Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Their Works
Coleridge, Blake and Wordsworth
The Romantic period gives value to men’s individual consciousness, it was directly related to the expression of feelings, and states of mind.
Poetry itself became increasingly associated with a yearning for another time and place; The idea of the poet was changing from that of a maker to that of an introspective, brooding confessor.
The materials of poetry were becoming rather the inner life and private vision of the poet than public, social affairs, with an often-morbid fascination with death.
Poets began to cultivate archaic language and antique literary forms, especially the ballad. The Gothic vogue introduced the pleasures of fancy and extravagance – intricacy, asymmetry and a wilful excess.
Nature was seen with admiration and idealization – it was a place where poets could find a lot of inspiration. It was consoling and more uplifting, seen as a spiritual healer. In fact, they searched for a simple life in communion with nature. Personifications were very common in Romantic poems, as poets were always comparing themselves to animals.
First Generation of Romantic Poets
William Wordsworth
Uses poetry to express the experience of his suffering and the successful effort to re-establish himself (“a saving intercourse with my true self”) to underline many of his greatest poems.
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
In the preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth explains his theory of poetry. He argues that literary tricks and devices such as personification make it difficult for writers and readers to speak simply and directly about their feelings. He hopes to combat this with his work.
In the composition of lyrical ballads, the poetry must concern itself primarily with nature and life in the country.
Wordsworth’s second reason for writing lyrical ballads is that they emphasize the status of poetry as a form of art. He intends to enlighten his readers as to the true depths of human emotion and experience.
Wordsworth argues that good poetry doesn’t have to be overly complicated or ornamental in order to capture the reader’s imagination. Clean, simple lines are best, in his opinion.
Tintern Abbey
Is memory—specifically, childhood memories of communion with natural beauty. It is the young Wordsworth’s first great statement of his principle theme: that the memory of pure communion with nature in childhood works upon the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion has been lost.
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Concerns about lost vision, how age causes man to lose sight of the divine, hopeful in that the memory of the divine allows us to sympathise with our fellow man. The poem relies on the concept of pre-existence, the idea that the soul existed before the body, to connect children with the ability to witness the divine within nature. As children mature, they become more worldly and lose this divine vision.
The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind
The work is a poetic reflection on Wordsworth’s own sense of his poetic vocation as it developed over the course of his life. Wordsworth chooses his own mind and imagination as a subject worthy of epic.
This spiritual autobiography evolves out of Wordsworth’s persistent metaphor [that life is] a circular journey whose end is ‘to arrive where we started / And know that place for the first time’. Literal journeys become the metaphorical vehicle for a spiritual journey—the quest within the poet’s memory.
S.T. COLERIDGE
Biographia Literaria is especially interesting are his views of the mind as creative in perception and capable of a poetic re-creation of the world of sense by the fusing and formative power of the “secondary imagination”. (Difference between Fancy and Imagination)
Coleridge focused mainly on imagination as the key to poetry. In Biographia Literaria he divided imagination into two main components: primary and secondary imagination. It is the imagination involved in the poetry that produces a higher quality verse. The primary imagination is a spontaneous creation of new ideas, and they are expressed perfectly. The secondary imagination is mitigated by the conscious act of imagination; therefore, it is hindered by not only imperfect creation, but also by imperfect expression.
With fancy there is no creation involved; it is simply a reconfiguration of existing ideas. Coleridge also writes that poetry “reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities”.
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. In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge wrote that a poem must be a cohesive unit, with every part working together to build into a whole.
Kubla Kahn
illustrates his use of primary imagination: The poem is the manifestation of a drug-induced vision. The lines have come to Coleridge unbidden, and represent the creation of a previously non-existent setting.
The Aeolian Harp
Through descriptions of nature, he relates his happiness and longing to the forces which govern all of creation. It’s as if all of nature is celebrating with him.
An idea that dominates the poem is that of the nature of thought. Coleridge represents his train of thought as musical instruments – a lute and a harp.
