...To the romantic poets poetry was an instrument of emotion and feeling intended to reconnect man with the natural world, and in general the poet was viewed as a person uniquely equipped to guide the layman to this reconnection. Romanticism as a movement appeared following a period in history when great importance was put on scientific discovery and formal education. In the eyes of the romantic poets mankind had become so swept up in the pursuit of knowledge and innovation that they had disconnected from both the natural world, and their deeper, natural selves. Though the philosophies of the individual poets differed, in general romantic poetry focused on and lauded primitivism, and emotion, while minimizing (but not discounting) the importance of reason and logic. The ultimate goal of romantic poetry was the attainment of the sublime, the ultimate, transcendental connection with the natural self. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the pioneers of the Romantic Movement, believed that the creative imagination was the key to man achieving his connection to the sublime. This caused much difficulty though, as the source of creative imagination was impossible to trace and because creative inspiration was quite fickle. Coleridge struggled with this conundrum throughout his life, but felt that as a poet and as one who understood the importance of the creative imagination it was his right and responsibility to better mankind through his poetry. William Wordsworth was, along with Coleridge...
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...The 19th century witnessed a shift in the perception of literary art, particularly poetry. The 18th century conception of art and literature was founded upon reason, logic and rationality. Tradition had valued art and literature for its ability to imitate human life. This however arguably took a step back and paved the way for the 19th century view that art and literature was to established on the grounds of pure emotion, imagination, external and internal experience. Or as William Wordsworth would say that ‘[...] poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.’ The poet therefore assumed the role of the mediator between man and nature. The role of the poet was arguably in place to showcase beauty, truth and the endless possibilities that tradition had previously encased. Within this new enlightened form of expression in literature, the imagination had been elevated to a primary position in regards to poetic composition. The imagination allowed poets to see beyond surface value, to create an external world of existence. It permitted them to see the truth beyond powers of reason and rationality. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in particular was a poet fascinated with the potential and limitless possibilities of the imagination. Coleridge placed considerable emphasis upon the imagination as a focal element within his poetry. He categorised the imagination into two key sectors; the primary imagination and secondary imagination. As explained in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria: ...
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...The Concept of Nature in the Poetry of William Wordsworth and Robert Frost : A Comparative Study Chapter One Introduction 1. Background Poets have long been inspired to tune their lyrics to the variations in landscape, the changes in season, and the natural phenomena around them. The Greek poet Theocritus began writing idylls in the third century B.C.E. to glorify and honor the simplicity of rural life--creating such well known characters as Lycidas, who has inspired dozens of poems as the archetypal shepherd, including the famous poem "Lycidas" by John Milton. An idyll was originally a short, peaceful pastoral lyric, but has come to include poems of epic adventure set in an idealized past, including Lord Alfred Tennyson's take on Arthurian legend, The Idylls of the King. The Biblical Song of Songs is also considered an idyll, as it tells its story of love and passion by continuously evoking imagery from the natural world. The more familiar form of surviving pastoral poetry that has retained its integrity is the eclogue, a poem attuned to the natural world and seasons, placed in a pleasant, serene, and rural place, and in which shepherds often converse. The first eclogue was written by Virgil in 37 B.C.E. The eclogue also flourished in the Italian Renaissance, its most notable authors being Dante and Petrarch. It became something of a requirement for young poets, a form they had to master before embarking upon great original work. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s...
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...William Wordsworth is the Romantic poet most often described as a "nature" writer; what the word "nature" meant to Wordsworth is, however, a complex issue. On the one hand, Wordsworth was the quintessential poet as naturalist, always paying close attention to details of the physical environment around him (plants, animals, geography, weather). At the same time, Wordsworth was a self-consciously literary artist who described "the mind of man" as the "main haunt and region of [his] song." This tension between objective describer of the natural scene and subjective shaper of sensory experience is partly the result of Wordsworth's view of the mind as "creator and receiver both." Wordsworth consistently describes his own mind as the recipient of external sensations which are then rendered into its own mental creations. Such an alliance of the inner life with the outer world is at the heart of Wordsworth's descriptions of nature. Wordsworth's ideas about memory, the importance of childhood experiences, and the power of the mind to bestow an "auxiliar" light on the objects it beholds all depend on this ability to record experiences carefully at the moment of observation but then to shape those same experiences in the mind over time. We should also recall, however, that he made widespread use of other texts in the production of his Wordsworthian (Keats said "egotistical") sublime: drafts of poems by Coleridge, his sisterDorothy's Journals, the works of Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson...
