Nature, Imagination, Travel, and Revolution in Poetry

Prof. Q

Romanticism Roots in Germany and England Literature: 1789 – Blake’s Songs /

1850 Wordsworth’s Prelude It was a reaction to several events:

Industrial Revolution

Aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment

A reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature

It placed a strong emphasis on emotion.

Key Elements of Romanticism Free Expression of the Artist’s Feelings

Caspar David Friedrich: “The artist's feeling is his law."

William Wordsworth “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of […] emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Art must come from imagination with as little “artificial rules” working as interference.

Romantic Genius - An artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of "creation from nothingness“.

To be derivative was the worst sin. Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and

tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy.

Romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves

Major Works (Very Short Selection)

Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge) Songs of Innocence and Experience (Blake) Manfred, Don Juan (Byron) Odes (Keats) Fragments, Ode to Intellectual Beauty (Shelley)

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13, 1798

FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the dim

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first

I came among these hills;

[...]

For nature then(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,

And their glad animal movements all gone by)

To me was all in all.--I cannot paint

What then I was.

Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

NuttingForcing my way, I came to one dear nook

Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign

Of devastation; but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,

A virgin scene!—A little while I stood,

Breathing with such suppression of the heart

As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint

Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed

The banquet;—or beneath the trees I sate

Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;

A temper known to those, who, after long

And weary expectation, have been blest

With sudden happiness beyond all hope.

Then up I rose,And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crashAnd merciless ravage: and the shady nookOf hazels, and the green and mossy bower,Deformed and sullied, patiently gave upTheir quiet being: and, unless I nowConfound my present feelings with the past;Ere from the mutilated bower I turnedExulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,I felt a sense of pain when I beheldThe silent trees, and saw the intruding sky.

Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shadesIn gentleness of heart; with gentle handTouch—for there is a spirit in the woods.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

[...]

He holds him with his skinny hand,

'There was a ship,' quoth he.

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'

Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years' child:

The Mariner hath his will.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased us south along. [...]At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name. [...]And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! [...]'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. [...]Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.

Spots of Time (Wordsworth)There are in our existence spots of time,That with distinct pre-eminence retainA renovating virtue, whence–depressedBy false opinion and contentious thought,Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,In trivial occupations, and the roundOf ordinary intercourse–our mindsAre nourished and invisibly repaired;A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,That penetrates, enables us to mount,When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

Discussion What is the meaning of Spots of Time?