He seems to be trying to analyse his thoughts as if they were entities in and of themselves. He credits God with all of life and all of nature. Without God’s generosity, man would not be able to enjoy the luxuries with which Coleridge has been blessed.
The Rime of the Ancient Marine
Coleridge emphasizes the way in which the natural world dwarfs and asserts its awesome power over man. The spiritual world controls and utilizes the natural world.
At times the natural world seems to be a character itself, based on the way it interacts with the Ancient Mariner. From the moment the Ancient Mariner offends the spirit of the “rime,” retribution comes in the form of natural phenomena.
The Spiritual World: The Metaphysical
The work has popularly been interpreted as an allegory of man’s connection to the spiritual, metaphysical world.
In the epigraph, Burnet speaks of man’s urge to “classify” things since Adam named the animals.
The Ancient Mariner shoots the Albatross as if to prove that it is not an airy spirit, but rather a mortal creature.
When the dead men come alive to curse the Ancient Mariner with their eyes, things that are natural-their corpses-are inhabited by a powerful spirit.
The Ancient Mariner detects spirits in their pure form several times in the poem.
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” typifies the Romantic fascination with liminal spaces. A liminal space is defined as a place on the edge of a realm or between two realms.
Coleridge expresses a fascination with the liminal state between the spiritual and natural, or the mundane and the divine.
In the Ancient Mariner’s story, liminal spaces are bewildering and cause pain. The first liminal space the sailors encounter is the equator, which is in a sense about as liminal a location as exists;
The poem’s ultimate symbolic liminal space, the icy world of the “rime.” It is liminal by its very physical makeup; there, water exists in all three forms: liquid (water), solid (ice), and gas (mist).
The Ancient Mariner is sentenced to Life-in-Death, condemned to be trapped in a limbo-like state where his “glittering eye” tells of both powerful genius and pain.
Its Retribution
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a tale of retribution, since the Ancient Mariner spends most of the poem paying for his one, impulsive error of killing the Albatross.
The spiritual world avenges the Albatross’s death by wreaking physical and psychological havoc on the Ancient Mariner and his shipmates.
The Act of Storytelling
In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge draws our attention not only to the Ancient Mariner’s story, but to the act of storytelling itself.
The poem can also be an allegory for the writer’s task. Coleridge uses the word “teach” to describe the Ancient Mariner’s storytelling and says that he has “strange power of speech.”
Coleridge implies that he, and by extension all writers, are not only inspired but compelled to write. Their gift is equally a curse; the pleasure of writing is marred with torment.
William Blake
Foster Damon, a critic and specialist in W. Blake’s works, referred to the entry for Blake’s Poetical Sketches as “a book of the revolutionary period, a time of seeking for non-neoclassical inspiration, a preparation for the Romantic period”.
Poetical Sketches
Shows Blake’s symbolic language in an emergent and transitional form, and partly because it confirms that Blake is organically part of his literary age.
shows dissatisfaction with the reigning poetic tradition and his restless quest for new literary forms and techniques.
Songs of Innocence and Experience
They Juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression. The collection explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world. The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems are written from the perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an adult perspective. Many of the poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding prior to the corruption and distortion of experience. Others take a more critical stance toward innocent purity.
The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the weaknesses of the innocent perspective (“The Tyger,” for example, attempts to account for real, negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront). These latter poems treat sexual morality in terms of the repressive effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of which corrupt the ingenuousness of innocent love. Regarding religion, they are less concerned with the character of individual faith than with the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its effects on society and the individual mind. Experience thus adds a layer to innocence that darkens its hopeful vision while compensating for some of its blindness. questions how we know that God exists, whether a God who allows poor children to suffer and be exploited is in fact, good, and whether love can exist as an abstract concept apart from human interaction. Regarding religion, they are less concerned with the character of individual faith than with the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its effects on society and the individual mind. The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language and the rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex. Many of the poems are narrative in style; others, like “The Sick Rose” and “The Divine Image,” make their arguments through symbolism or by means of abstract concepts. Some of Blake’s favourite rhetorical techniques are personification and the reworking of Biblical symbolism and language.
