Assignment: The Romantic literature

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Description of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s life and their important works

M.K Bhavnagar University

Department of English

Sem 2

Name – Hema Goswami

Roll no. 12

Enrollment no. 2069108420180020

Paper 5: The Romantic literature

Topic:  Description of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s life and their important works

 Introduction

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are two prominent figures in Romantic era. From their publication of their Lyrical ballad, Romantic age begins. They both are great Romantic poets and responsible for launching the Romantic age in English Literature. Throughout their age they published many significant works. Both have worked a lot and both are called the true lovers of nature. Wordsworth steady nature and moral preoccupations had given effect on Coleridge’s wavering will and rambling tendencies (research pedia, 2014)

William Wordsworth

Birth-

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland, England and died on 23 April 1850. Cockermouth was a Lake District of northern England (Stephen maxfield Parrish, 2017).

Family-

 Wordsworth was second of five children. He lost both his mother and father when he was too young, just 7 year old when he lost his mother and 13 year old, when his father dies. He becomes orphan and was sent to Grammar school by his uncle at Hawkshead. Wordsworth received an excellent knowledge in classics, literature, and mathematics.

Education-

Wordsworth moved to St. John’s College in 1787. He spends his summer vacation of college to a long walking tour through revolutionary France in 1790. There he became an ardent republican sympathizer.

Wife: Annette Vallon and Mary Hutchinson

Wordsworth had returned to France in 1791, where he formed a passionate attachment to a French woman Annette Vallon. Wordsworth soon returned to England before the birth of his child Caroline, because he cut off there by the outbreak of war between England and France. Those days were among the darkest days of the Wordsworth’s life.

Wordsworth along with his sister Dorothy visited France to meet his daughter Caroline or to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson. She is a former school friend and a long time friend of Wordsworth.  The couple had five children. One of among them is Dora, who is supposed to be a frequent inspiration for Wordsworth’s life (shmoop editorial team, 2008)

Friend:  William Godwin-

Wordsworth doesn’t have any type of profession and was bitterly hostile to his own country’s opposition to the French.  Therefore in London he lived with his friend William Godwin. There he grew up with a profound sympathy for the abandoned mothers, beggars, victim of England’s war.

Sister: Dorothy

The dark period in Wordsworth’s life was ended in 1795, when a friend’s legacy made possible Wordsworth’s reunion with his sister Dorothy. Both, brother and sister moved to Alfoxden House, near Bristol in 1797. They had three other siblings: Richard who was the eldest son who becomes a lawyer. Other was John who was younger than Dorothy. He went to sea and died in 1805. His ship the Earl of Abergravenny, was wrecked off. The youngest among all these was Christopher, who becomes the master of Trinity college, Cambridge (wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2018)

Friend: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wordsworth became friend to Samuel Coleridge and they formed a partnership. Their partnership changed their lives and makes them popular in romantic age. They both formed Lyrical Ballad altogether.

Poet Laureate-

After the death of Robert Southey in 1843, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate.

Popular works and famous poems

1.     Descriptive sketches(1793)

2.     Lyrical ballads(1798)

3.     Tintern Abbey(1798)

4.     The Solitary Reaper(1807)

5.     Daffodils(1807)

6.     Ode: Intimation of immortality(1807)

7.     The excursion(1814)

8.     The white Doe of Rylstone(1815)

9.     The prelude(1850)

1.Descriptive sketches(1793)

It is one of the Wordsworth’s books; the other is “An evening walk”. Both the books were published by Joseph Johnson in January 1793 (Norton and company, 2010)

It describes Wordsworth’s observation during a walking tour through the Alps Mountain in summer. That time French were celebrating anniversary of the “Fall of the Bastille”. In the concluding section, the poet describes the promise of the French Revolution , which envisions the return of the primeval Golden age. Wordsworth composed much of the Descriptive sketches while hanging out on the banks of the Loire in 1791 and 1792. (wordpress.com, 2008)

“…..The tall sun passing on the Alpine spire,

 Flings o’er the wilderness a stream of fire:

 Now meet we other pilgrims ere the day

 Close on the remnant of their weary way;

 While they are drawing toward the sacred floor

 Where so they fondly think, the worm shall gnaw no more.”

Descriptive sketches reveal a complexity of vision and a conceptual sophistication that reward the attentive reader. The work contained crude expressions of revolutionary sympathies in isolated passages. There is also a kind of moral dejection and religious disbelief which exhibited in the tone of the poem.

2. Lyrical Ballads (1798)

Lyrical Ballad is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and marked the beginning of Romantic age (wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2018). It changed the course of English literature and poetry.