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...Mark Cruz Professor Wood ENGL 1302-316 16 February 2015 Essay One: Theme Analysis of “The world is too much with us” by William Wordsworth In the poem “The world is too much with us” written by William Wordsworth, the speaker is almost condemning the human race as a whole for not appreciating the everlasting beauty of the nature around us. There was many themes in this poem but the one that was most prominent was the relationship between man and nature. The reader is given the feeling of guilt and I believe he was trying to open eyes of those that could not see this beauty. Wordsworth’s wordplay and metaphors in his poem reveals the importance of nature and the lack of appreciation we give it. The speaker in the poem wastes little time to begin to show his frustration with those that “lay waste our powers” (2). We are “Getting and spending” too much and are so caught up with consumerism that we are blind to the world around us (2). We spending all of our time and money on material things and are so selfish to not enjoy what beauty nature can give us for free. Wordsworth’s wordplay shows the faults that we possess and is hoping to change our ways. Even though this poem was written more than 200 years ago, Wordsworth still presents an issue that can relate to today. The speaker continues his rant and expresses his frustration even further when stating, “Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” (3-4). People have taken...
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...LAMIA: Lamia has puzzled critics because of the elusiveness of its theme. Lamia seems to say that passionate love is an illusion and an enchantment, ultimately destructive. Keats presents her sympathetically; she is not an evil creature. Lycius too is presented sympathetically but in living with Lamia he is indulging in "sweet sin." Since he is a high-minded Platonist when first introduced into the story, his love for Lamia is indulging a weakness. When Lycius and Lamia meet Apollonius, Lycius' mentor, while walking through Corinth, Lycius is at pains to avoid being recognized by him. Context: The subject of Lamia is consuming love such as Keats himself was experiencing when he wrote the poem. His letters to Fanny Brawne indicate that he was obsessed by her beauty — and, at the same time, fearful for his freedom. He realized, however, that desire must be curbed by restraint, that love must harmonize with, and be a part of life, rather than dominate and control it. Lamia, therefore, can be regarded as a warning against the all-absorbing nature of illusory, passionate love and a recognition of the claims of reason. Lamia does not have much in the way of crisis and climax his narrative technique is superior, Lamia-as-snake is as beautiful as Lamia-as-woman: She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; And full of silver moons, that, as she...
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...wanting to make the best of any happiness they have. In “Ode On A Grecian Urn” by John Keats, the effects of both love and loss are displayed. The poem describes two lovers frozen in time, forever immortalized as a painting on an urn. These lovers can not move forward in their relationship or actively show their love, though they are still able to spend their lives together in peace. Similarly, Mary Shelley wrote about themes of love and loss in Frankenstein, as a character Victor Frankenstein creates a monster that murders many of his family members and other loved ones. However, Victor is not the only one who feels the pain of loss, as the monster also feels neglected and rejected from any form of love or care that he tries to pursue. The Romantic Era texts “Ode On A Grecian Urn” by John Keats and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley display both the important presence of and the reliance between love and loss and the balance of their euphoric and destructive effects on individuals. Love has both a uniquely detrimental and unequivocally beneficial impact on those who experience it. The lovers in Ode On A Grecian Urn feel both of these sides of love. John Keats is able to convey this message in his poem; “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;/Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,/Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:/Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave/Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;” (Keats 11-16)...
