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WORDSWORTH & COLERIDGE.

Examines poets' themes, styles, focus on Nature as examples of 19th Cent. Romantic Movement.

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One of the elements of the Romantic Movement in literature was the elevation of Nature as a subject not only for poetry but for study, for life, and as a source of philosophy. This element is seen in different forms in the works of different artists. Romantic poetry such as that by Wordsworth, for instance, takes a more realistic and naturalistic view of Nature than does the more other-worldly sense of Nature found in Coleridge. Each poet features Nature, creates images of the natural world, and makes a connection between human life and the world of nature. This point of view is partially a product of the Enlightenment and of a more human-centered conception of the universe. A comparison of some poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge shows how different poets reacted to the new world-view.
The Romantic period in English literature is usually

A comparison of some poems byWordsworth and Coleridge shows how different poets reacted to the new world-view. In the first chapter of the Biographia Literaria, Coleridgerecalls a crisis in his thinking which he was able to avoid throughpoetry, "though not by poetry as poetry. 1-3). The supernatural for Coleridge oftenhas the quality of a dream. There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek. In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," thatdream is a nightmare. For both Wordsworth and Coleridge, there is a psychological elementto both Nature and poetry, and each offer a means of soothing the humanmind and soul. This element is seen in differentforms in the works of different artists. A savage place! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet (9-1 ).The poet also aggrandizes nature above both Science and Art and says againthat he can learn more from nature than from any other source. so much as by poetry as arepresentative of nature" (Perry http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat 385).Wordsworth uses his poetry as a means of addressing psychological issuerswhile showing that Nature a he observes it has the same effect, as isevident in his poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." Inthis work, Wordsworth returns to a site he experienced before. The imagery presented now is reminiscent of the terrorof discovering the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and here the serpent is . Heremembers his earlier feelings and responds to the feelings evoked in himon this return visit: "Five years have past; five summers, with the length/Of five long winters!" (1-2). Coleridge tells a ghostly story in "Christabel," another poem withicy, cold imagery taken from Nature. Coleridge here turns elements ofnature into harbingers of things to come, for Kubla Khan now hears voicesfrom the past telling of a war to come. It is as if humans were then challenging Nature, whichresponds by demonstrating who is the more powerful. In "Kubla Khan," the poem itself is derived from adream vision and is incomplete because the dream was never completed by thepoet. Hisadult view was a conscious revolt against the scientific view of the worldand man: To such temperaments as Wordsworth and Coleridge, it seemed that both the outer and the inner world had been thoroughly mechanized by scientists and psychologists; the physical universe and the soul of man were alike governed by mechanical laws and subject to rationalistic analysis. that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! . The natural and the mysticalcombine in the dream. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2. . The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. This point ofview is partially a product of the Enlightenment and of a more human-centered conception of the universe. Each poet features Nature, creates images of the natural world, and makesa connection between human life and the world of nature. In thefirst, Wordsworth is addressed by his friend Matthew, who asks why he sitson a stone and observes nature as if he were the first human being to doso. Imagination in Coleridge. . Talbot Donaldson, Hallet Smith, Robert M. Norton, 1962.Adams, Robert M. The oldregime in England took its stand in the face of revolutionary fervor basedon the American and French Revolutions. The Romantic period in English literature is usually considered toextend from 1798, when Wordsworth and Coleridge published their LyricalBallads, to 1832, when Sir Walter Scott died (Abrams et al. . "Christabel" also has the aura of a nightmare--the action takesplace at night, with many of the accoutrements of the supernatural story,from the clock striking in the night to the white-clad figure of a womanmoving through the grounds, unable to cross the threshold of the castle.The woman, Geraldine, is some sort of vampire, but she is also apparentlycaught in the throes of larger supernatural forces herself and is unable tocontrol her actions. This mixture brings forth another image of the domeof pleasure, which seemed now to float on the waves as its shadow is caston the water: It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! Romantic poetry such as that byWordsworth, for instance, takes a more realistic and naturalistic view ofNature than does the more other-worldly sense of Nature found in Coleridge. "Wordsworth: A Minority Report." In British Romantic Poets, Shiv K. 33-44.Cuddon, J.A. (12-16).Another mysterious element is introduced with the fountain that emergesfrom the chasm, a fountain that also casts up huge rocks and tosses themaround as if they were grain in a thresher. "Coleridge, the Return to Nature, and the New Anti- Romanticism: An Essay in Polemic." Romanticism on the Net (August 1996), http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat 385.