Romantic Poetry

Romantic Poetry

Romanticism was a movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that marked the reaction in literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics from the neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period; sensibility, love of nature, interest in the medieval and reaction against whatever characterized neoclassicism could be a resumed way of defining this movement. In a brief way, Romanticism is a philosophical theory that tends to see the individual at the center of all life, and it places the individual at the center of art, literature and science. Although it could seem this authors are happy people only watching the side of life, a romantic is a dissatisfied individual. The poet may be dissatisfied with the circumstances of his own life, with his age, with literary conventions and traditions of the day, or with the general fate humanity. Romantic poetry is, therefore, often pessimistic in tone. A romantic may revolt against the existing conditions and may seek to reform them, or he may try to escape into an imaginative world of his own creation. Often the poet escapes into the past. The middle ages have a special fascination for him, as I commented before, for they not only provide him with an escape from the sordid realities of the preset but also delight his heart by their colour pageantry and magic, poetry carries as away from the suffocating atmosphere of cities into the fresh invigorating company of the out-of door world. It not only sings s of the sensuous beauty of nature, but also sees into the heart of things and reveals the soul that lies behind. Imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind. This contrasted distinctly with the traditional arguments for the supremacy of reason. The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate "shaping" or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions. Imagination is the primary faculty for creating all art.

British Romanticism shows exuberance and optimism, about the prospects for changing the individual and society. Poetry expresses the poet's spirit and passions; it does not merely imitate the outside world, it is organic, nature seems to be the regenerator of the imagination and guide for all human kind, a strategy to oppose to the early advances of industrialism and urbanization. Maybe lyric poems are the favourite form for romantic poets, they are emotional and passionate.

Unlike earlier poets, the Romantics are obsessed with "originality" and "authority"

Romantic poets respond to England's changing landscapes and human relationships. "Nature" is no longer simply god's gift, as previous generations might have thought; some Romantic poets see nature as threatened with extinction.

Samuel Tylor Coleridge (1772-1834) : Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, as the youngest son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary. English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, started the English Romantic movement. His poems set a new style by using everyday language and fresh ways of looking at nature. Coleridge lectured on literature and philosophy, wrote about religious and political theory and was addicted to opium, what many people think is an important thing to take into account when analyzing his poetry.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge died of a heart attack in 1834.

Victorian Poetry

Victorian poetry is so defined because it was written in England during the reign of Victoria (1837-1901). It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century, both Romantic and Victorian use the identical technique of picturing the nature of the natural world, but to extraordinarily different ends. This period is characterized by intense and prolific activity in literature, especially by novelists and poets, philosophers and essayists.

The Victorian Age was a time of change, from agriculture to an industrial society, and these changes influenced the attitudes and values of the emerging society. There was great political change which produced more democratic societies. There were great economic changes due to some political reforms and all of the inventions that came about during this time period. These inventions changed England from a farming country into an industrialized country. Great advances in science and technology created changes in literature and speech. Life was moving at a faster pace for people during this time period. The Victorian Age started the progress of societies that continued to take place during the 20th century. Gothic Revival architecture became increasingly significant in the period, leading to the Battle of the Styles between Gothic and Classical ideals. During the Victorian era, science grew into the discipline it is today. In addition to the increasing professionalism of university science, many Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to the study of natural history. Influenced as they were by the large sprawling novels of sensibility of the preceding age they tended to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrong-doers are suitably punished; They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart, informing the reader how to be a good Victorian.

Alfred Lord Tennyson held the poet laureateship for over forty years and his verse became rather stale by the end but his early work is rightly praised.

Lord Alfred Tennyson(1809-1892) : English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and intellectual values of his time, which made them especially vulnerable for later critic. Tennyson was influenced profoundly by the poetry of Byron and Scott. The new discoveries in biology, astronomy, and geology implied a view of humanity that much distressed many Victorians, but Tennyson was radically secular, but he is also a poet of the natural and psychological landscape, he also attends frequently to the past and historical events; were Romantics present nature poems as a scene that raises an emotional or psychological problem, Tennyson uses nature as a psychological category. He also had the ability to link external scenery to interior states of mind. Tennyson had a passion for the past, a longing for the days that had gone either the great ages of earlier history or the immediate past of his own life. This poetic nostalgia was at the heart of his poetry.

