William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.- a critical study.

Assignment

Name: Dave NIMESH B
M.A. Semester: 2
Paper No. (5) Romantic Literature
Assignment Topic: Wordsworth and Coleridge( as a Romantic Poet): a critical study.
*Biography.
*works
*features of poetry
* comparison and contrast  in Wordsworth and Coleridge.
*conclusion

• Introduction

                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.

*WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ( 1770-1850)

*biography

William Wordsworth ( 7 April- 1770- 23 April- 1850) a major English romantic poet, was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, a town outside the Lake district.His father was a lawyer, died when he was thirteen years old. So  the orphan was the orphan was taken in charge by some relatives, who sent him to school at Hawkshed in the beautiful lake region.

Born	7,April, 1770 Cockermouth, Cumberland England.
Died	23, April, 1850 (aged 80) Cumberland, England.
Occupation	Poet
Almamater	Cambridge University
Literary Movement	Romanticism
Notable works	‘lyrical Ballads’, ‘ Poems in two Volumes’, ‘ The Excursion’,’ The Prelude’, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’

 Here apparently,  the unroofed school of nature attracted him more than the discipline of the classics, and he learned more eagerly from flowers and hills and stars than  from his books.

              

  Wordsworth went  Cambridge, entering St. John’s college in 1787, and having graduated in 1791 He left  with no foxed career in view. After spending few months in London he crossed over to France (1791), and stayed at Orleans and Blois for nearly a year. An enthusiasm for the revolution was aroused in him; he himself has chronicled the mood in one of his happiest passages.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very heaven !

Three things in his poems must impress the casual reader

1.       Wordsworth loves to be alone, and is never lonely with nature

2.       Like every other child who spends much time alone in the  woods and fields, he feels the presence of some living spirit.

His impressions are exactly like our own, and delightfully familiar when he tells  of the long summer day spent in swimming, basking in the sun,  and questing over the hills or of the winter night  when, on hid skates he chased the reflection of a star in the black ice, or of his exploring the lake in a boat.

                The second period of Wordsworth’s life begins with his university course at Cambridge. All his life he was poor, and lived in an atmosphere of “ Plain living and High thinking” In 1839 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L., in 1842 the crown awarded him a pension of  £300 a year.On the death of Southey in 1843 he became the Poet Laureate. 

    William Wordsworth died from an aggravated care of pleurisy on 23, April, 1850, and was buried at St. Oswald’s church, Grasmere.Wordsworth was hailed by critics as the first living poet, and one of the greatest  that England had ever produced.  

          Poetry was his life, his soul was in all his works.Outwardly his long and uneventful life divides naturally into four periods.1.      His childhood and youth, in the Cumberland Hills, from 1770 to 1787.

2.      A period of uncertainty, of storm and stress, including his university life at Cambridge, his travels abroad and his revolutionary experience from 1787 to 1797.

3.      A short but significant period of finding himself, and his work, from 1797 to 1799.
A long period of retirement in the northern lake region, where he was born, and where for a full half century he lived so close to nature that her influence is reflected in all his poetry.

His Major works

1. ‘Lyrical Ballads’, with a few other poems (1798)
2. “simon Lee”
3. ‘we are seven’
4. ‘lines written in  early spring’
5. ‘expostulation and reply’
6. ‘The Thorn’
7. ‘The Tables Turned’
8. “Lines composed A few Miles above Tintern Abbey’
9. ‘Lyrical Ballads’ with other poems (1800)
10. ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballad’
11. ‘Strange Fits of Passion have I Known’
12. ‘She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways’’
13. ‘Three Years she Grew’
14. ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
15. ‘I travelled among unknown men’
16. ‘Lucy Gray’
17. ‘The two April Mornings’
18. ‘Nuttuing’
19. ‘ The Ruined Cottage’
20. ‘Michael’
21. ‘The Kitten at Play’
22. ‘Poems, in two Volumes’ (1807)
23. ‘Resolution and Independence’
24. ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’ also known as “DAFFODILS”
25. ‘my heart leaps up’
26. ‘Ode to Duty’
27. ‘The solitary Reaper’
28. ‘London’
29. ‘Elegiac Stanzas’
30. ‘Guide to the Lakes’
31. ‘To the Cuckoo’
32. ‘Ode: Intimation to Immortality’
33. ‘The Prelude’
34. ‘Laodamia’
35. ‘The world is too much with us’
36. ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’, September  3, 1802’.

