Assignment 103 Romantic Poets of First Generation
Assignment paper 103 Romantic Poets of First Generation
Romantic Poets of First Generation
Table of content:
Personal Information
Introduction
William Black
William Wordsworth
S. T. Coleridge
Work Cited
Personal Information :
Name: Kusum J. Sarvaiya
Batch: M. A. Sem 1 (2023-25)
Enrollment N. :
Roll N. : 21
Paper 103: Literature of Romantics
Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English,, M. K. University Bhavnagar
E mail: kusumsarvaiya2304@gmail.com
Introduction :
The first generation of Romantic poets, spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries, consisted of remarkable literary figures who reshaped poetry's landscape. At the forefront were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. Wordsworth, a nature enthusiast, celebrated the sublime in everyday life through his lyrical ballads. Coleridge, known for his vivid imagination, co-authored the famous "Lyrical Ballads" with Wordsworth and crafted enigmatic poems like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Southey, renowned for his epics and ballads, contributed to the Romantic movement with his works celebrating heroism and folklore.
Wordsworth, with his focus on the ordinary and the natural world, shifted poetry's subject matter from lofty themes to the beauty found in everyday life, influencing future poets to explore personal experiences and nature.Coleridge's vivid imagination and exploration of the supernatural expanded poetic possibilities, introducing symbolism and psychological depth into literature.
Southey's contributions, though sometimes overshadowed by his contemporaries, added to the Romantic movement by celebrating heroism, folklore, and historical narratives, contributing to the richness and diversity of Romantic literature.Collectively, their works laid the groundwork for a new era of poetry that celebrated individual expression, emotions, and the awe-inspiring power of nature. This influence reverberated through subsequent generations, shaping literature for years to come.
William Blake:
Blake was born on November 28, 1757. Unlike many well-known writers of his day, Blake was born into a family of moderate means. His father, James, was a hosier, and the family lived at 28 Broad Street in London in an unpretentious but “respectable” neighborhood. In all, seven children were born to James and Catherine Wright Blake, but only five survived infancy. Blake seems to have been closest to his youngest brother, Robert, who died young.
Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity.
In his Life of William Blake (1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake “neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work’y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself ‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.” Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of his peers. Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and political change that profoundly influenced his writing. In addition to being considered one of the most visionary of English poets and one of the great progenitors of English Romanticism, his visual artwork is highly regarded around the world.
William Wordsworth :
William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District and attended St John’s College in Cambridge. As was customary for scholars of those times he went on his Grand Tour through Europe and while travelling on foot the French Alps, in 1790, he became familiar with the revolutionary democratic ideas that so much affected him. However, he was soon greatly disappointed for they turned into raging fury destroying any hope of a more just social order. He was so distraught by such turn of events that he had a nervous breakdown that nearly annihilated him and from which he recovered only thanks to the close contact to nature that such an important part will have in his poetry later on.
His close relationship with his sister Dorothy and his friendship with Samuel T. Coleridge were crucial for Wordsworth poetical growth and development. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson with whom he had five children, he also had an older daughter from a previous relationship he had had with Annette Vallon. A distinguished intellectual and artist he was made Poet Laureate in 1843.
Wordsworth focuses on two main poetic themes, nature and childhood. They are both bound together as for Wordsworth the child’s sensations of the outside world, free of any cultural contamination, are retrieved through the adult’s memory and meditation and recreate his inner life which is enriched then by a quiet contemplation of Nature’s beauty. Nature is, according to Wordsworth, a living presence; not only plants and animals, but inanimate things such as mountains, stones, rivers are also endowed with a spirit and a living essence of their own and man can therefore see in it God’s creation linking nature to his own inner life, so man, through this blending of his deeper essence with Nature, and through this special relationship can rediscover and be part of the All Mighty’s design.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge :
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772, he studied at Christ’s Hospital School in London and then in Cambridge but he never graduated. He was much inspired by the new democratic ideals of the French Revolution and became a Republican, with his friend Robert Southey, a radical, he meant to set up a utopian community in Pennsylvania where private property did not exist but everyone worked for the community’s interest in peace. This idea never became reality and the French Revolution also turned into a great disillusionment, furthermore Coleridge suffered from chronic rheumatism and to alleviate the pain he was prescribed opium which in turn made him develop an addiction to the drug that will condition his entire life.
His friendship with William Wordsworth became very important to him and during these years he created his best poetic works. Later, he lived in Malta for some time and when he returned to England he dedicated himself to teaching literature and journalism. Shakespearian criticism owes him the basis for its development and literary criticism in general, thanks to his Biographia Literaria (1817).
As far as imagination is concerned Coleridge had his own theory partly derived from his German studies. He divided it into two parts which he called “primary” and “secondary”. In his opinion, during “Primary imagination” the world around us transmits us information that all human beings commonly perceive through their senses. “Secondary imagination”, instead, is the special gift that poets have “to idealize and unify” in a sort of ecstasy, images are associated to others according to laws of their own that absolutely escape those of simply putting together data coming from experience.
Imagination though has nothing to do with “fancy” since this is the mechanical use of poetic devices such as metaphors or similes. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge prefer imagination to Fancy, their difference consists in that for Wordsworth the poet modifies or transforms and “half-recreates” the information gathered through experience by “recollection in tranquillity”, Coleridge, instead, believes that imagination goes beyond the data of experience and does actually “create”.
Work Cited:
Lrcapuana.com. “First Generation Romantic Poets – William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge.” L. R. CAPUANA, 1 May 2021, lrcapuana.com/2017/02/17/first-generation-romantic-poets-william-wordsworth-and-samuel-t-coleridge/.https://lrcapuana.com/2017/02/17/first-generation-romantic-poets-william-wordsworth-and-samuel-t-coleridge/ Accessed 24 Nov. 2023.
“William Blake.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-blake.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-blake Accessed 24 Nov. 2023.
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