Department
of English
Name: Baldaniya
Vanita Velabhai
Semester: 2
Class: M.A. Part-1
Paper: No:5 Romantic
Literature
Subject: Assignment
Topic: Themes Study of Poet
(1798-1850)
-
1) William
Shakespeare
-
2)Samuel Taylor
Coleridge
Guidance By: Heenaba Zala
Roll no: 29
Themes Study of Poet
1798-1850
1) William
Wordsworth
2) S.T.Coleridge
William
Wordsworth
For over a century
classical conventions were applied to English Poetry with success. They established
the rule of low in literature, by which writers were thought “to think
naturally and express forcibly” A literary technique was evolved which in the
words of Pope was “Nature Methodist”. But just as the metaphysical had abused
the Elizabethan ideal of liberty, the followers of Dryden and Pope Abused the
classical ideal of order and restraint. “Art degenerated into artifice”. In the
Hands of the great masters, the balance between two had been properly
maintained but the others could not do so.
It becomes clear that the days of the
classical mode were over and needed to be replaced. In 1798, the publication of
the publication of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ of Wordsworth and Coleridge made the
gap between the two modes of writing final.
“Romanticism” is the name given to the new
tendency. It is also known as the Romantic Movement or Romantic Revival. The
Romantic Movement is popularly known by two terms- romantic Revival and the
Romantic Revolt. The Romantic movement is called romantic revival because it
seeks to revive the poetic ideals of the Elizabethan age. Love beauty of nature
were the ideals of the romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Shelly, Keats, Byron,
Coleridge and Walters Scott revived all those Elizabethan ideals and infused
them into their poetry. Therefore the Romantic Movement is called the romantic
revival.
The Romantic Movement
movement is also called. Romantic revolt because it revolted against the ideals,
principal and practices of neoclassical school of poetry. The Neo-classical
poetry was “The product of the intelligence playing upon the surface of life”,
According to Walter Pater:-
“The essential element of
the romantic
Spirit are curiosity and
the love of beauty,
And it is as the
accidental effects of these
Qualities only, that it
seeks the middle ages;
Because in the atmosphere
of the middle
Ages there are sources of
romantic effect.”
After his mother death in
1778 he was sent to Hawkshed Grammar school, near Windermere; in 1787 he went
up to St. John’s College, Cambridge. He enjoyed hiking; he tramped around
Cumberland country; two years later event on a walking tour of France,
Switzerland, and Germany; and in 1791, after graduation, trekked trough Wales.
His enthusiasm for the
“French Revolution” took him to France again in 1791, where he had an affairs
with Annette Vallan, who bore him an illegitimate daughter, Caroline, in 1792.
Having run out of money, Wordsworth returned to England the following year and
the Anglo-French war, following the Reign of Terror, prevented his return for
nine years. The three friends traveled to Germany that fall, a trip that
produced intellectual stimulation for Coleridge and homesickness for
Wordsworth. After their return, William Wordsworth and Dorothy settled in his
beloved Lake district, near Grasmere.
The peace of Amiens in 1802
allowed Wordsworth and his sister to visit France again to see Annett and Caroline.
They arrived at a mutually agreeable receiving an inheritance owed by Lord
Lonsdale since John Wordsworth’s death in 1783.
The important later works
were well under way. His success with shorter forms made him the more eager to
succeed with longer, specifically with a long, three part “philosophical poem
containing views of man, nature and society, Having for its principal subject
the sensation and opinions of a poet living in retirement”. The first book of the first part, the
Recluse. During his lifetime he had complete by 1805, because he thought it was
unprecedented- unless he could put it in its proper setting, which was as an
introduction to the complete three-part Recluse.
18th century
puridical age, time of Danial Defoe, Ramlor, Jonathan Swift etc. classical is
strongly rules and regulation followed. Gentleman and morality followed and new
tradition poetry in transition period. Italian quality and brotherhood in
Romantic period picture is mate. Poetry and poetry is speaking picture Romanticism
is an international artistic and Philosophical movement that redefined the ways
in which human in western civilization thought about themselves and their
world. Wordsworth era is romantic era because in this era is the music, dance
and pleasure to very enjoy and freely write through imagination. In the Age two
type to Revolution that first is American Revolution and second is French
Revolution.
Wordsworth says that
‘poetry is simple understand to easily by reader, imagination is shaping and creative
power. Wordsworth says that about poetry’:
“All good poetry is a
spontaneous
Overflow of powerful
feeling its
Takes it origin from
emotion
Re-collected in
tranquility”.
His definition of poetry
shows that Wordsworth is not for all emotions. He is for certain control and
discipline o0f emotion for the poet observation, sensibility imagination and
fantasy reflection is necessary. A poet should revise his poem contently. In
William Wordsworth French Revolution of
characterization he was own individualism word’s says that ;
“I am not made like anyone
I have seen, I dare believe
that
I am not made like anyone in
Existence. If I am not
superior,
At least I am deferent”.
Renaissance is wonderful it is
a second Renaissance, according to literature, it is also known as golden age.
According to Wordsworth for what is nature;
“Consider man and nature as
Essentially adopted to
each
Other and the mind of man
As naturally a mirror of
the
Fairest and most
interesting
Properties of nature”.
Throughout Wordsworth‘s work,
nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human mind. All
manifestations of the natural world-from the highest mountain to the simplest
flower-elicit noble, elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people
who observe these manifestations. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasized the
importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development.
A good relationship with
nature helps individuals connect to both the spiritual and the social worlds.