                At the university he composed some poetry, which appeared as ‘An Evening walk’ (1793) and ‘Descriptive Sketches’ (1793). In style this poems have little originality, but they already show the Wordsworthian eye for nature.

The fruits of his genius were seen in the “ Lyrical Ballads” (1798), a joint production by Coleridge and himself, which was published at Bristol.

                Some of his poems as ‘ The Thorn’ and ‘ The Idiot Boy’ are condemned as being  trivial and childish in style.

A few, such as ‘Simon Lee’ and ‘ Expostulation and Reply’ are made adequate  in their expression.  And the concluding piece , ‘Tintern Abbey’, is one of the triumph of his genius.

                Almost the most noteworthy of the new works in this collection were ‘Michael’, ‘ The Old Cumberland Beggar’, ‘She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways’, ‘Strange fits of passion have I Known’,  and ‘ Nutting’.

                ‘The Prelude’, which was completed in 1805 but not published until 1850, after Wordsworth’s death, is the record of his development as a poet. He describes his experiences with a fullness, closeness, and laborious anxiety that are unique in our literature.

                ‘The prelude’ was intended to form part of a vast philosophical work called ‘The Recluse’, which was never completed.

Next to be published, in 1807, were two volumes of poem which represent the fine flower of his genius. It is impossible here to list even the very great poems  in these volumes, but even in poetic form that he used, with the possible exception of the narrative, Wordsworth is here seen at the height of his powers.

His Finest Sonnets

• ‘The Green Linnet’
• ‘The Solitary Reaper’
• ‘Ode to Duty’
• ‘I wandered Lonely as a Cloud’
• ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’
• ‘Resolution and Independence’
• ‘Sonnets dedicated to National  Independence and Liberty’

All this are of a quality which has led many critics to hail them as the finest sonnets in the language.

                After the publication of The Excursion Wordsworth’s poetical power was clearly on the wane, but his productivity was unimpaired. His later volumes include ‘The White Doe of Rylstone’ (1815), ‘The Waggoner, (1819) ‘Peter Bell’ (1819), ‘Yarrow Revisited' (1835) and ‘The Borderers’ (1842) a drama.

Wordsworth’s theory of poetry:-

In the Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. Wordsworthian dogma can be divided into two portions concerning (1) the subject and (2) the style of poetry.Wordsworth’s Definition of poetry:-

“poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, recollected in tranquility”

*object- ( Subject Matter of Poetry)

-to choose incidents and situations from common life

-a selection of language really used by men, and to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination.

Subject matter of poetry:-

• Humble and rustic life

Language/ Diction of poetry ( style of poetry)

Wordsworth’s views on poetical style are the most revolutionary of all the ideas in his preface.

• He discarded the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers.

He insist that ‘ his poems are written in selection of language really used by men in a state of vivid sensation.

His views on poetic diction can be summed up as “ there  neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

·         What is a poet?

He is a man speaking to men, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness. He has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul.

*Some of his beautiful poems

The following lyrics illustrates this mood of perfection.

Rainbow

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die !

The child is the father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

The series of Lucy poems are typical of their kind:

She dwelt among the untrodden waysBeside the spring of Dove,A maid whom there where none to praise,And very few to love.A violet by mossy stoneHalf hidden from the eye!Fair as a star, when only oneIs shining in the sky.She lived unknown, and few could knowWhen Lucy ceased to br;But she is in her grave, and oh,The difference to me !

In this sonnets his lyrical mood burns clear and strong, and as a result they rank among the best in English poetry. Wordsworth’s use of Petrarchan form was so striking that he re-established its supremacy over the Shakespearean sonnet , which had eclipsed it in popularity during the last great age of sonneteering- the Elizabethans.

• His treatment of Nature:

 his dealing with nature are his chief glory as a poet. Even the slightest of his poems have evidence of close observation.

The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one.

He tries to see more deeply and to find the secret spring of this joy and thanksgiving. 

He says:

To me the meanest flower that blow can giveThoughts that do often lie to deep for tears.

Let’s see his another beautiful poem..

Our birth is but a sleep and a foregetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star

Hath had elsewhere its seting,

And cometh from a far;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From god, who is our home.