----------------------- 9 However, Wordsworth was not generally as mystic in his approach tothe intersection between Nature and spirit as was Coleridge. In the poem "Kubla Khan," Coleridge offers an even more mysticalvision of Nature. As with most movements, the perceptionthat a group of poets exhibited this sort of shift in sensibility issomething imposed after the fact by critics reading the works of Keats,Coleridge, and Wordsworth, among others, and finding that many of theirsentiments and responses demonstrate a similarity in outlook different fromthe previous age. Nature itself is a character in this story and seemsalways to be a manifestation of forces greater than the human beings itsurrounds: The night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? . (35-36). Cudworth's doctrine of nature as an adumbration of deity, a second book of Scripture through which God continuously reveals himself, was promptly appropriated by Coleridge in his lectures on revealed religion. Ford, and David Daiches. It is evident that the scene creates strongemotions in the poet and makes him follow a train of thought that takes himthrough a number of emotional changes and that evokes a wide array ofspiritual issues in his life, all related to the natural scene: Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of a more deep seclusion (lines 4-7).This poem shows that one of the things we learn from nature is how to lookwithin and seek the true meaning of our own souls. Wordsworth and Coleridge saw the universe and man as enveloped and interpenetrated by mystery and the all-comprehending unity of spirit (Bush 33).William Wordsworth states in his poems "Expostulation and Reply" and "TheTables Turned" that we can learn much of value from our interaction withNature. One of the elements of the Romantic Movement in literature was theelevation of Nature as a subject not only for poetry but for study, forlife, and as a source of philosophy. Each of the 16 stanzas consists of three lines ofiambic tetrameter and one line of iambic trimeter. This is a Romantic concept, and the Romantic poets turned tonature as their schoolroom and derived life's lessons from nature. For those who sympathized with theRevolution, they needed a new revolution directed against reason and towardsomething else, and that "something else" was imagination (Adams 363).Romanticism was a movement marked by a shift in feeling, a shift insensibility, as well as a new concept of man's relation to the naturalorder and to Nature in particular. Wordsworth responds that his sense cannot but help to react to nature. Wordsworthdoes show a more Coleridge-like view of nature and the supernatural in hispoem "Lucy Gray, in which he tells the true story of a young girl whodrowned after losing her way in a snowstorm. Norton, 1983.Bush, Douglas. The first line of thepoem begins with a spondee, however, two stressed syllables that act as acall to the reader to listen. It also emphasizes that Lucy Gray is a well-known story, and as the first three stanzas unfold, it is evident that LucyGray is well-known because of her supernatural form and power. The poetinserts himself into the poem from the first--this is a reaction to hismeeting with the ghost-child on the moor, and the poet himself has "crossedthe wild" and so has experienced the darkness of Nature such as hascaptured the spirit of this child. This line is also not characteristicin terms of meter. Wordsworth always identified himself as having a special messageconcerning nature's relation to man and man's relation to nature. London: Macmillan, 1978.Perry, Seamus. Again the sacred river emergesfrom beneath this fountain, connecting the images in this second section tothose in the first even more directly. Kumar (ed.). . (42-46).Coleridge's intellectual development can be seen to have been given impetusby his discovery in 1795 of Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System: Cudworth had challenged the rising tide of empiricism in his day by asserting that the universe was not (as Hobbes and others believed) composed merely of inert material atoms governed by mechanical laws; rather, the natural world was symbolic of a transcendent reality that lay beyond material appearances. Romanticism was marked by certain attitudes, among themthe following: 1) a growing interest in Nature and in the natural,primitive, and uncivilized manifestations of Nature; 2) a growing interestin scenery; 3) an association of human moods with the "moods" of Nature,leading to a subjective feeling for it and interpretation of it; 4) anemphasis on natural religion; 5) an emphasis on the need for spontaneity inthought and action and in the expression of thought; 6) more importancegiven to natural genius and the power of the imagination; 7) a tendency toexalt the individual and his or her needs and an emphasis on the need for afreer and more personal expression; and 8) the cult of the Noble Savage(Cuddon 814-815). as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! . Wordsworth had stated in hisPreface to Lyrical Ballads that he intended to cast a blanket ofimagination over ordinary things, and this tragic death was such anordinary thing which Wordsworth infuses with a poetic sensibility, acertain view of the importance of the individual, and an elevation of thepower of Nature and the relationship between Nature and the individual.The poem seems simple in construction, though Wordsworth varies his meteras needed to emphasize certain words and so certain ideas or a certainsense of Nature and the events depicted. (Hill 4). New York: W.W. . Both Coleridge andWordsworth use poetry in this way, but they also use Nature for that sameassessment of the soul. The poet introducesLucy Gray as the subject and the center of the poem in the first line:"Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray" (1). . . New York: Penguin, 1991.Hill, John Spencer. The story of the poem is alsodeceptively simple, but Wordsworth infuses it with considerable complexityas it unfolds. New York: New York University Press, 1966. Works CitedAbrams, M.H., E. In "The Tables Turned," the same subject is pursued of an evening, and thepoet notes the great value of learning from nature over learning frombooks: Books! The Land and Literature of England. Throughout this poem, the imagery shows the power of Natureboth to give meaning to life and to take life when humans venture too farinto the wild. Adams, Samuel Holt Monk, George H. New York: W.W.

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