Name:- Sejal Parmar R
Course:- M.A English
Sem:-2
Batch:- 2018-2020
Enrollment no:- 2069108420190033
Paper:- 5 The Romantic Literature
Topic:- Wordsworth and Coleridge a study of poets
Submitted to:- smt. S. B. Gardi department of English MKBU
Imail id:- sejalparmar095@gmail.com
An Introduction of The Romantic Age :
The
first half of the nineteenthcentury records the triumph of Romanticism in
literature and democracyin government. The chief subject of romantic literature
is the essential nobleness of common men and the value of theindividual. In the
period there were so many writers and poets were presenting their individual
point of views and viewingthe world with their own perspective. It was an age
of poetry and poets of the agewere William Wordsworth, Samuel Tailor Coleridge,
Robert Southey, Walter Scott, George Gordon Byron and many more poets has given
their contribution in the poetry of the age. Here is the introduction of two
major poets of Romantic Age.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
* Life :
Wordsworth
is born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland, and spent his seventeen years in
Cumberland Hills; his mother died when he is eight years old and after six
years his father has also died, and the orphan has taken in charge by
relatives, in school he used learn with flowers and hills rather than classes;
in 1787 he went toCambridge. It is the time of stress and storm with his
revolutionary experience in university and in his life it is like a period of
uncertainty. He started writing from 1797 to 1799 a very short period but very
important in his life and for the romantic period, and from 1799 he has takenretirement
from his work of writing and spent time in between the nature at northern lake
region where he was born, he was very close to the nature which experience has
reflected in all his poetry.
I heard among the solitary hills
Lowbreathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion.
He goes out into the
woods at night and what heexperienced he has presented in the poetry it is like
a mental photograph. On the death of Southey, he was made poet laureate,
against his own inclination.
* The Poetry of
Wordsworth :
Wordsworth has in favour ofsimple poetic diction but he himself has not
followed his own rule, his poetries are easy to read but not to understand,
reader could get the pleasure but not the hidden meaning. As in his poem
“Lucy”:
A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Wordsworth was strongly believedthat man and nature should be portrayed
as they are. He was not always melodious, but he was seldom graceful. He is
absolutely without humour.
After his longerworks his first good book as per critics is Selections
with short poems, after reading these poems we come to know that Wordsworth is
the greatest nature poet that ever has been produced by our literature. No
other poethas found such beauty in nature as Wordsworth has described. He had a
strong belief that all nature is the reflection of the living God, all his
contemporary writers like Cowper, Burns, Keats, and Tennyson were providing the
out ward aspects of nature in varying degrees but Wordsworth gives you her very
life, and the experience of man with the nature. While reading his poetry the
reader could feel the touch of nature, the experience of wonderland and memory
of our own childhood.
Wordsworth’s philosophytoward human life is very simple that man is not
apart from nature, but is the very “life of her life.” Wordsworth hasconnected
birth with nature and he expressed this gladness with poetry that the child
comes straight from the Creator of nature:
Our birth is but a sleep and aforgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
But trailing cloud of glory do we come
From God, who is our home”
In
“Intimations of Immorality from recollections of Early Childhood” and in “The
Retreat” he has summed up his childhood and philosophy; In “Tintern Abbey”,
“The Rainbow”, “Ode to Duty” and “Intimation of Immorality” it is plain
teaching; In “Michael,” “The Solitary Reaper,” “to a Highland Girl,” “Stepping
Westward,” he tries to suggests the joy and sorrow not of princes or kings but
of a common life. He hasdescribed his whole life in “The Prelude” and “The
Recluse” is the treat to nature.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834)
* Life :
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, theyoungest of thirteen children. He was an extra precocious
child, who could read at the age of threes, and before he was five, he had read
the Bible and the Arabian Nights. From three to six he has attended “dame”
school and from six to nine he was attending his father’s school and in that
period his father died. At ten he sent to London for school education. At
nineteen Coleridge, who had read more books than old professor he entered
Cambridge as a charity student. He left the university without taking the
degree. After that he has joined Southey and they were working together for theregeneration
of the human society. Then he studied in Germany; worked as a private secretary
later he went to Rome for study and then he started The Friend a paper devoted
to truth and liberty.
In
early life he suffered from neuralgia, and to ease the pain began to use
opiates, the result was very bad he became a slave to the drug habit; after
fifteen years of pain and struggle and despair, he gave up and put himself in
the charge of physician and Carlyle who visited him at this time called him “a
king of men” he later gave his contribution in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. He died
in 1834, and was buried in Highgate Church.
* Works of
Coleridge :
In
the poetry of Coleridge we find note of sympathy, and humanity. He has three
divisions of his works, the poetic, the critical and thephilosophical. He had a
strong influence of Blake’s poetry. Coleridge was very much attracted with the
concept of supernatural, he was able to make familiar world unfamiliar, as he
himself noted in his “Day Dreams” that,
“My eyes make pictures when they are shut”
It seems very similar to Blake’s songs ofinnocence, bbut the
difference between both is very important that Blake is only a dreamer while
Coleridge is dreamer as well as a profound scholar. Strong suggestions of Blake
can be seen suchpoetries like “A Day Dreamer,” “The Devil’s Thoughts,” “The
Suicide’s Argument,” and “The Wanderings of Cain.”
His
later poems there is hisimagination with thought and study, as it could be
noticed in “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner.”
Coleridge’s more controversial and unfinishedpoem id Kubla Khan, the poem has a
verbal dream pictures,
The sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
He
was interrupted after fifty-four lines werewritten, and he never finished the
poem. Christabel is also planned as the story of a pure young girl and till the
poem ends it has so many elements which convert it from a simple story to a
very mysterious and horror supernatural reading. The masterpiece of Coleridge
is “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” he has presented this poem in Lyrical
Ballads, he has made the reader aware with the supernatural imagination he has
presented totally an imaginative journey which cannot be true and reader also
know that but though it seems real, it gives us a sense of reality if weconnect
the incidence with each other, the poem has a very good meter, rime and melody.
Coleridge has a very clear pattern of poetry that he never describes things but
makes suggestions, brief suggestions and always right, it supports with the
imagination of the reader.
Coleridge has written also a short poems, and there is a wide variety,
that are, “Ode to France,” “Youth and Age,” “Dejection,” “Love Poems,” “ fears
in Solitude,” “Religious Musings,” “Work Without Hope,” and “Hymn Before
Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.” Coleridge also translated a poem from Latin,
“The Virgin’s Cradle Hymn” and “Wallenstein” is its best example.
Coleridge’s proseworks are also important; the first and remarkable one
is Biographia Literaria, or Sketches of My Literary Life and Options, his
collected Lectures on Shakespeare (1849), and Aids to Reflection (1825) both
are very important on the literary point of view. His lectures has been stood
for two centuries as the rules of literary criticism of Shakespeare, it could
be applied to all the literary works. Coleridge had a belief that only a
profound philosopher could be a perfect poet, as he has the philosophic
perspective in his poetries. He has introduced the idealistic philosophy of
Germany to England. In his works he has presented the view of Religion and
aspect of Philosopher. The life of Coleridge was full of strugglethough he has
lived with his imagination and supernatural realms.
Wordsworth and Coleridge both have given a very important contribution
to the literary world. Contemporary literature has also aninfluence of both.
The introduction of nature by Wordsworth and supernatural world by Coleridge is
still fresh asblossomed flower.
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