Assignment writing: Paper no. 103 (Literature Of The Romantics)
This blog is Assignment writing on paper 103 (Literature Of The Romantics) assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
Name: Archana Dave
Paper: Romantic literature
Roll no: 03
Enrollment no: 4069206420220008
Email ID: archanadave1212@gmail.com
Batch: 2022- 24( M.A. Sem - 1)
Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
The characteristics of romantic poetry, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Introduction
Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850.
Here are some characteristics of Romantic poetry
Back From Set Rules
Interest in Rural Life
Common Life
Love of Liberty and Freedom
Escape to the Middle Ages
Predominance of Imaginations & Emotions
Supernaturalism
Endless Variety
Subjectivity
Lyricism
Simplicity in Style
Back From Set Rules
The poetry of the Romantic Revival is in direct contrast to that of Neoclassical. In the 18th century, poetry was governed by set rules and regulations. There were well-prepared lines of poetic composition.And any deviation from the rules was disliked by the teachers of poetic thought. The first thing that we notice in the poetry Romantic age is the break from the slavery of rules and regulations. The poets of the Romantic Age wrote poetry in freestyle without following any rules and regulations.
Interest in Rural Life
The poetry of the 18th century was concerned with clubs and coffee houses, drawing rooms and the social and political life of London. It was essentially the poetry of town life.
Nature had practically no place in Neo-classical Poetry. In the poetry of Romantic Revival, the interest of poets was transferred from town to rural life and from artificial decorations of drawing rooms to the natural beauty and loveliness of nature.
Nature began to have its own importance in the poetry of this age. Wordsworth was the greatest poet who revealed the physical and spiritual beauty of nature to those who could not see any charm in the wildflowers, green fields and the chirping birds.
Common Life
Romantic Poets started taking interest in the lives of the common people, the shepherds, and the cottages and left the gallant lords and gay butterflies of fashion to the care of novelists.A renewed interest in the simple life marked the poetry of the poets of the Romantic Age. A feeling of humanitarianism colored the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. Thus Romantic Poetry was marked by intense human sympathy and a consequent understanding of the human heart.
Love of Liberty and Freedom
In Romantic Poetry, the emphasis was laid on liberty and freedom of the individual. Romantic poets were rebels against tyranny and brutality exercised by tyrants and despots over humans crushed by poverty and smashed by inhuman laws.
Escape to the Middle Ages
Some Romantic poets felt irritated with the tyranny and ugliness of materialistic life of their age and to avoid the life of uneasy restlessness, they escaped from the problems of the world to a world of beauty and joy which their poetic definitions had pictured.
In many ways, Romantic Poetry proved to be the poetry of escape from the sorrows and sufferings of worldly life and their times to the Middle Ages, where they found the eternal bliss.The enthusiasm for the Middle Ages satisfied the emotional sense of wonder on the one hand and the intellectual sense of curiosity on the other hand.
Predominance of Imaginations & Emotions
In Romantic Poetry, reason and intellect were subdued and their place was taken by imaginations, emotions, and passion. In the poetry of all the Romantic Poets, we find heightened emotional sensibilities and imaginative flights of genius bordering on heavenly heights uncrossed by the poets of the previous age.
Supernaturalism
Supernaturalism is another outstanding quality of Romantic Poetry. Poets like Coleridge and Scott gave a sense of wonder and mystery to poetry. It was this supernaturalism that gave the atmosphere of wonder and mystery to Romantic Poetry.
Endless Variety
In Romantic Poetry, we come across an endless variety. The poetry of this age is as varied as the character and moods of different writers.
Subjectivity
Subjectivity began to have its full play in the poetry of this age. The poets of this period were in favour of giving a subjective interpretation of the objective realities of life. “The Romantic Movement”, says William J. Long “was the expression of individual genius rather than of the established rules.”
Lyricism
In Romantic Poetry, lyricism predominates and the poets of this school have, to their credit, a number of fine lyrics excelling the heroic couplet of the Neoclassical Age in melody and sweetness of tone.
Simplicity in Style
The style of the Romantic Poets is varied but the stress was laid on simplicity. Instead of an artificial model of the expression of classical poets, we have a natural diction and spontaneous way of expressing thoughts in Romantic Poetry.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth
In a chance meeting that would change the course of poetic history, Samuel Taylor Coleridge made the acquaintance of William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, in Somerset in 1795. The two became immediate friends. Upon meeting Wordsworth, Coleridge decided to move to Grasmere to be in close proximity to his fellow poet. During this time, Wordsworth and Coleridge greatly influenced, criticised and inspired eachother’s poetry. In 1798, the two poets joined together to publish the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems that is considered by many to be the definitive starting point of the Romantic Era. Over the course of their collaboration, the second edition followed suit in 1800. Their mutual friend Robert Southey, who was also a poet, worked with them and the trio became known at the “Lake Poets.” In this page, we will more deeply explore the relationship between these two Romantic poets and the people, like Southey, who shaped their lives and their poetry while they lived in Grasmere. Not only did Wordsworth and Coleridge have similar poetic interests, but the two developed a deep and lasting friendship that was able to withstand the trials of their drug addiction, bouts of depression and mutual artistic criticism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Background Information
From The Aeolian Harp
-written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1795 and to Sara Fricker, his wife
-Stanza 2 to 4*
“And that simplest lute,
Placed length-ways in that clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caressed,
Like some coy maid half-yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, it’s strings
Boldlier swept, the lond sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O the one life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where –
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
And thus, my love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility;
Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject lute!
