William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Let the Romantic Period Begin….
Lyrical Ballads Published in 1798 Tintern Abbey Rime of the Ancient Mariner Began the Romantic Period
William Wordsworth 1770-1850 Orphaned in 1783 Degree from Cambridge, 1791 No head for business 1791, went to France to learn the language Inspired by Revolution
William Wordsworth Disillusioned about potential for change Reunited with sister, Dorothy 1795, inherited money 1797, met Coleridge 1798, Lyrical Ballads
The Best Poet of the Age Poetry: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” produced by someone who has “thought long and deeply” (Wordsworth).
“She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! This suggests? This suggests?
-- Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me! This is one of five “Lucy” poems. How did he feel about Lucy? This suggests? Did you see this coming?
The World is Too Much With Us 1807 Sonnet: 14 lines, shift in thought Wordsworth realized his creative powers were beginning to fail Response to accusations of conspiring against society, being an enemy of society
The World is Too Much With Us a The world is too much with us; late and soon, b Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: b Little we see in Nature that is ours; a We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! a This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; b The winds that will be howling at all hours, b And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers; a For this, for everything, we are out of tune; Tone?
The World is Too Much With Us How did the pagans differ from today’s men? The World is Too Much With Us c It moves us not. –Great God! I’d rather be d A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; c So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, d Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; c Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; d Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. Would we be happier if we were more ‘in tune’? Is this still pertinent today? Tone?
Literary Form Sonnet Italian, Petrarchan: octave and sestet Shakespearean: 3 quatrains, couplet Ode uses heightened, impassioned language addresses an object
Samuel Taylor Coleridge left university with no degree – commitment to utopian colony in America depressed: addiction to opium, failed marriage “Sage of Highgate” profound philosopher and guiding spirit
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Called Wordsworth the “the best poet of the age” Wordsworth called Coleridge “the most wonderful man I’ve ever known” Loneliness came from lifelong need for affection and support not available in an isolated writer’s life
Love of Language Kubla Khan p. 846
Rime of the Ancient Mariner Exploration of the ‘unreal’/imagination ‘Ballad’ in seven sections Love Shame Isolation Page 820
Albatross