THE ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

This research work focuses on “The Romantic Philosophy in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’’. The Romantics focus on landscape because of its natural essence and its spiritual composition. The Romantics aim at fighting for the masses and educating the public on how nature can be better treated and appreciated. They present the beauty and enjoyment of life in which they find themselves as imaginary and visionary. This work examined the theory of romanticism in romantic poetry using William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems as our reference texts. Wordsworth and Coleridge own most of their poetic resources and characters to nature as they both strongly believe in the power of nature that brings all that is good to life.

 

The  early Romantic period coincides with what is often called the “Age of Revolutions” including of course, the American (1778) and the French (1789) revolutions an age of upheavals in political, economic and social traditions. The age which witnessed the initial transformations of the industrial revolution.

The take off of Romantic Movement in English Language is set in the year 1798 when William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, publish of their poem called “Lyrical Ballads”. Though, these two lake-side poets wrote the poetic book, they have different view of the way poetry is seen, unlike William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge had an inspiration towards the supernatural, the mystic and the occult.

A revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art) but the very way we perceive the world. Some of its major precepts have survival into the twenteth century and still affect our contemporary period.

Romantic writers generally see themselves as reacting against the thought and literary practices of the preceding century. The Romantist’s major subject matter is the beauty and satisfactions derive from nature. Romantists believe in naturalism and realism in the place of morality. They believe that man should not be conformed or stereotyped to one norm of code rather derive pleasure from what he derive from nature. Be that as it may, more emphasis is not laid on the thematic study of Romantic poetry rather that the beauty is derived in its form following the theory of arts for art’s sake.

“Nature” meant many things to the Romantics, it was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language, for example, throughout “song of myself”, Whitman  makes a practice of presenting common place items in nature... “ants”, “heap’d stones”, and “poke-weed” as containing divine elements and he refers to the “grass” as a natural “hieroglyphic”, “the handkerchief of the lord”. While particular perspectives with regards to nature varied considerably; nature is perceived as a healing power, a source of subject and image, a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language, the prevailing views accorded nature the status of an organically unified whole. It was viewed as “organic”, rather than as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of “mechanical” laws, for romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine (e.g., the deistic image of a clock) with the analogue of an “organic” image, a living tree or mankind itself. At the same time, Romantics gave greater attention both describing natural phenomena accurately and to capturing “sensuous nuance” and this is as true of Romantic landscape painting. Accuracy of observation, however, was not sought for its own sake. Romantic nature poetry is essentially poetry of meditation.