He has an apocalyptical vision about historical events, and he uses a lot of biblical references in his poems. In fact, he satirizes certain events and he also dislikes social elites – he thinks that it is unfair for some to be rich and for some others to be poor. Due to social differences, Blake starts to question himself about the existence of God – in his view, if God existed, there wouldn’t be so many differences, there wouldn’t be children living in bad conditions. He calls readers attention, making them go back to their state of innocence through the power of imagination as an effort to redeem a fallen world.
He serves up stanzas that cheerfully violate their paradigms, or refuse rhyme, or off-rhyme, or play with eye-rhymes; rhythms that disrupt metrical convention, and line-endings so unorthodox as to strain a practice of enjambment already controversial in eighteenth century poetics
Historically, Blake belongs in the Revolutionary generation, when the closed heroic couplet was exhausted, and new subjects and new rhythms were being sought out.
• In his: ‘To Spring’, ‘To Summer’, ‘To Autumn’, ‘To Winter ‘
The opening four poems, are invocations to the four seasons, are often seen as offering early versions of four of the figures of Blake’s later mythology, each one represented by the respective season, where “abstract personifications merge into the figures of a new myth. “
• In: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
The publication of Songs of Innocence began his series of “Illuminated Books,” in which Blake combined text and visual artwork to achieve his poetic effect.
While ostensibly about the naivety and simplicity of innocent youth, Songs of Innocence is not merely a collection of verses for children. Several of the poems include an ironic tone, and some, such as “The Chimney Sweeper,” imply sharp criticism of the society of Blake’s time.
Wordsworth, Coleridge
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth is known as the poet of remembrance of things past – one object or one event in the present provokes in him a renewal of feelings he had experienced in youth, which makes his poems an expression of what he is now and of what he once was – his poetry is a kind of excitation in calm.
He met Coleridge, and they became so close that they ended up collaborating in some of their writings. The result of their efforts was Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems. It opened with Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and closed with Wordsworth’s great descriptive and meditative poem in blank verse, Tintern Abbey. This book of poems announced a new literary departure, in which he enunciated the principles of the new criticism (the basis for the ‘new’ poetry).
He also wrote the Preludes, an autobiographical poem, where he exposes many experiences he had been through; This spiritual autobiography evolves out of Wordsworth’s persistent metaphor [that life is] a circular journey whose end is ‘to arrive where we started / And know that place for the first time’. However, the apparent simplicity of the poem is deceptive; Many passages can tolerate two or more readings and afford new meaning at each reading.
Each of the three “sections” corresponds roughly to a phase in Wordsworth’s poetic development and to a period in his life.
The Prelude is critically central to his life work because it contains passages representing all his three styles of writing. It describes the creation of a poet, and one who was pivotal in English letters.
The Prelude may be classed somewhat loosely as an epic (a psychological epic), written in blank verse with unrhymed lines.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He became a drug addict and he started to write poems about it. As a matter of fact, Dejection: An Ode is his farewell to health, happiness and poetic creativity.
He published his literary criticism in Biographia Literaria – he explains that the mind is creative in perception and that it is capable of a poetic recreation of the world of sense by the fusing and formative power of the secondary imagination.
Coleridge wrote poems of mystery and demonism – The Rime of an Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan; and conversation poems of related description and meditation – Frost at Midnight; Dejection: An Ode.
He abandons Wordsworth’s notion of poetry for the common man, and uses lofty language, poetic diction, and subject matter that is specialized.
Wordsworth and Coleridge were very close to each other, so it is common to identify similar phrases in their poems. They were known to collaborate in some writings such as in Lyrical Ballads.
•In: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage.Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is unique among Coleridge’s important works— unique in its intentionally archaic ,its length, its bizarre moral narrative, its strange scholarly notes printed in small type in the margins, its thematic ambiguity, and the long Latin epigraph that begins it, concerning the multitude of unclassifiable “invisible creatures” that inhabit the world.
Its peculiarities make it quite atypical for its era; it has little in common with other Romantic works.