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...Our society is in a permanent, evolving world of revolution, seeking beyond what is natural into what is material. William Wordsworth and Marshall Jones recognized this change of passion in different periods of time. “The world is too much with us” and “Touchscreen” share the simplest of truths as each unveils the bitter reality of society’s focus. Although, while both hold onto aspects of the forgotten nature and the costly progression of human nature, their differences remain to be on their emphasis of the human relationship, whether it be with nature or other people. In addition, these two works of art ultimately contrast in their attitude of whether humanity is still considered hopeless. The cover of nature in this world is now tarnished by technology and all things absent of nature. Both poets understood the implications of when nature would soon be forgotten. In “The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth proclaims that “We have given our hearts away,” to the culture of materialistic wanting by “Getting and spending.” So if the world is too much with us, then that coincides with what “Touchscreen” notes as the “world is so digital,” and the lack of an authentic lifestyle has led the world to have “forgotten what that feels like.” Moreover, human nature is deliberately becoming interconnected and attached to the ease of technology, and, also, conforming to a behavior characterized as inhumane. Wordsworth insists that this adverse way of life has distracted humans...
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...Kubla Khan Kubla Khan is one of the strangest, greatest and most ambiguous poems that I've ever read. This romantic poem is written by Coleridge, and through it, he shows the power of imagination that results in the importance of poetry as an art. The poem has the most significant romantic characteristics: nature, imagination and supernaturalism. The mother is everything for everyone, and nature, considered as the great mother by the romantics, is everything for Coleridge and other romantic poets. The poem takes place in nature in which Kubla Khan builds his dome of rock. The poet describes a wild nature showed by the sacred river that is measureless and sunless and the forests, the hills and the eternal spring. This beautiful nature is no more when it's touched by humans. When Kubla Khan ordered to build the dome, humans begin to corrupt every natural element there and to mix it with artificial one. When the natural place is distorted by humans, we find the poet describing the place as enchanted, and introducing a woman wailing for her demon-love. All these frightened scenes described in the poem have something to do with the corruption man causes to nature. Romantic poets would be nothing without imagination. Imagination is the power that distinguishes the romantic poets from others. The two kinds of imagination is found here in the poem. The primary imagination is the foundation on which the author based his poem. The action of Kubla Khan ordering people...
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...The Romantic poetry was limited to a few poets, still, those few altered the aspect of literature forevermore. In a group of such prominent poets were George Crabbe and Thomas Moore who gave vivacious renderings of natural scenes with Romantic emotionality. George Crabbe was one of the first poets whose works provided the link between Pre- Romanticism and Romanticism. He was a great bard of nature who portrayed it as strange being and arresting as no other Romantic poet did and therefore was named by Byron as “Nature’s sternest painter”. Throughout the age, Crabbe persisted in his precise, realistic portraits of rural life and landscape, writing mainly in the heroic couplets of the neoclassical age. His poems described village manners without...
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...occasionally show itself as a muse of Romantic poetry it has very little to do with Romanticism. Romanticism is considered to be an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world.(Brooklyn College) The early Romantic period begins with the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth - co-written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I'm going to specifically refer to three poetic works by Wordsworth when referring to the imagination, nature, and emotion used as components of Romantic Literature: "The Tables Turned", "My Heart Leaps Up", and "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud." Imagination was considered to be one of the highest faculties of the mind during the Romantic era. The Romantics used their imaginations as the ultimate shaping tool for their literature. It was their creative power in that it was dynamic, active, and provided many functions for creating all art. Wordsworth suggested that it is also the faculty that helps humans to constitute reality for we not only perceive the world around us, but also in part create it. The Romantics are also extremely concerned with the healing nature of the imagination in that it can reconcile differences and opposites in the world of appearance. It inextricably enables us to "read" nature as a system of symbols. (Brooklyn College) Wordsworth uses all aspects of the Romantic view of imagination in "The Tables Turned...
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...by Spenser and was, like the latter, a passionate lover of beauty in all its forms and manifestation. This passion for beauty constitutes his aestheticism. Beauty, indeed, was his pole-star, beauty in Nature, in woman, and in art. He writes and defines beauty: “A think of beauty is joy for ever” In John Keats, we have a remarkable contrast both with Byron and Shelley. He knows nothing of Byron’s stormy spirit of antagonism to the existing order of things and he had no sympathy with Shelley’s humanitarian real and passion for reforming the world. But Keats likes and worships beauty. In his Ode on a Grecian Urn, he expresses some powerful lines about his thoughts of beauty. This ode contains the most discussed two lines in all of Keats's poetry: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The exact meaning of those lines is disputed by everyone; no less a critic than TS Eliot considered them a blight upon an otherwise beautiful poem. Scholars have been unable to agree to whom the last thirteen lines of the poem are addressed. Arguments can be made for any of the four most obvious possibilities, -poet to reader, urn to reader, poet to urn, poet to figures on the urn. The issue is further confused by the change in quotation marks between the original manuscript copy of the ode and the 1820 published edition. P. B. Shelley: Shelley expresses love as one of the God-like phenomena in human life and beauty is the intellectual beauty...
