Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic PoetryThe interrelationship of the ideas of apocalypse and millennium is a dominant concern of British Romanticism. The Book of Revelation provides a model of history in which apocalypse is followed by millennium, but in their various ways the major Romantic poets - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley - question and even at times undermine the possibility of a successful secularization of this model. No matter how confidently the sequence of apocalypse and millennium seems to be affirmed in some of the major works of the period, the issue is always in doubt: the fear that millennium may not ensue emerges as a significant, if often repressed, theme in the great works of the period. Related to it is the tension in Romantic poetry between conflicting models of history itself: history as teleology, developing towards end time and millennium, and history as purposeless cycle. This subject-matter is traced through a selection of works by the major poets, partly through an exposition of their underlying intellectual traditions, and partly through a close examination of the poems themselves. |
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Angel apocalypse and millennium apocalyptic appears beginning Book British Burke Byron Cain Cambridge Church Clarendon Press Coleridge Coleridge's Continental Prophecies Darkness Death Demogorgon dream earth England English Essay Eternal Europe Famine figure followed France French Revolution Heaven Hell human Hyperion Ibid imagery imagination Jerusalem Joan of Arc John Keats Keats's kingdom kings Last later Letters Liberty lines London Lord Mary Shelley Mask of Anarchy millenarian millennial Milton nature Orc's Paradise Lost parallel passage Percy Bysshe Shelley plate poem poet poet's Poetical Poetry political Prelude Preternatural Agency Princeton University Press Prometheus Unbound prophetic Prose published radical Reiman Religious Musings Revelation Richard Robert Robert Southey Romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge sense serpent Shelley Shelley's Sibylline Leaves Southey Spirit stanza sublime Swedenborg Swedenborgians theme Thomas Thomas Paine thou tion vision vols Wesley William Blake William Wordsworth Woodring Wordsworth wrote York
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Page 6 - For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: And the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: For, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.
Page 8 - And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.