As Wordsworth explained in the prelude, a love of nature can lead to a love of
humankind Wordsworth praised the power of the human mind. Using memory and
imagination, individuals could overcome difficulty and pain. Throughout his
work, Wordsworth showed strong support for the political, religious and
artistic rights of the individual, including the power of his/her mind.
Later poems, such as “ode:
intimations of immorality (1807) imagine nature as the source of the inspiring
material that nourishes the active creative mind. In Wordsworth’s poetry,
childhood is a magical magnificent time if innocence. In 1799 Wordsworth wrote
several poem about a girl named Lucy who died at a young age. As children age
and reach maturity, they lose this connection but gain an ability to feel
emotions, both good and bad. Through the power of the human mind , particularly
memory, adult can recollect the devoted
connection to nature of their youth.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
S.T.Coleridge was an English
poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth,
was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake
poets.
His poems :- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
:- Kubla Khan
His Prose work:- Biographia Literaria.
His critical work
especially on Shakespeare was highly influential, and he helped introduce
German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Throughout his adult
life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has
been speculated by some that he suffered from poor health that may have stemmed
from about of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for
these concerns with Laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.
At that school Coleridge
become friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil
and William Lisle Bowles. In one of a serious of autobiographical letters
written to Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote:
“At six years old I remember
to have
Read Belisarius, Robinson
Crusoe, and
Philip Quarll and then I found
the Arabian
Nights’s Entertainments one
tale of
Which made so deep an
impression on
me that I was hunted by specters whenever
I was
in the dark and I distinctly remember
the anxious
and fearful eagerness with which
I used to watch the window in which the
Books lay and whenever the sun lay upon
them, I would seize it, carry
it by the wall,
and bask, and read”.
Coleridge’s early intellectual
debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first
to William Godwin’s political justice, especially during his pantisocratic
period, and to David Hartley’s observations on man, which is the source of the
psychology which is found in frost at Midnight.
Coleridge Themes:-
The Trans formative power of
the imagination:-
Coleridge believe that a
strong, active imagination could become a vehicle for transcending unpleasant
exclusively by imaginative flights, wherein the speaker temporarily abandons
his immediate surroundings, exchanging them for an entirely new and completely
fabricated experience. Using the imagination in this way is both empowering and
surprising because it encourages a told and complete disrespect for the
confines of time and place.
These mantle and emotional
jumps are often well rewarded. Perhaps Coleridge’s most famous use of
imagination occurs a keen poetic mind that allows his to take part in a journey
that he cannot physically make. When he “returns” to the bower, after having
imagined himself on a fantastic stroll through the countryside, the speaker
discovers, as a reward, plenty of things to enjoy from inside the bower itself,
including the leaves, the imagination transform the prison into a perfectly
pleasant spot.
The Interplay of Philosophy,
Piety, and Poetry:-
Coleridge used his poetry to
explore conflicting issues in philosophy and religious piety. Some critics
argue that Coleridge’s interest in philosophy was simply his attempt to
understand the imaginative and intellectual impulses that fueled his poetry.
To support the claim that his imaginative and
intellectual forces were, in fact, organic and derived from the natural world,
Coleridge linked them to God. Spirituality and worship. In his work, however, poetry, philosophy, and
piety clashed, creating fiction and disorder for Coleridge, both on and off the
page.
In “the Eolian Harp”,
Coleridge struggles to reconcile the three forces. Here, the speaker’s
philosophical tendencies, particularly the belief that an intellectual breeze”,
brushes of his orthodox wife, who disapproves of his unconventional ideas and
urges him to Christ. While his wife lies untroubled, the speaker agonizes over
his spiritual conflict, caught between Christianity and a unique, individual
spirituality that equates nature with God. The poem ends by discounting the
pantheist spirit, and the speaker concludes by privileging God and Christ over
nature and praising them for having headed him from the spiritual wounds
inflicted by these unorthodox views.
Nature and the
Development of the Individual:-
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other romantic poets praised the unencumbered
imaginative soul of youth, finding an image is nature with which to describe
it. According to their formulation. Experiencing nature was an integral part of
the development of a complete soul and sense of person hood. The death of his
father forced Coleridge to attends school in London, far away from the rural
idylls of his youth and he lamented the missed opportunities of his sheltered,
city bound adolescence in many poems, including “frost at Midnight”. Here, the
speaker sits quietly by a fire, musing on his life, while his infant son sleeps
nearby. He recalls his boarding school days. During which he would both
daydream and full himself to sleep by remembering his home far away from the
city, and he tells his son that he shall never be removed from nature, the way
the speaker once was. Unlike the speaker, the son shall experience the season
and shall learn about God by discovering the
beauty and bounty of the natural world.
The son shall be given the opportunity to
both the speaker and Coleridge himself. For Coleridge, nature had the capacity
to teach joy, love, freedom and piety. Crucial characteristic for a worthy,
developed individual.
In conclusion, William Wordsworth and
S.T.Coleridge both are the great poet and critic in return of the nature age. In
this era was famous for The European war and The Reaction and than social
conditions three things are important in this age and William Wordsworth’s poem
connection between human and nature world and also this poem ponders the
limitation of language and rhythm and rhyme scheme are best. So, that in poem “solitary
Reaper”, William Wordsworth write on pain, sorrow and loneliness in this poem
and his own experience of his life and S.T.Coleridge was a great genius. His
poetic imagination is unique. He is found of unusual and supernatural things,
and his thing for truth and pleasure. So both are the famous and great poet in
Romantic Period.