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...Although romantic poets have established several ideas concerning what they believe a poem should be, Wordsworth’s definition of poetry in The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is the most famous one: “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of human feelings…modified and directed by our thoughts." or "...the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. He sees poetry as acting like Nature, which touches all living things and inspires and delights them. Therefore, poem is an instrument that draws attention to the hidden, unnoticed beauties of nature. In addition, Wordsworth also emphasizes the relationship between the mind and poetry. The “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” leaves an individual incapable of articulating the beauty of nature, thus these feelings should be “recollected in tranquility” and deep thought. “My heart leaps up when I behold” is one of the best poems that convey Wordsworth’s definition The poem encompasses all of the themes central to Romantic movement such as the importance of the emotion, the important of nature, the transience of joy, and the sanctity of childhood. Nature and its connection to humanity makes an appearance in the vast majority of Wordsworth’s poetry, often holding a poem’s focus, thus the important of nature is introduced in the first two lines: “My heart leaps up when I behold/ A Rainbow in the sky.” (Line 1, 2) He is moved emotionally by the beauty of nature and his...
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...Wordsworth’s ‘Spots of Time’ Wordsworth’s notion of ‘spots of time’ existing in personal and poetic experience is closely aligned to the spiritual or animistic perception of nature that underscores Romantic poetry. In The Prelude, Wordsworth uses the spots of time concept as an organizing element, structuring both individual passages and the poem as a whole, a pattern that resembles the arc of dramatic tension in classical tragedy. For Wordsworth, spots of time are instances of life experience where one’s common perception of Nature and people is suddenly wrenched into a disturbing new perception that ultimately gives a deeper insight into oneself and the universe. The recurrence of this pattern of expectation, disappointment, and understanding is a structural element of The Prelude that extends from subtle allusion to explicit description. Closely connected to the concept of the spot of time is Wordsworth’s conception of a “border creature” which is a personification of the initiation into a new, often troubling realization. The resonance of a spot of time is such that it cuts through past, present, and future and provides a foundation in memory for poetic expression and also for reading into the mystical aspect of the human psyche or soul. The most overt description of a spot of time that is present in The Prelude is found in Book Eleven in lines 278-89. Before describing the memory directly, Wordsworth states explicitly that the coming passage will be an example of a spot...
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...John Keats – La Belle Dame Sans Merci La Belle Dame sans Merci, one of John Keats last works, is a ballad which tells the story of a knight who fell in love with a mystical creature, and now suffers the aftermath of a broken heart. The poem starts with the writer describing a solitary knight who is walking around lonely. So already from the poems start the reader gets sympathy for the knight. In the two first verse, the scene of autumn is described: The grass stopped, no birds sing, squirrels and other animals have hoarded food to sustain them throughout winter, and the harvest is done. The writer makes the knight look so exhausted and miserable, by saying: So haggard and woebegone. By saying this, it makes the knight seem to be in a terrible condition: “And on the thy cheek a fading rose – the poet is comparing the color on his cheeks with a fast fading rose. The poet also says: I see a lily on thy brow – which means that the knight-at-arms forehead glistens with sweet like a lily (white). In the fourth stanza the knight starts to tell his tale: He had met a beautiful maiden in the meadows. She was the most beautiful thing he had cast eyes upon, with long flowing hair and wild eyes, which led him to believe that she must be a fairy’s child. Her eyes however had struck him as wild and doleful. He had only eyes for her and did not notice anything else. She was receptive of his attentions and sang to him sweetly. He tried to win her by making garlands and bracelets out of...
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