 Hello and welcome back to yet another GCC revision lesson. Now for those of you who are studying AQA's new world and lives anthology You're definitely well aware by this stage that Percy Shelley's sonnet England in 1819 Forms part of this anthology now what want to do within this lesson is begin by going over Important contextual information the background information that really influenced Percy Shelley when he was writing this powerful sonnet And remember that Shelley is no stranger to sonnets Okay, he uses sonnets quite ironically in a lot of his writings Okay, another sonnet that comes to mind which is he's quite ironically is Ozzy Mandeus and in this case in England 1819 he uses the sonnet form remember that sonnets are traditionally love poems Okay, but he uses it ironically to criticize the monarchy and the government Okay, but before I go into a detailed line-by-line analysis of the sonnet especially if you're studying this I have firstly created a bit of a mind map going over the important contextual information that you need to be aware of and to Be quite fluent in if you're writing about this poem as part of AQA's world and lives anthology Okay, so I'm going to begin by going over that and then afterwards I'll do a line-by-line analysis of the sonnet itself now Remember in terms of Percy Shelley himself remember that he lived in 7092 to 1822 and he was very Infamous okay, very well known during this time for his scandals remember that Percy Shelley was basically a kind of mini celebrity at the time Okay, so of course today We know of like these rich and famous celebrities and some of them are very scandalous a lead quite scandalous kind of bad boy lives Percy Shelley was a little bit like that okay in his time He was born to an aristocratic family But he was quite a rebel and one of the scandals that he was involved in which led him to be Disinherited by his father was he decided to marry a 16 year old girl called Harriet Goodman And this was seen as scandalous at the time because she wasn't off his social status She wasn't from an aristocratic background She was actually the daughter of a merchant a very successful merchant But it was still a merchant which was not the same social status as Percy Shelley's family and this was seen as really scandalous to do at the time Okay, so Percy Shelley in spite of his father's objections and in spite of his family's objections He's still decided the rebel that he was to go ahead with the marriage However adding more to the scandal and the intrigue around Percy Shelley's life Harriet his first wife ended up committing suicide Okay, so she killed herself and then he remarried he married a second time and this time to a woman very famous Author called Mary Shelley. Okay, so Mary Shelley is famously known for being the author behind the Book Frankenstein, okay, so she's the one that authored Frankenstein and she was married to Percy Shelley, okay? And remember finally that Percy Shelley died a really quite early in his life Okay, so he didn't live very long He died when he was 29 years old in a boating accident in Italy. He ended up drowning Okay, so his life was very short-lived as well now remember that Percy Shelley in terms of his writing He's known as a romantic poet. Remember that romantic poetry is not Writing about love. Okay, contrary to the name romantic poetry simply means authors and poets who see anything to do with nature as Beautiful as perfect and anything that takes us away from nature for example cities as being quite corrupt Okay, so you use a lot of natural language and natural imagery in their writing Okay, so Percy Shelley was a romantic poet with very radical Socialists and atheist beliefs, okay remember that socialists tend to believe that especially wealthy people should share the wealth a little bit more Okay, it goes against kind of capitalist ideas and remember that Percy Shelley himself coming from an aristocratic family Who would very much be quite capitalist him holding socialist beliefs or something that was seen as quite radical More so in a very religious society him being atheist was seen as almost, you know unspeakable Okay, so he was a very radical person. That's why he was such a scandalous person. Okay now when it comes to the poem itself It's really important to bear in mind That England in 1819 was written at a time of political crises in England Okay, there was a lot of political chaos during the time that Percy Shelley wrote this and also this poem was written during the reign of King George III who was mentally unwell and mentally ill and he made a series of bad political decisions Okay, now the poem itself England in 1819 was inspired by the Peterloo massacre You need to be familiar with the Peterloo massacre and I'm going to explain to you what happened during this massacre This really kind of inspired a lot of outrage within lots of people who witnessed this massacre and heard about it But also especially Percy Shelley who was really driven to write this poem, okay So the Peterloo massacre which is on the 16th of August basically it happened after the Napoleonic Wars So the Napoleonic Wars which are in 1803 to 1815 were basically just a series of wars between England and France But what that what that led to was Britain and England became economically quite unstable Okay, because it was obviously spending all of this money on these wars Okay, and because England's economy was quite bad. There was a lot of high Unemployment right some loads of regular people just weren't unable to support themselves with jobs and there were corn laws Okay, so corn the actual thing to eat, right? There were a series of corn laws that were passed which made food expensive Okay, so during this time in 1819. There was basically a perfect storm brewing. Okay now People were understandably quite enraged a lot of peasants a lot of working-class people a lot of just normal regular everyday people Were quite outraged and they wanted to see change, okay They wanted the Parliament to change, okay The Parliament there was a Parliament but the King still had lots of power and the Parliament was just seen as being part of his Within his pocket, okay They the parliamentarians are not seen as very effective and of course also the King who was mentally ill was not seen as quite Effective and he'd made lots of really bad decisions Okay, so lots of regular people basically got super super angry and enraged with what was going on and What that led to was? 60,000 people gathered in Manchester and marched on St. Peter's field, okay And this is where you know Peter Lou is okay now what they simply wanted and it was a very peaceful protest Okay, so this this protest that happened in Peter Lou very peaceful and they simply wanted to have the right to vote because at that Time the only people who had the right to vote were men and very rich men, okay Only about around 11% of the population so very tiny percent of people were able to affect what was happening politically in the country These people just wanted the right to vote and obviously more democracy and the prices of food to go lower Okay, so that they can actually literally feed themselves, okay However, this ended in tragedy this very peaceful protest which was asking for very reasonable demands Led to the King and Parliament calling in an armed cavalry, right basically an army You know who have like who and horse backs with swords and stuff and this armed cavalry Stormed this peaceful crowd and killed 15 people including a child and hundreds more people were injured Okay, so basically rather than you know There's people in power like the King and Parliament basically listening to these people's very peaceful demands and very reasonable demands Actually, they were punished, okay So this cavalry came and then ended up killing a bunch of them and injuring hundreds more and of course this Massacre which was called the Peter Lou massacre sparked huge outrage across England Including outrage within Peter Shelley himself, okay So he was so outraged that he wrote this really really powerful sonnet as a direct Criticism of both the King the monarchy by extension and Parliament, okay So that's really it when it comes to important contextual information to be familiar with with this poem now that you have this in Mind let's now go into a line-by-line analysis of this on it