Course:
M.A (English)
Topic: Salient features of Wordsworth &
Coleridge as Romantic Poets.
Semester:
02
Roll
No. : 07
Paper
No.: 05
Paper
Name: The Romantic Literature
Submitted
to: Dr. Dilip Barad,
Smt.
S.B.Gardi
Department
of English,
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Salient
features of Wordsworth & Coleridge as Romantic Poets.
The second of five
children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born
on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in
Cockermouth, Cumberland, part of the
scenic region in North-Western England known as the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he
was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised
together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a
lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the
ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher,
the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James
Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the
small town. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible
and the Spectator, but
little else. It was at the school in Penrith that he
met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became his wife.
After the death of his mother, in 1778, Wordsworth's
father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire and sent Dorothy to live
with relatives in Yorkshire.
Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he
published a sonnet in The European Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge. He
received his BA degree in 1791.
Wordsworth’s
masterpiece however was his large autobiographical poem entitled The
Prelude (1850), which focused on the formative experience of his youth.
His first two collections of poetry were published in 1793, five years after
his first published poem. They respectively entitled An Evening
Walk and Descriptive Sketches. Both were strongly influenced by
the writing style of the 18th century. Not long after this in 1795,
Wordsworth had a fateful meeting with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In spite of, or
perhaps, even because of their at times stormy relationship, they managed to
collaborate and produce the founding document of the English Romantic movement,
published in 1798; The Lyrical Ballads.
In 1807, the
third edition of what was to become a classical work was supplemented with a
long- awaited introduction written by Wordsworth. Having defined what poetry is
according to Wordsworth, he defines it as:
“ He is a
man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility,
more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature,
and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a
man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than
other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate
similar volitions and passions as manifested in the going-on of the universe,
and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”
The complete
poetry work of Wordsworth is too much big. It also includes Guide to the
Lakes (1810), The Excursion (1814), and Laodamia (1815). Both Durham
University and Oxford University awarded him with the honorary Doctor of Civil
Law Degree in 1838 and 1839. When his friend and poet colleague Robert Southey
died in 1843, Wordsworth became the new poet Laureate in Great Britain, a title
he would keep until his death. He died in 1850 at the age of 80 at Rydal Mount,
a house in the Lake District near Ambleside, made famous as the home where he
lived and died. The cause of his death was a re- aggravating cause of pleurisy,
which is an inflammation that prevents breathing by causing terrible pain when
one does so. It is typically the result of pneumonia. Life of both Coleridge
and Wordsworth, in particular, their collaboration on the important Lyrical
Ballads is at the heart of the film Pandemonium (2000). Some of his major
works are- “Lyrical Ballads”, “Simon Lee”, “We are Seven”, “Lines written
in Early Spring”, “Expostulation and Reply”, “The Tables Turned”, “The Thorn”,
“She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways”, “I Traveled among Unknown men”,
“Lucy Gray”. Now, when we talk about Romantic poetry, it is the break from
the set rules and regulations. The Romantics showed interest in the country
life. In their poetry, they discarded the glamours of artificial life and turn
to the elements and simplicities of life lived in closer touch with the
beauties and charm of nature. Every genius is a rebel and so was Wordsworth. He
protested against the traditions and usages setup by the poets of the pseudo-
classical school during the Eighteenth century. The three main principles of
his poetic diction are-
1) The
language of poetry should be the language really used by men but it should be a
selection of such language.
2) It should
be the language of men in a state of vivid sensation. It means that language
used by people in a state of animation can form the language of poetry.
3) There is
no essential difference between the words used in prose and in metrical
composition. The elements of simplicity and ease that we come across in his
poetry are principally due to his adoption of a language well within the reach
of common people.
Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction was disapproved by Coleridge and in the
pages of Biographia Literaria, he found numerous defects in Wordsworth’s
theory. In spite of his shortcoming’s, Wordsworth rendered remarkable service
to poetry by effectively putting an end to the use of false poetic diction. He
brought back the natural beauty and simplicity of poetry. Wordsworth’s poetry
exhibits Romantic characteristics and for his treatment towards Romantic
elements, he stands supreme and he an be termed a Romantic poet for number of
reasons. The Romantic movement of the early Nineteenth century was a revolt
against the classical tradition of the Eighteenth century; but it was also marked
by certain positive trends. Wordsworth was, of course, a pioneer of the romantic
movement of the 19th century. With the publication of The Lyrical
Ballads, the new trends became more or less established. The reasons why he was
called a Romantic poet are-
1) Imagination-
where the Eighteenth century poets used to put emphasis much on ‘wit’, the
Romantic poets used to put emphasis on ‘imagination’. Wordsworth uses
imagination so that the common things could be made to look strange and
beautiful through the play of imagination. In his famous “Intimation
Ode” it seems to him as to the child “the earth and every common sight”
seemed “appareled in celestial lights.” Here he says-
“There was a time when
meadow, grove
And stream
The earth and every
common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in
celestial light.”
Moreover, in
this poem, we find a sequence of picture through his use of imagery. Through
his imagination, he says,
“The rainbow come and
goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with
delight
Look round her when the
heavens are bare.”
Similarly,
in the poem Tintern Abbey, the poet sees the river, the stream, steep and lofty
cliffs through his imaginative eyes. He was enthusiastically charmed at the
joyful sound of the rolling river. Here he says,
“Once again
Do I behold those steep
and lofty cliffs
That on a wild secluded
scene impress
Thoughts of more deep
seclusion and
Connect
The landscape with
quiet of the sky.”
In this
poem, the poet seems that the nature has a healing power. Even the recollection
of nature soothes the poet’s troubled heart. The poet can feel the existence of
nature through imagination even when he is away from her, he says,
“In lovely rooms and
‘mid the dim
Of towns and cities, I
have owed to them
In hours of weariness,
sensation sweet.”
2) Nature- He is especially
regarded as a poet of nature. In most of the poems of William Wordsworth,
nature is constructed as both a healing entity and a teacher or moral guardian.
Nature is considered in his poems as a living personality. He is a true
worshiper of nature: nature’s devotee or high priest. The critic Cazamian says:
“To William Wordsworth, nature appears
as a formative influence superior to any other, the educator of senses or mind
alike, the shower in our hearts of the deep laden seeds of our feelings and
beliefs.”
He dwells
with great satisfaction on the prospects of spending his time in
groves and valleys and on the banks of streams that will lull him to
rest with their soft murmur. For Wordsworth, nature is a healer and he ascribes
healing properties to nature in Tintern Abbey. This is a fairly obvious
conclusion drawn from his reference to “Tranquil Restoration”, that his memory
of the Wye offered him “in lovely rooms and mid the in/ of towns and cities.”
3) Subjectivity-
it is the key note of Romantic poetry. He expresses his personal thoughts,
feelings through his poems. In Ode: Intimation of Immortality, the poet
expresses his own/ personal feelings. Here he says, that he can’t see the
celestial light anymore which he used to see in his childhood. He says,
“It is not how as it
hath been of yore
Turn wheresoever I
may,
By might or day,
The things which I have
seen I now can
Seen on more.”
4) Pantheism
and Mysticism- These two are almost interrelated factors in the nature poetry
of the Romantic period. Wordsworth conceives of a spiritual power running
through all natural objects- the “presence that disturbs me with the law of
elevated thoughts” whose dwelling is the light.
Coleridge was born on 21 October
1772 in the town of Ottery St.Mary in Devon, England. Samuel's
father was the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), the well-respected Vicar of Ottery St.Mary and headmaster of the King’s School, a free grammar school established
by King Henry VIII (1509–1547) in the town. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squier's School in South Molton, Devon, and Lecturer of nearby Molland. John
Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten
by the Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809), probably
the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South
Molton, Devon, in 1726. Coleridge suggests that he "took no
pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and
played by himself. After John
Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ’s Hospital, a charity school which
was founded in the 16th century in Greyfairs, London, where he remained throughout his childhood,
studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate,
and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowle. In one of a series 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' Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man
who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me
(I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was
haunted by spectres 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."
