Essays on Literary Genres

2680

"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"

3 pages / 1343 words

Wordsworth’s pastoral poem “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey” eloquently expresses the poet’s feelings of ambivalence regarding maturation, nature, and modern society. The poem is formatted in a distinct approach that serves to highlight the poet’s own conflicting emotions. Wordsworth initiates the composition...

Poetry Romanticism

2681

Wordsworth: The Young and The Wise

3 pages / 1143 words

“Resolution and Independence” and “Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey” respectively illustrate the difference between a young and nave poet-wanderer to a traveler who has found wisdom through time and nature. Furthermore, the two poems are also able to elucidate dissimilar types of acquired wisdom through...

Poetry Romanticism William Wordsworth

2682

The Wordsworthian Child: a Symbol for Romantic Idealism in "We Are Seven" and "Intimations of Immortality"

6 pages / 2856 words

The turn of the 19th century was a morbid, dark time period: death was a common visitor, as plagues and diseases diminished the children, and the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars diminished the overall population. In response to such loss, humans became relegated to a...

Poetry Romanticism

2683

The Romantic Era: Imagination as a Rebellion Against Rationalism

2 pages / 1124 words

In an era driven by rationalism and logic, the poets and authors of the Romantic era sought to defend what they understood as a more natural system of values. Among the themes prevalent throughout the era, the theme of the imagination’s power is definitely central,...

Poetry Rebellion Romanticism

2684

How Learning Leads to The Sublime in The Works of William Wordsworth

3 pages / 1476 words

For Wordsworth, it is the human imagination and potential to not just observe, but comprehend, nature that ascribes the sublime meaning. Without human cognizance, the objects and elements of the sublime are just physical tokens. Man’s finite existence and the sublime’s apparent totality appear in...

Poetry Romanticism William Wordsworth

2685

Comparison of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's and William Wordsworth's Literary Style

3 pages / 1222 words

In their Lyrical Ballads, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth experimented with traditional forms by interpreting them in a fresh manner. Although they garnered little attention upon their publication, the Ballads stepped outside of the established boundaries concerning not only meter and form but subject...

Poetry Romanticism

2686

Victorian, Romantic and Modernist Literature: Style as Cultural Commentary

3 pages / 1150 words

Tony Harrison’s “A Cold Coming,” William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and George Orwell’s 1984 each display distinct sensibilities that reflect the time from which they emerged. Modernist manifestos differentiate the Modernist movement from previous ones through...

Poetry Romanticism

2687

Sublimity in Wordsworth and Smith

3 pages / 1492 words

Romantic literature is deeply concerned with manifestations and attainment of the sublime. The notion itself asserts gender upon both subject and object, and pervades any attempt to gain historical knowledge. This fetishization of the sublime, however does not prevent the concept from being subverted consciously...

Poetry Romanticism

2688

Naturalism in Tintern Abbey

3 pages / 1233 words

William Wordsworth was a Romatic English poet with a vast body of work, and Naturalism abounds in nearly all of his poetry. Nature is a major theme in Wordsworth’s famous works such as, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and “It is a Beauteous Evening,...

Poetry Romanticism

2689

Comparison of William Blake and William Wordsworth's Writing Styles

3 pages / 1376 words

Although scholars classify both William Wordsworth and William Blake as “romantic poets”, their writing styles and individual perspectives differ tremendously. Wordsworth, though he is not so blind as to ignore the strife that is prevalent in everyday society, tends to focus on more positive aspects...

Poetry Romanticism William Blake

2690

Wordsworth’s References to Nature in Resolution and Independence

2 pages / 896 words

A Romantic poet, Wordsworth often draws from nature to describe his subjects or his narrator’s outlook on the world. In his poem “Resolution and Independence,” which employs twenty septets with an ababcc rhyme scheme, Wordsworth expresses his concerns and anxiety with a topic that can...

Poetry Romanticism

2691

The Act of Travel in Wordsworth’s "I Travelled Among Unknown Men"

2 pages / 917 words

Wordsworth’s “I travelled among unknown men” appears at first to be a tribute to a woman he loved and a poem of patriotism. It is initially unclear how Lucy and England are similar beyond being things that are ultimately important to him. Through further interpretations,...

Poetry Romanticism

2692

Analysis of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"

3 pages / 1160 words

Wordsworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” is a short and powerful poem that centers around the loss of someone close to the speaker. The poem is composed of two four line stanzas, which both follow a simple ABAB rhyme scheme and are based on...

Poetry Romanticism

2693

William Wordsworth’s Expostulation and Reply: a Neoclassical and Romantic Analysis

5 pages / 2229 words

The first volume of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) was published, as Wordsworth states in Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), “…as an experiment.” (482). The introduction to Lyrical Ballads by William Richey and Daniel Robinson suggests that the experiment contested the valued literature of the...

Poetry Romanticism

2694

Unavoidable Destiny: Flannery O’connor’s Southern Adaptation of Oedipus Rex

3 pages / 1470 words

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood is a powerfully unsettling novel concerning a lost man in the grotesque, dark world of the American South. Published in 1949, Wise Blood’s protagonist Hazel Motes serves as a reflection of the power of mythology that continues to assert itself in...

Novel Oedipus Oedipus Rex

2695

Motivation of The Narrator in Winter in The Blood

2 pages / 770 words

For the narrator of Winter in the Blood, by James Welch, motivation is at the root of all of his problems, from his need to leave his mother and the comfort of home, to his problems in dealing with the past, and finally to his...

Fiction

2696

Ree's Maternal Role in Winter Bone and Its Film Adaptation

2 pages / 985 words

In his book Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell follows sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly in her struggle to help her family survive in the bleak Ozarks. The protagonist must constantly maintain a crucial balance between caring for her mentally incapacitated mother and younger siblings while hunting the hardscrabble...

Fiction Film Analysis

2697

"Editha": William Dean Howells’ Reflection of America

4 pages / 1910 words

William Dean Howells’ short story “Editha,” published in 1905, revolves around ideals about war and the romanticized vision of it. Through each character, Howells presents a contrasting view of war. Editha, and her view of God-intended glorious war, is able to push her fiancé George...

Short Story

2698

Escapism in William Dean Howells’ "Scene"

4 pages / 1727 words

The desire to escape, to break free from confinement or control, emerges in William Dean Howells’ short story “Scene,” where the actual tragedy of a suicide victim appears secondary to the importance of the diversion it creates for the characters involved: the Contributor and the...

Short Story