Romanticism Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth Analysis Paper
Romantic Period
The forum for this week addresses the third learning objective: Produce an original opinion based on assigned literature and the fourth learning objective: Discuss major literary movements in English literature from the 18th century to the present.
After completing the assigned readings and reviewing the resources, discuss the reading of one of the assigned literary authors you believe best represents the Romantic period and why. (Hint: consider common characteristics of Romantic literature as discussed in the introductory reading and documentaries)
Romantic Period
Guiding Points
The Romantic period, like most literary movements, was shaped by the historical context of England. As you complete the assigned readings, please pay close attention to how nature is represented by each of our assigned authors.
Wordsworth and Coleridge
Wordsworth and Coleridge are critical Romantic authors. In fact, Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1798) is a manifesto of sorts for the Romantic Period and its poets. Coleridge’s emphasis on the possibilities of imagination adds the fantastic subject matter we also associate with the Romantic Period. In England, the voice of Romanticism is primarily the voice of the poet, and our reading this week reflects some of the greatest personae of the time.
The Romantic Period is also a time of contradictions. The Industrial revolution that takes shape in the 1780s creates conflict for poets and others reconciling their place in a society that is increasingly ignoring its most vulnerable citizens. The French Revolution’s disastrous results also quell the strong emotion of many poets who, like Wordsworth, had earlier considered the Revolution a positive social landmark.
One thing the Romantics had in common is that they were all visionaries. Researching their visions is often key to understanding the work. If you take Yeats, for instance, his vision was a bit supernatural. After death, he did not want to come back in any bodily form. He wanted to come back as artifice. His complicated vision can be seen in the poem, Sailing to Byzantium:
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come. (17-32)
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/sailing-byzanti”¦
The vision is clarified is some of his other poems. It is up to you, as the researcher to uncover such gems offered by the Romantics.
Wordsworth thought that nature nurtured. What he meant by this is that nature could teach us all we needed to know about the world. This can be best seen in his poem, Nutting:
Nutting
By William Wordsworth
It seems a day
( I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o’er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow’rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,and, in truth,
More ragged than need was! O’er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene!A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet;or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;
A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons re-appear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
F or ever; and I saw the sparkling foam,
Andwith my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees,
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep
I heard the murmur, and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Wasting its kindliness on stock