Throughout his life, Coleridge idealised
his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was
more problematic. His childhood
was characterised by attention seeking, which has been linked to his dependent
personality as an adult. He was rarely
allowed to return home during the school term, and this distance from his
family at such a turbulent time proved emotionally damaging. He later wrote of
his loneliness at school in the poem "Frost
at Midnight": "With
unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace." He died on 25 July 1834. He wrote the
poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan well as the
major prose work Biographia Literaria.
His critical
work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped
introduce German idealist philosophy to English- speaking culture. He coined
many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was a
major influence of Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult
life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has
been speculated that he suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition not
identified from poor physical health that may have stemmed from a bout of
rheumatic fever and other childhood illness. He was treated for these concerns
with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction. His opium addiction
now began to take over his life: he separated with his wife Sarah in 1808,
quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put
himself under the care of Doctor Daniel in 1814. His addiction caused severe
constipation, which required regular and humiliating enemas. He is one of the
most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply
influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries
as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his
poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his
professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important
because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of
“Conversational Poems”.
The idea
of utilizing common language to express profound poetic images
and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost
entirely in Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great
poems, The Excursion or The Prelude, ever having been written
without the direct influence of Coleridge’s originality. As important as
Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was equally important to poetry as a
critic. His philosophy of poetry, which he developed over many years, has been
deeply influential in the field of literary criticism. This influence can be
seen in such critics such as A O Lovejoy and I A Richard’s. Coleridge is
probably best known for his long poem, The Rime of the Ancient
Mainer and Christabel. Even those who have never read the Rime
have came under his influence: its words have given the English language the
metaphor of an albatross around one’s neck, the quotation of “water, water
everywhere, nor any drop to drink”, and the phrase “a sadder and a wiser man”.
The phrase
“all sadder great and small” may have been inspired by the Rime:“He prayeth
best, who loveth best;/All things both great and small;/For the dear god who
loveth us;/He made and loveth all.”
Christabel
is known for its musical rhythm language and its Gothic tale. Kubla khan or A
Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter is also widely known. Both
Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional Romantic aura because they were
never finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due
to their “exquisite metrical movement” and “imaginative phrasing”. Some of his
conversational poems are-
The Eohian
Harp (1795)
Fears in Solitude
(1798)
This Lime-
Tree Bower my Prison (1797)
Dejection-
An Ode (1802)
To William
Wordsworth (1807)
Frost at
Midnight (1798)
The above
listed poems are entitled “Conversational Poems”. The term itself was
coined in 1928 by George McLean Harper, who borrowed the
subtitle of The Nightingale: A Conversational Poem (1798) to describe the
other poems as well. The poems are considered by many critics to be among
Coleridge’s finest verses; thus Harold Bloom has written, “With Dejection, The
Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight shows Coleridge at his most
impressive.” They are also among his most influential poems. The last ten lines
of Frost at Midnight were chosen by Harper as the “best example of the
peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as
natural-seeming as prose, but as exquisitely artistic as the most complicated
sonnet”. The speaker of the poem is addressing his infant son, asleep by his
side:
“Therefore all seasons
shall be sweet
To thee,
Whether the summer
clothe the
General earth
With the greenness, or
the redbreast sit
And sing
Betwixt the tufts of
snow on the bare
Branch
Of mossy apple tree,
while the nigh
Thatch’Smokes in the
sun-thaw; whether the
Eave-drops fall
Heard only in the
trances of the blast, or if the secret ministry of frost,
Shall hang them up in
silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the
quiet moon.”
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge is one of the remarkable poets of Romantic period. He was a
most intimate friend of Wordsworth and their influence on one
another was most productive. Coleridge’s poems are removed from the gravity and
high seriousness of Spenser, Milton or Wordsworth.
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