In: Kubla Khan
There is a comparison of creative power that does not work with nature and creative power that is harmonious with nature.
In terms of genre, the poem is a dream poem and related to works describing visions common to the Romantic poets.
The poem expands on the gothic hints of the first stanza as the narrator explores the dark chasm during Xanadu’s gardens, and describes the surrounding area as both “savage” and “holy”.
this chasm as symbolic of the poet struggling with decadence that ignores nature. It may also represent the dark side of the soul, the dehumanising effect of power and dominion.
Kubla Khan is also related to the genre of fragmentary poetry, with internal images reinforcing the idea of fragmentation that is found within the form of the poem.
The major romantics such as Wordsworth and Coleridge produced manifestos of sorts of ‘what poetry is’ in their own individual ways. it was a precursor to the ‘Art for Art’s sake’- it really marked the origins of literature and literary theory as we understand the terms to mean today.
Byron, Percy and Keats
The romantics were poets and at the same time critics, using poetry to critic and justify their methods, schools and movements.
After the French revolution of 1789, the period of the 1790s, brought on a whole new way of thinking about society, politics, and poetry, with the poetic revolution of Coleridge and Wordsworth kickstarting this second wave of romantic poetry.
By the time you get towards the end of the Napoleonic wars, things are changing, the war with France ended, Wordsworth and Coleridge’s poetic revolution has begun to stall, and onto the scene come these new figures: starting off with the publishing of Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” poem, in 1812; Soon after, Keats and Percy Shelley enter a period of intensive writing, fuelled by the feeling of being left astray by Wordsworth and Coleridge, originating a need for something poetically new.
They were children of the revolution, Unlike the first generation that was born under the old regime. Within a writing perspective, they were also children of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s works. The second generation was mainly represented by Lord Byron, with works such as Childe Harold’s pilgrimage, and Don Juan; Percy Shelley mostly known as the author of Ode to the west wind, Queen Mab, and many dramatic plays like Prometheus unbound. And finally, John Keats, with works, like La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Ode on a Grecian urn.
John Keats used an elaborate slow-paced language on his works, as an expression of his aesthetic philosophy, that intended to stray away from the first generation’s dominant use of plain language. His education played a crucial role in sharpening his sensibilities with a liberal outlook. He was described by Edward Holmes as a volatile character, that was always in extremes, and received some sarcastic reactions towards his poetry.
When it comes to themes, the one of continuity, was a recurrent one, mentioned initially by Wordsworth but also explored under a different perspective by Keats, on his Ode on a Grecian urn, where he talks about the classical art, and describes it as being perfect yet dead images. To Keats, continuity can’t exist, it’s just an illusion, feelings and beauty fade, and eternity isn’t possible. This idea is also found on his La Belle Dame Sans Merci, where feelings are also associated with fatality.
Keats’ central theme of all his poetry is imagination mainly concerned with beauty; As it was the only consolation, he found in a life full of sadness and misunderstanding. Keats’ idea of the poet was that of a man capable of experiencing uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact or reason. In other words, his theory of the “negative capability”, sees the poet as capable of shedding his own identity so as not to be concerned with a moral judgement thus, opening himself fully to the complex reality around him, while still recreating and re-interpreting it through the eyes of a Romantic; he sought after an humanitarian beauty.
Another theme dear to him was the one of nature, as evident on his lyrical poem Ode to autumn, he was deeply inspired by it. Unlike his predecessors, nature represented a different form of beauty, since, he stated that the beauty that originates from the imagination is far more superior than the one perceived by the senses;For him, beauty exists within the truth; Seeing artistic creation not to delight and exhibit, but to self-express, a compelling need, following the “art for art’s sake.”
He always portrayed his immediate experiences into poetry, drawing images and metaphors from nature and arts; His Ode to a nightingale serves as a good example of this, he digs into his inner self, expressing how the nightingale’s singing made him forget about his troubles. Yet another mention of the classical world can be found in this ode, with the reference to the Greek god of wine, Bacchus.
