Essays on Medieval Europe

381

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

382

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

383

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

384

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

385

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

386

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

387

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

388

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

389

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

390

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

391

Compassionate Colonialism in Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life

5 pages / 2081 words

Herman Melville’s Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life is both a compelling illusory story and a concerted effort to moderate the imperialist mindset of its readers. In fact, Typee is a narrative that doubles as a manifesto, a collection of Melville’s own autobiographical observations that...

Book Review Imperialism

392

Analysis of a Passage in The Prelude

5 pages / 2152 words

In the stichic passage from William Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude, the speaker, who represents Wordsworth himself, encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. The passage is a bildungsroman in verse, a coming-of-age poem that chronicles the psychological growth of the speaker. In the passage,...

Romantic Era Romanticism

393

The Romanticism of Wordsworth and Shelley: a Poetry of The "Happiest Moments"

3 pages / 1473 words

Wordsworth said that ‘poetry is passion, it is the history or science of feeling’. In conjunction with Shelley’s quote, this is a bold statement to make. Not only does Wordsworth name poetry as the ‘science’ of emotion –creating an authorial sense of logic –but also...

Percy Bysshe Shelley Romanticism

394

Isolation and The Sublime in Rousseau and Wordsworth

5 pages / 2081 words

In their article entitled “Me,” Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royale assert that “Literature, like art more generally, has always been concerned with aspects of what can be called the… ‘not me’ or other,” (Bennett 129-130). Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions and William Wordsworth in his...

Romanticism Rousseau

395

Romantic Poets & The Poetic Problem of Representing London

5 pages / 2195 words

Writing on nineteenth-century London poetry, William Sharpe comments that ‘Regardless of shared reference to sublimity, fog, of Babylonian blindness, each poet’s London is different. Each time we read ‘London’ we have to begin again.’ For poets in the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, London...

Poetry Romantic Era Romanticism

396

Analysis of "In Praise of Folly" by Erasmus

3 pages / 1251 words

The Silenus box is a “case carved like an ugly Silenus” that can be “opened to reveal beautiful, precious objects” (Erasmus 43, footnote). This box appears in Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly as a metaphor for the central claim in the novel, which is that...

Literature Review Renaissance

397

Bisclavret: Marie De France’s Manipulation and Why We Hate The Wife

2 pages / 1129 words

Bisclavret is the only lai of Marie de France’s that deals with a couple falling out of love (Creamer 259). The lycanthropic theme is used by the poet as a test of love and respect for one’s husband, as the baron’s wife doesn’t approve of...

Poetry Renaissance The Lais of Marie de France

398

Comparing Tombs and Lays in "Marie De France Laustic" and "Yonec"

3 pages / 1543 words

In both Yonec and Laustic, Marie de France describes tombs that house the unfulfilled love of her characters. The tombs function to preserve the physical bodies of a love that could not be fulfilled during the characters’ lives. In both lais, the tombs are overwhelmingly...

Poetry Renaissance The Lais of Marie de France

399

Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" as a Revival of "Marie De France's "Lanval"

7 pages / 3409 words

If one was asked to name the epitome of medieval English literature, it is very likely that the answer would be Geoffrey Chaucer. Indeed, this world-wide known poet has played a major role in the development of the English language thanks to his masterpiece The...

Poetry Renaissance The Lais of Marie de France Wife of Bath