Essays on Romanticism

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...

In modern parlance, the word ‘romantic’ is often and understandably used with a positive connotation. A romantic individual is most often recalled with fondness, if also with pity. The faults of such a person might be limited to mere naivete: “He was a hopeless romantic;...

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...

William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a lyric poem, which deals with the speaker’s state of mind. The description of the process, which the speaker goes through, is represented by a natural scene where the speaker, plants and the surroundings become united....

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,...

“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...

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...

After ten weeks of intently studying a wide range of some of literature’s greatest authors and their representative works, one is hard pressed to single out only four of these transcendiary pieces from such a distinguished list. However, four of these works, and their authors,...

While oftentimes viewed as contributing to the development of Freudian psychoanalysis, the psychological discourse, and specifically that which deals with the unconscious (the part of the psyche which subjects are actively unaware), of Romantic poetry can also be seen as possessing various methods of its...

William Wordsworth’s poem “A slumber did my spirit seal” compels different interpretations with different readers. In this case, two critics, Cleanth Brooks and F.W. Bateson, analyze the poem and produce two contrasting interpretations. For the most part both critics focus on examining the same facts...

The Romantic Era was a time when people embraced imagination, emotion, and freedom – quite a contrast to the preceding Neoclassic Era, which emphasized the values of reason, judgment, and authority. The values of the so-called Romantics are embodied in the poetry which developed during...

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...

European romanticism in the nineteenth century is described as the worship of the self, the relationship between the individual and nature, or the relationship between an individual and the world. Aesthetics, in a general sense, refers to art and to beauty. Therefore, it could be...

“In what sense is a child of that age a philosopher?” – Coleridge If philosophy is defined as ‘advanced knowledge or learning’, it can be argued that age is not central to this definition, but the idiosyncratic experiences that are felt by each individual. Throughout...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

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...