With his Ode to Psyche and Ode to melancholy, he presents us with the concept of the poet as a dreamer; a theme initially explored by first generation Coleridge in kubla Khan. The function of a dream or vision is indicated by Keats as necessity, for the poet to experience a deeper sense of reality, carrying an edge of danger.The set of odes he wrote, became famous for their classical form, with some critics seeing them as a new tone for the English lyric.
The dichotomy of melancholy in delight and pleasure in pain; The way he marvelled at the simple existence of things, made him stand out amongst other poets of this romantic age.
When it comes to P.B Shelley and Lord Byron’s writings, we can say that they differ from each other, but still manage to hold a common ground: just like Keats, they demonstrate a clear spirit of criticism, focused on the institutions of religion, politics and even society itself.
The regency period these young poets lived in, was a time of sexual indulgence in high society. a time of freedom, but also a time of political oppression, with a very right-winged government, that quelled all the revolutionary attempts.
Unlike Wordsworth, who would just leave troubles behind and focus in natural themes, the second generation, had a rebel spirit that couldn’t be left out of their artistic works.
The ideals of these young poets were nurtured by this oppression, as shown in P.B Shelley’s Queen Mab, right on the footnotes (not even focused on the poetry itself). The same goes for his Mask of Anarchy, his radical side comes before his poetry, he writes a wonderfully vicious attack, towards the world of politics that he is glad to be out of. Being a rebel at heart he fought against all sorts of conventional customs, laws and existing religions. Seemingly acting not with the intent to cause a big impact but more for his own private satisfaction. His main literary themes focus on freedom and love as the remedies against the faults and evils of society along with the belief that man could, eventually, overcome any political, moral and social conventions. Shelley uses images and symbols to render his ideas vivid to the reader, often contrasting with the accepted associations. His poetic style is very rich, and, at times, his use of metaphors and symbols make it difficult to understand what he really means.
Shelley was close friends with Keats, and deeply affected by his friends ‘untimely death, going as far as writing an Elegy in his name entitled Adonais. We can see how this generation’s poetry was very adamant of the expression of personal experiences.
He wrote Epipsychidion, to idealize his own life and feelings, stating that love goes beyond earthly limits.
In his essay A Defence of Poetry he emphasizes the idea that poetry can be considered the expression of imagination because it contains a revolutionary creativity that can change the reality of an increasingly material world. The second generation was isolated from society, usually dying young, and far away from their original homes; we can say they really experienced a strong disillusionment, a disappointment which is expressed in the clash between what is real and what is ideal; We can see that they aren’t capable to bridge this gap.
For the second generation, the poet’s task is to help mankind to reach an ideal world where freedom, love and beauty are delivered from their enemies, such as tyranny, destruction and alienation. As far as Nature is concerned, Shelley’s theory is that it sympathises with man, and is for him an eternal source of joy and happiness. He shares with Wordsworth the idea of nature as an active force, an union and universal power, believing that by cooperating with this power, mankind will be led into a social rebirth; He speaks of the war between the oppressed and the oppressors, and this is why the idea of prophetic status, the poet prophet, of the second generation differs greatly from the idea of poet prophet of the first generation, that believed in existential themes such as human destiny, and other factors as essential elements to be a writer, Whereas the second generation assumes a realistic idea of a Poet prophet, that was not chosen by a larger force and that is actively working towards a social change.
This aspect is also strong in Lord Byron’s works, the Byronic hero in general is always fighting against tyranny in order to help oppressed people achieve freedom. This hero
develops from his character Childe Harold, and mirrors many aspects of the writer’s own personality, to the point of confusion between the writer and the character.
This individualism separates Lord Byron from Keats, contrary to him, Keats, doesn’t reveal much about himself.
We could say that this Byronic hero is as sort of compensation for lord Byron himself, because of his difficult childhood, that was characterized by oppression, this weak version of him was now being rewritten with a strong personality.
Lord Byron was a bitter cynical man and his personality reflected on his works; He became the spokesman for the post-Napoleonic generation, with a popularization of his adorned language, with exception to his Don Juan, where a more colloquial, witty language was used.