Realism in Romantic poetry Essay

Reality is abstract, as it depends on any individuals testify perspective. When Wordsworth says, hu military man is too much with us, it depends on us how we look at the land, as e rattling being has a world of his own. We acknowledge the level offts around us with whom we great deal relate, just now ignore many other(a) changes considerable for others. Most of the times, Romantics argon considered escapist, and ar alleged that their writings reflect an complex form world far from the touchableity border us. But going through several(a) poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, I find it vice versa. solely bright and glittering in the smoke-free air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill Neer saying I, never felt, a calm so deep The river glideth at his own sugared will Dear God The very houses take care asleep And all that decent heart is lying still Westminster tide over Wordsworth Sept 3,1802 The allegation that Wordsworth moved from the bumpy realities of the cities brought about by the industrial conversion initiated in 1765. This allegation was made relatively stronger by placing Wordsworth vis-a-vis Victorian naturalism.In my view such an allegation is a product of superficial readings of his poems. The poem tranquil upon Westminster Bridge illustrates keen sense of socio-economy of the consequently capital of the United Kingdom. It describes the urban landscape departing from his stock piece based on rural landscape. It negotiation about the landscape of the urban center which has been divested to its prohibit qualities. Like the smoke of the industries, the busy crowd, unsusceptible to its fellow man and the incessant intrust in man to control nature.The experimental condition smokeless air is for him a motion to rejoice a enounce of the city distilled of the harmful effects of industrialisation. The line, the river glideth at his own sweet will encapsulates the spotless take to of Wordsworth vis-a-vis the new call addicted by the middle class to take over and exploit nature. In this sense his realism is much more pronounced and knowing than it is taken into account of. Citing from historical context, hotshot can notice the involvement of the likes of Coleridge, Wordsworth and bear during cut revolution.In 1798, the year musical Ballads, a joint effort by Wordsworth and Coleridge, came out, was a turbulent period in Englands history. Hostilities had broken out in the midst of Her and France in 1793 (and was to last with unremarkable rest for over twenty years), and by 1798, she was faring disadvantageously in the contend. Wordsworth had, of course, visited France in 1791-92, and had been in capital of France at perhaps the most unfavourable of all the great moments of the cut regeneration that began with the destruction of the notorious prison of the Bastille in July 1789.(Coleridges poem, An Ode on the dying of the Bastille). The policy-ma king tussle mingled with the Girondins and the Jacobins were at a height, and Wordsworth saw cl first the slow revolt of the Jacobins under Robespierre. He felt a deep concern for the Girondin leaders whom he felt were the genuine revolutionaries. He believed in the reasonableness of human nature and in like manner believed passionately that men were worthy of license.Wordsworths early republicanism, his concern for France and the gyration is described memorably in his dogged and autobiographical Prelude Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven O times, In which the meager, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, uprightness and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in romance The approach testifies to the shock that Wordsworth felt in his object lesson nature when he saw the revolution that was to redeem mankind, turn to dust.For many, Tom Paine, William Godwin, Coleridge and Wordsworth, the French regeneration was not simply as struggl e of a people to be free- it was mankinds struggle to execute something better- a new age for the entire human race- when aristocracy and class perquisite would give to democracy and Reason would obliterate the fetters of superstition and tyranny. Coleridge, like Wordsworth, had been swayed by the likingls of the Revolution, but the savagery and unrestrained mob hysteria under the Terror disillusioned him as did the rise of Napoleon and Frances fast-growing(a) conquests of other European nations.In France, An Ode and Fears in Solitude, Coleridge describe his feelings with candour O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And nationalist only in pernicious toils argon these thy boasts, Champion of humankind? To mix with kings in low lust of sway, Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey To smear the Shrine of Liberty with spoils From freemen torn to ask round and to betray? France, An Ode British sympathizers of the French Revolution like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were lampooned in the conservative press.Coleridge was so much influenced by William Godwins idea (Political Justice, 1793) of rejection of authority, abolition of private property, creation of a just state that along with Robert Southey, he was ready to set sail for the States to establish a perfect state along the lines charted by Godwin. The political ideas of Wordsworth and Coleridge was in like manner strengthened by pursuing the ideological goals of Unitarianism (which verged on radical deism) and drew severely on the ideas of English Commonwealthman of the seventeenth century. typeface by side to these intellectual debates between the conservatives and the liberals, the economic and the human cost of the war proving to be enormous. In the country, rural privation was becoming acute and the number of beggars, sharp-set children, gypsies, wounded soldiers roaming the country lanes could be seen from early poetry. Wordsworths poetic capability to encounter the sorr ows and hardships of these homeless, starving populace is one of his fixed achievement as a poet.The doddery Cumberland Beggar in poem of the selfsame(prenominal) name, the traveler of Guilt and Sorrow, the blind London beggar in The Prelude are all powerful figures of forsaken humanity who receive permanent symbols of the human condition. The effect of industrialization was viewed by both Wordsworth and Coleridge with a mix of excitement and distrust. The new industrial cities- Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, by 1815, contained a large population that had pursue from the country to look for work, and both Wordsworth and Coleridge were more and more worried about the rising number of poor.Against the expanding complexities of men living in an industrial wasteland, the destruction of old livelihoods and an increasing impossibility to believe in a friendly Providence, harmony with Nature offered the Romantic poets another(prenominal) way of life. The disr uptive force of the French Revolution added the impetus to romanticistism. There are individual differences among the great romantic poets concerning the liking of nature. But all of them share a common objection to the mechanistic creative activity of the eighteenth century- even though Wordsworth admires due north and accepts him, at least in the Orthodox interpretation.All romantic poets conceived of nature as an organic whole, on the analogue of man rather than a concourse of atoms- a nature that is not divorced from esthetical values, which are just as real (or rather more real) than the abstractions of science. My conclusion concerning the romantic poets may be unorthodox and even unconventional. On the whole political criteria seem grossly overrated as a buttocks for judging a man. References Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge Edited by Debjan Sengupta and Shernaz Cama Worldview small Editions The Prelude by William Wordsworth An Ode on the Destruction of the Bastille by S amuel Taylor Coleridge