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Name: Ravi Rajyaguru
In short, Wordsworth
believes in simplicity of diction and brought poetry to the level of the common
speech of common life. Coleridge was the master of narrative verse. The Ancient
Mariner is a fine example of narrative perfection. So with their so many
differences and similarities Wordsworth and Coleridge are different in their
writing in somehow.
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Study of Poets : William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Name: Ravi Rajyaguru
Roll no.28
M.A. Semester: 2
Enrolment No.: PG15101032
Year: 2015- 17
Paper no.:5 (The Romantic Literature)
Submitted to: Department of English
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
v Introduction
The
age of romanticism (1800-1850) it is the second creative period of English
literature. Well, any age like, the age of Romanticism becomes famous because
of creative writers. Wordsworth and Coleridge made this age by giving their
fabulous works. We can say at some extent that Shakespeare has started
romanticism in his age but after that no one has continued his effort. But the
unity of Wordsworth and Coleridge gave soul to the Romanticism again. The age
of Romanticism is known as the second creative period of English Literature.
The poetry of this age was marked by intense human sympathy and a consequent
understanding of the human heart. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the two great
poets of Romanticism and it was by their joint effort that the romantic revival
in poetry was brought about during nineteenth century. So let’s study William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in detail. So, let’s discuss William
Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in detail.
William
Wordsworth a well- known romantic poet, He was born at Cockermouth , Cumberland. He
was a thirteen years old when his father died. So, some of his relatives took
care of him and sent him to school at Hawkshed in the beautiful lake region. The
age of romanticism It is the second creative period of English literature. It
is known as an age of poetry and romantic enthusiasm.
Wordsworth
and Coleridge both the poets were related with Romantic age both the poets were
related with Romantic age both the poets were passionate and enthusiastic which
was reflects into their poems.
Romanticism
is the expression in terms of art of sharpened sensibilities and heightened
imaginative feelings. Emotion and imagination are the bedrock of romanticism;
imagination is the flight of sensibility. Romanticism stands for freedom and
liberty, and has therefore been designated as “liberalism in literature”.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ( 17701850)
He
was the exemplar of “plain living and high thinking.” He lived fairly humbly
and insisted that he spoke for the common man, but he expressed the exalted.
This humble yet exalted combination exemplified what became an enduring notion
of what “the poet” is. He was seen as a great poet of nature, and he made the
Lake District a tourist spot. Wordsworth was a close friend of, and worked and
published with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Together they produced “a new style and
a new spirit” in poetry. Later the two fell out.
"Poetry
is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from
emotion recollected in tranquility."
In
this definition of poetry there are two apparent contradictions. The
"spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" on one side and
"emotion recollected in tranquility" on the other side are apparently
two contradictory statements. "Spontaneous overflow" must be
immediate and unrestricted without any interval of time between feeling and its
expression. The expression "recollected in tranquility" would suggest
intervention of time between feeling and its expression.
v His Major works
ü Expostulation
and reply
ü The
Thorn
ü The
Tables Turned
ü Preface
to the Lyrical Ballad
ü Three
Years she Grew
ü I
travelled among unknown men
ü Lucy
Gray
ü Michael
ü Poems,
in two Volumes
ü Resolution
and Independence
ü I
Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’ also known as “DAFFODILS”
ü Ode
to Duty
ü London
ü Guide
to the Lakes
ü To
the Cuckoo
ü Ode:
Intimation to Immortality
ü The
Prelude
Wordsworth
believes that poetry should contain events from real, common and everyday life
while Coleridge believes that this feature is too limiting. Wordsworth believes
that a poem should be spontaneous and that it should arise out of powerful
emotions which are recollected in ecstasy or tranquility while Coleridge
believes that poetry deals with the communication.