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of All?”
From Dejection: An Ode
-by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1798
-from stanza 5*
“O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!”
“Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud-
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.”
-from stanza 7*
“Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that ravest without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree,
Or pine grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches’ home,
Methings were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak’st Devils’ yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.”
William Wordsworth
Background Information
Lyrical Ballads
The Role of Poetry and the Poet
The ordinary man, Wordsworth believes, is closer to nature; and therefore closer to human-nature. To succeed in directing poetry toward the “ordinary man”, Wordsworth must address the significance of language in his poetry, as well as the effects of poetry on the reader. This leads to the discussion of the poet’s role where Wordsworth claims he, being a poet, is capable of educating the reader by his ability to be affected by absence.The poet is a “man speaking to men” whose language should not fall short of that which would be heard by men. The opinion of these “men” differ among Wordsworth and Coleridge. Coleridge thinks the role of the poet should maintain some of the previous ideals of poetry regarding language rather than completely change to a language of lowly men.The role of poetry is where both writers seem to agree. Wordsworth and Coleridge believe the purpose of poetry is to stir passion in the reader. However, their methods are slightly different. Coleridge agrees that being a poet does take the imagination and the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”; but, it also requires “good sense,” which is the body of poetic genius”.
Expostulation and Reply
“Why, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?
“Where are your books?–that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.
“You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!”
One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:
“The eye–it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where’er they be,
Against or with our will.
“Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
“Think you, ‘mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
“–Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away.”
This poem is a great example of what the Romantic poets thought of learning. Unlike the Augustan poets, who thought learning could only be done by looking to the Classics like Aristotle and Virgil, the Romantics believed that a person could learn from observation rather than just reading a book. The Romantics also believed that life experience provides a better base for learning as opposed to the learning from reason. This poem shows the contrasting views of the two writing periods and is a great defense for the Romantics’ idea of learning.
The poem starts out with Matthew questioning the narrator about why he is sitting there daydreaming and why he has no books. Clearly, Matthew believes in the Augustan way of learning and doesn’t think that the narrator is going to learn anything by sitting around and daydreaming. When he says, “Where are your books?–the light bequeathed/ To beings else forlorn and blind!” it seems as if he thinks that the light is the books and without them he will be blind to the learning that he could acquire from them. It is very obvious that Matthew thinks that a person has to learn from books because there is no other good way to learn, just like other Augustan followers.
The second part of the poem is the narrator’s reply to Matthew, which is basically defending the Romantics’ idea of learning. In the fifth stanza, the narrator goes on and on about the senses and how a person can’t help but hear, see, or feel things. He says it is something that is “Against or with our will” and that our senses are going to take things in whether it is actively or passively. That is how he defends that he is not daydreaming but that his mind is still taking in information even though he is not actively learning. This is further proof that the narrator does not believe everything can be learned from a book and that he believes even when it appears a person is daydreaming they are still learning.William Wordsworth was considered the poet who, with Samuel Coleridge, launched the Romantic Period with their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, where his most noted contribution remains The Preface, detailing the nature of the collection, as it looks to reach out to the common man, placing verse in a form to which he can relate. Of Wordsworth’s most noted contributions to the poetic realm, his sonnets remain the forces that resonate above all else, encompassing the “sense sublime” Wordsworth feels through Nature and the empowering religious connection he forges.
The World is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon, ————A
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: ———B
Little we see in Nature that is ours; ————————B
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! ———-A
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; ————-A
The winds that will be howling at all hours, ————–B
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; ———B
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; ————–A
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be —————C
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; ———————D
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, —————-C
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; ——-D
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; —————C
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. ————-D
In this poem, Wordsworth bemoans the loss of individual human talents, lost to the materialistic society in which we live. To Wordsworth, the poet and the common man are placed on the same level, as both have extraordinary talents that could change the world, yet give into the fabricated, falsified life which deviates from Nature and the beauty of spiritual existence. Works by Wordsworth follow the same themes and are representative of the Romantic period, and the sentiments of its writers, which urge society to rely on their spiritual connection and their own artistic talents (seen through nature and its beauty) rather than through logic, reason, and materialistic thought.
Wordsworth and the Sonnet
Wordsworth’s The World is Too Much With Us is a Petrarchan sonnet recognizable by the rhyme scheme and the eight/six line format. In the first eight lines, Wordsworth draws a picture of the awesome power and beauty of nature and comments on humankind’s reaction to nature in the last six lines, the common usage of the eight/six structure.
Words Count - 3104
References:
Information: Norton Anthology: Eighth Edition: Volume 2. Website: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/18century/welcome.htm
“Esthwaite Water.” The Lakeland Cottage Company. http://www.lakeland-cottage-company.co.uk/lakeland-guide/area-information.php?ID=21
Poem cited from the Norton Anthology of English Literature: Eight Edition, Volume 2
https://englishsummary.com/romantic-poetry/#Back_From_Set_Rules
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