-Ode: Intimations of Immortality

And also the most famous poem among all  ‘Daffodils’
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud…..

• Conclusion

It is always to be remembered that at his best Wordsworth can unite simplicity with sublimity. He has a kind of middle style, at its best it has grace and dignity, a heart searching simplicity, and a certain enlightenment of phrase that is all his own.


SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

*Biography

Born	21, October, 1772Devonshire, ENGLAND.
Died	25, July 1834 (aged 61) Highgate, Middlesex, England.
Occupation	Poet, Critic, Philosopher
Almamater	Jesus college, Cambridge
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable works	‘The Rime of the Ancient mariner’ ‘Kubla Khan’.

Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772. As a child he was unusually precocious. He was a poet, literary critic and a philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth , was a founder of the ROMANTIC  movement in ENGLAND  and a member of the LAKE POETS.

                At Bristol Coleridge lecture and issued a newspaper called ‘ The Watchman’ (1796). At this time(1797) he met Wordsworth, and as has already been noticed , planned their joint production of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’, which was published at Bristol.

If Wordsworth represents the central pillar of early Romanticism, Coleridge is nevertheless an important structural support. His emphasis on the imagination, its independence from the outside world and its creation of fantastic pictures such as those found in the “Rime” exerted a profound influence on later writers such as Shelley.
                His depiction of feelings if alienation and numbness helped to define more sharply the Romantics idealized contrast between the emptiness of the city-where such feelings are experienced and the joys of nature.
                Coleridge’s intellect was quick, versatile and penetrating. He was idealistic and ranged for in the abstract thought.
Coleridge went to the Medieval period for creating the atmosphere of magic and mystery.
In 1792, he won the Brown Gold Medal for ode that he wrote on the slave trade.

• *His poetry:-

The real blossoming of Coleridge’s poetical genius was brief indeed, but the fruit of it was rich and wonderful.
                His first book was “Poems on Various Subjects” (1796), issued at Bristol. Then, in collaboration with Wordsworth he produced the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (1798). This remarkable volume contains nineteen poems by Wordsworth and four by Coleridge, and of these four by far the most noteworthy is “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

Wordsworth has set on record the origin of ‘The Ancient Mariner’. He and Coleridge discussed the poem during their walk on the Quantock Hills. The main idea of the voyage, founded on a dream of his own, was Coleridge’s, Wordsworth suggested details, and they thought of working on it together. Very soon, however, Coleridge’s imagination was fired with the story, and his friend was sensibly left him to write it all. Hence we have that marvelous series of that dissolving pictures, so curiously distinct and yet so strangely fused into one. The voyage through the polar ice, the death of the Albatross, the amazing scenes during the calm and the storm, and the return home. In style, in swift stealthiness of narrative speed , and in its weird and compelling strength of imagination the poem is without parallel.

In 1797 Coleridge also wrote the first part of ‘Christabel’, but though the second part was added in 1800. Christabel is the tale of a kind of witch, who by taking the shape of a lovely lady, wins the confidence of the heroine Christabel.
                ‘KUBLA KHAN’, written in 1798 but remained unpublished until 1816. It is the echo of a dream- the shadow of a shadow. Coleridge averts that he dreamt the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration, threw the words on paper, but before the fit was over was distracted from the composition, so that the glory of the dream never returned  and Kubla Khan remained unfinished.
                In the same year Coleridge composed several other poems, including the fine ‘Frost at Midnight’ and ‘France: an ode.
In 1802 he wrote the great ode ‘Dejection’, in which he already bewails the suspension of his “shaping spirit of imagination”
                                His play “Remorse” was on recommendation of Byron, accepted by the management of the Drury Lane Theatre and produced in 1813. It succeeded on stage, but as literature it is of little importance.

*features of his poetry:-

• ·         Intense imaginative power
• ·         Witchery of language
• ·         Simplicity of diction.

His prose work

“ The Morning post”

“the Watchman”

“the Friend”

“Biographia Literaria”

“Table Talk

‘ Aids to Reflection’

‘Lectures on Shakespeare and other poet’

 To sum up……..

• At its best Coleridge’s prose has much of the evocative suggestiveness of his finest poetry, and is an admirable stimulus to keener perception in the reader, while his choice of language is discriminating, particularly in the fine distinction he makes while describing the process of artistic creation.