Wordsworth’s
poetry is of stunning purity and power. One example that comes from the ‘Lucy’
poem included in later reprints of lyrical ballads. There is often a sense of
disappointment when one read Wordsworth for the first time like Wordsworth’s
Lucy.
v Wordsworth’s
poems fall into three categories:
Wordsworth
writes in a subjective style. He examines his state of mind or consciousness
before attempting to write a creative work. This is largely why he fell in love
in nature and became a nature worshipper. He believes in a primordial
relationship between the mind of man and the nature around him. Coleridge on
the other hand is quite objective. His works arise out of the factual and
biographical antecedence that surrounds his life.
v Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(17721834)
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge was a poet, philosopher, and literary critic whose writings
have been enormously influential in the development of modern thought. In his
own lifetime, Coleridge was renowned throughout Britain and Europe as one of
the Lake Poets, a closeknitgroup of writers including William Wordsworth and
Robert Southey, who resided in the English Lake District.Coleridge was also
known to many English readers as a talented prose writer, especially as the
author of the Biographia Literaria (1817).
Ø Coleridge’s
definition of a ‘Poem’
The
difference between Poem and Poetry, Coleridge considers distinguishing poem
from poetry. Coleridge points out that “poetry of the highest kind may exist
without metre and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem”.He
also assert that the poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all
poetry. Then the question is what poetry is? How is it different from poem? To
quote Coleridge: “What is poetry? Is so nearly the same question with, what is
a poem? The answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. Thus
the difference between poem and poetry is not given in clear terms. Even John
Shawcross writes;
“This
distinction between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ is not clear, and instead of defining
poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to
enumerate the characteristics of the imagination”.
This
is so because ‘poetry’ for Coleridge is an activity of the poet’s mind, and a
poem is merely one of the forms of its expression, a verbal expression of that
activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination.
Coleridge
was the master of narration verse. The Ancient Mariner is a fine example of
narrative perfection. Coleridge went to the mediveal period for creating the
atmosphere of magic and mystery. Wordsworth lived on the pain of common life
concentrating on the life that he saw around. He did not leave the earth and
his own times. The call of the middle Ages was not for Wordsworth, it was
purely for Coleridge.
“Holds
him with his gittering eye
The
wedding Guest stood still
And
listens like a three year's child:
The
Mariner hath his will
The
wedding Guest set on a stone
He
cannot choose but hear"
The
Rime of Ancient Mariner”
‘KUBLA KHAN’,
written in 1798 but remained unpublished until 1816. His later poems wherein
see his imagination bridled by thought may best appreciated in Kubla Khan and
Christable. Kubla khan is a fragment painting a gorgeous oriental dream picture
the whole poem came to Coleridge one morning when he had fallen asleep;.
"In
Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A
stately pleasure dome decree :
Where
Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through
caverns measureless to man
Down
to a sunless sea"
According
to Coleridge, the poem is distinguished form prose compositions by its
immediate object. The immediate object of prose is to give truth and that of
poem is to please.
Ø Features of his poetry
Coleridge’s
spontaneity is found in “Kubla Khan” the short poem he began under the
influence of a narcotic dream. Coleridge in contrast, left in his chaotic wake
a collection of fragments, short works, and prolegomena.
v Comparative Analysis:
· In
Wordsworth’s poem we find an imaginative record of the pastoral life as well as
the pastoral beauties of place he lived in, this is not so in the case of well
Coleridge. He lived in a world of his own thoughts and fancies, and did not
take care of the external suggestions.
· Wordsworth
was a teacher throughout his life holding out moral lesson for the guidance of
humanity. The teaching element in Coleridge's poetry is almost nominal.
Coleridge was greater artist than Wordsworth and the claims of art were more on
this poet than the climes of morality and teaching. In this respect he stands
apart from Wordsworth.
· Wordsworth
did not have the high imaginative power which Coleridge had his poems of supernaturalism.
The imaginative power of Wordsworth was on a lower level particularly because
he had not to deal with themes of imaginative character, but was mainly
concerned with the life of the simple people.
· Wordsworth
and Coleridge was that both of them always loved and appreciated nature
Wordsworth saw the spirit of joy in nature and at least in the early poems of
Coleridge the spirit of joy in nature represented.
v Conclusion
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