Tennyson was regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest poet of Victorian England.

SAMUEL TYLOR COLERIDGE AND LORD ALFRED TENNYSON

1. Samuel Tylor Coleridge, The Suicide’s Argument

Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me--it could not be so !
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be YES; what can NO be ? to die.

NATURE'S ANSWER

Is't returned, as 'twas sent ? Is't no worse for the wear ?
Think first, what you ARE ! Call to mind what you WERE !
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope,
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair ?
Make out the invent'ry ; inspect, compare !
Then die--if die you dare !

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge)

2. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam ( OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII )

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

1849.

( http://home.att.net/~tennysonpoetry/IMAHHS.htm )

COMPARING NATURE IN BOTH POEMS

The feelings and attitudes in the poem In Memoriam are those of Tennyson’s, same as in The Suicide’s argument. In both poems an extremely harsh situation takes the poets to an extremely sentimental answer. Coleridge is wanting to suicide, his life depending in opium, his bad relations with people, took him to that extreme situation. The poems is asking nature, who he thinks is the responsible for his living, why is he there, who put him there and why. The situation Tennyson is living is a bit different, but the suffering is very similar, his best friend’s death takes him to a series of confusion in his mind, but, who is he telling of? “o Lord”, Christ, making him the most important, the one who can make us live, and make us die. This both poems are very interesting, The Suicide’s argument, just the title, explains very much about the suffering we after read in the poem, same as for In Memoriam, which refers to the loss of his very best friend, the poem has relation with nature, faith and with living eternally, something impossible because of nature, Tennyson had been working on the poem for 17 years. It is ostensibly a requiem for his friend Arthur Hallam who died suddenly at the age of 22. Although Tennyson associated evolution with progress, he also worried that the notion seemed to contradict the Biblical story of creation and long-held assumptions about man's place in the world. Nonetheless, in "In Memoriam," he insists that we must keep our faith despite the latest discoveries of science: he writes, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love / Whom we, that have not seen they face, / By faith, and faith alone, embrace / Believing where we cannot prove." At the end of the poem, he concludes that God's eternal plan includes purposive biological development; thus he reassures his Victorian readers that the new science does not mean we have to not believe in God.

For Coleridge, as we can see in the poem, Nature has given him birth, is the star and the end of everything and he wants to know why, why didn’t he choose to live or not to live. For Tennyson, God is the beginner of everything, and, even without seeing his face, he can prove that he is there, watching and controlling; if Tennyson had written Coleridge’s poem, he would had probably asked God, not nature, why he was there. Same would be if Coleridge had written this part of “In Memoriam”, he would have asked nature why had she taken his friend, and not him or something similar. So we have different ways of treating nature. Nature for Romantics, were it controls our lives and answers the question of Who put’s us here? and for Tennyson, or Victorian point of view were Nature is made by God, so questions have to be made to God.

CONCLUSION

I’ve found many common points in this two poems, but also very different. It is true that I was shocked to see that Tennyson believes much more in God’s hand than Coleridge. I say I was shocked because it seemed strange to me that Romantics were nearer than Victorians to nowadays literature, what I then investigated and found aout that Tennyson was one of the most secular poets in the Victorian period. I had worked on Coleridge in the first paper, because I thought his life and writings were very interesting, and with this second paper I’ve enjoyed it much more. It has always been very interesting for me, how people which are leaving the same ages, the same time, and the same social situations can write and describe things so different.

INDEX

Romantic Poetry ……………………………………………... Pag 1, 2
Victorian Poetry ………………………………..……………. Pag 2, 3, 4
Samuel Tylor Coleridge, The Suicide’s Argument ………….. Pag 5
Lord Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam ……………………….. Pag 6, 7, 8
Comparing Nature in both poems ……………………………. Pag 9, 10
Conclusion ……………………………………………………. Pag 10