William Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The poem was completed in two parts, with the first four stanzas written among a series of poems composed in 1802 about childhood. The first part of the poem was completed on 27 March 1802 and a copy was provided to Wordsworth's friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who responded with his own poem, "Dejection: An Ode", in April. The fourth stanza of the ode ends with a question, and Wordsworth was finally able to answer it with seven additional stanzas completed in early 1804. It was first printed as "Ode" in 1807, and it was not until 1815 that it was edited and reworked to the version that is currently known, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".

John Hamilton Reynolds was an English poet, satirist, critic, and playwright. He was a close friend and correspondent of poet John Keats, whose letters to Reynolds constitute a significant body of Keats' poetic thought. Reynolds was also the brother-in-law of the writer and humorist Thomas Hood, who was married to his sister Jane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span> English Romantic poet (1792–1822)

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English writer who is considered as one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets, including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Keats's 1819 odes</span> Poems

In 1819, John Keats composed six odes, which are among his most famous and well-regarded poems. Keats wrote the first five poems, "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche" in quick succession during the spring, and he composed "To Autumn" in September. While the exact order in which Keats composed the poems is unknown, some critics contend that they form a thematic whole if arranged in sequence. As a whole, the odes represent Keats's attempt to create a new type of short lyrical poem, which influenced later generations.

Hero and Leander is a poem by Leigh Hunt written and published in 1819. The result of three years of work, the poem tells the Greek myth of Hero and Leander, two lovers, and the story of their forlorn fate. Hunt began working on the poem during the summer of 1816, arousing the interest of the publisher John Taylor, and despite repeated delays to allow Hunt to deal with other commitments the poem was finished and published in a collection 1819. Dealing with themes of love and its attempt to conquer nature, the poem does not contain the political message that many of Hunt's works around that time do. The collection was well received by contemporary critics, who remarked on its sentiment and delicacy, while more modern writers such as Edmund Blunden have criticised the flow of its narrative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Palace of Pleasure (poem)</span>

The Palace of Pleasure is a poem by James Henry Leigh Hunt published in his 1801 collection Juvenilia. Written before he was even sixteen, the work was part of a long tradition of poets imitating Spenser. The Palace of Pleasure is an allegory based on Book II of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and describes the adventure of Sir Guyon as he is taken by airy sylphs to the palace of the "Fairy Pleasure". According to Hunt the poem "endeavours to correct the vices of the age, by showing the frightful landscape that terminates the alluring path of sinful Pleasure".

The Literary Pocket-Book was a collection of works edited by Leigh Hunt and containing material by Hunt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Bryan Waller Procter. The collection was put together during 1818, and proved so successful that Hunt was able to sell the copyright for £200 a year later. The collection includes written worked, lined pages to write notes on and lists of authors, artists, schools and libraries. It was a public success, bringing new readers to both Shelley and Keats, and served as a model for other collections of poetry written during the Victorian era. Critical reviews were also excellent, with The London Magazine describing it as "for the most part delightfully written", although Keats himself later wrote that the collection was "full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine".

<i>The Descent of Liberty</i> Masque written by Leigh Hunt

The Descent of Liberty was a masque written by Leigh Hunt in 1814. Held in Horsemonger Lane Prison, Hunt wrote the masque to occupy himself, and it was published in 1815. The masque describes a country that is cursed by an Enchanter and begins with shepherds hearing a sound that heralds change. The Enchanter is defeated by fire coming out of clouds, and the image of Liberty and Peace, along with the Allied nations, figures representing Spring and art, and others appear to take over the land. In the final moments, a new spring comes and the prisoners are released. It is intended to represent Britain in 1814, emphasising freedom and focusing on the common people rather than the aristocracy. Many contemporary reviews from both Hunt's fellow poets and literary magazines were positive, although the British Critic described the work as a "pert and vulgar insolence of a Sunday demagogue, dictating on matters of taste to town apprentices and of politics to their conceited masters".

<i>The Feast of the Poets</i> 1811 poem by Leigh Hunt

The Feast of the Poets is a poem by Leigh Hunt that was originally published in 1811 in the Reflector. It was published in an expanded form in 1814, and revised and expanded throughout his life. The work describes Hunt's contemporary poets, and either praises or mocks them by allowing only the best to dine with Apollo. The work also provided commentary on William Wordsworth and Romantic poetry. Critics praised or attacked the work on the basis of their sympathies towards Hunt's political views.

<i>The Story of Rimini</i>

The Story of Rimini was a poem composed by Leigh Hunt, published in 1816. The work was based on his reading about Paolo and Francesca in hell. Hunt's version gives a sympathetic portrayal of how the two lovers came together after Francesca was married off to Paolo's brother. The work promotes compassion for all of humanity and the style served to contrast against the traditional 18th century poetic conventions. The work received mixed reviews, with most critics praising the language.

The Nymphs was composed by Leigh Hunt and published in Foliage, his 1818 collection of poems. The work describes the spirits of a rural landscape that are connected to Greek mythology. The images serve to discuss aspects of British life along with promoting the freedom of conscience for the British people. The collection as a whole received many attacks by contemporary critics, but later commentators viewed the poem favourably.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Cloud (poem)</span>

"The Cloud" is a major 1820 poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. "The Cloud" was written during late 1819 or early 1820, and submitted for publication on 12 July 1820. The work was published in the 1820 collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts, With Other Poems by Charles and James Ollier in London in August 1820. The work was proof-read by John Gisborne. There were multiple drafts of the poem. The poem consists of six stanzas in anapestic or antidactylus meter, a foot with two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romantic literature in English</span> Era in English-language literature

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, about 1820.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.