In this Lyrical Ballad most of the poems were written by Wordsworth and Coleridge only contributed four poems to the collection.

Wordsworth included some additional poems in the second edition of Lyrical Ballad in 1800. He has also included a preface for another edition in 1802.

The title of the collection recalls rustic forms of art.

The word ‘Lyrical’ links the poems with the ancient rustic bards and lends an air of spontaneity and the word ‘Ballads’ are an oral mode of storytelling used by the common people. It included Coleridge’s “Rime of ancient mariner” and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, as well as many controversial common-language poems by Wordsworth such as “The Idiot boy”. Wordsworth explained his poetical concept as the majority of the poems in Lyrical Ballads is experimental, written chiefly with the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society (the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014).

Wordsworth gives the famous definition of poetry in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads:-

“The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”

The main theme of “Lyrical Ballads” is the return to the original state of nature. In the purest form of nature people led a more innocent existence.

3. Tintern Abbey (1798)

“Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour” is a poem by Wordsworth which was published in 1798. It is all about remembering past event during present walk on the same place. Means the poet has already visited that place in past, but now he is visiting it again with his sister Dorothy.  Wordsworth took his sister to the site of the Abbey. It begins with the speaker remembering his past explaining that it has been five years since he last took a walk to the location (editors of super summary)

 These memories offer a fond sensation of peace. The poet further attributed his lightness of soul to these memories, calling them his access to a spiritual state in which he becomes “a living soul” with a view into “the life of things.” The poet recalls the memory with bittersweet emotion. He is not the same person he was when he first visited, no longer a young boy.  He loves nature and considered it as the purest part of himself. The poet thinks that in future whenever his sister re-visited that place, she will recall the moment which she has spent along with him, even when he is dead.

This poem also shows the transformation from child to adult with the help of memories as the poet recalls each part of his walk there, and now recognizes the presence of his beloved sister in making new memories in nature.

4. The Solitary Reaper (1807)

The Solitary Reaper is the best poem written by Wordsworth which reflects the rustic life of a reaper. It focuses on a young Scottish girl who is reaping alone and singing to herself while she works (expert answers, 2015). The whole valley is filled with the sound of her singing and the poet very carefully listening to the sweet song of reaper.

The poet is mesmerized with the melodious song and says that no nightingale ever sang a more welcoming song; even it exceeds that of the cuckoo bird’s in the spring time. Her singing breaks the silence. But the poet was not able to understand the language of the young girl and he wants someone to tell him what the girl is singing about.  Then the poet goes on interpreting the song as his own self, that it might be about old sorrows or battles of long ago, or more mundane concerns, or even some sufferings which the girl has endured. But in reality the poet never find out the theme of her song.

5. Daffodils (1807)

 The poem “Daffodils” is very well fitted in the description of a perfect poetry given by Wordsworth that is it is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquility. The poem begins with the lonely and sad speaker who is walks along and sees a large area of daffodils along the side of the lake. There are bright yellow flowers whose shadow gets reflected in the water. These flowers are cheerful which cheers the poet greatly and brings him out of his loneliness.

Even if poet lives the place its beautiful memory stays with him, and gives him companionship and joy when he is “in vacant or in pensive mood.” (expert answers enotes, 2011)

6. Ode: Intimation of immortality (1807)

“Ode: Intimation of immortality from recollections of early life Childhood” is a poem by Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and was first printed as “Ode” in 1807.

The poem combines aspects of Coleridge’s Conversation poems.

The first four stanzas discuss death, and the loss of youth and innocence. The second four stanzas describe how age causes man to lose sight of the divine. The final three concluding stanzas express hope that the memory of the divine allow us to sympathize with our fellow man. The ode reveals Wordsworth’s  understanding of psychological development (wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2018).

7. The excursion (1814)

The excursion is one of the parts of “The Recluse” and consisted of nine long philosophical monologues spoken by Pastoral characters. The first monologue contained a version of one of the Wordsworth’s greatest poems, “The Ruined Cottage.” (the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014)

When the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live, it was reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far nature and Education had qualified him for such employment. This idea gave rise to the determination of the poet to compose a philosophical poem, containing views of man, nature and society; and to be entitled, The Recluse; as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.

The first and the third part of The Recluse will consist chiefly of meditations in the author’s own person; and that in the intermediate part, The Excursion- the intervention of characters speaking is employed, and something of a dramatic form adopted. (h.w , 2014)

8. The white doe of Rylstone (1815)

It is a long narrative poem by Wordsworth published in 1815, written initially in 1807-08.  This poem combines historical and legendary subject matter.

The location of the poem is Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale. There the poet sees the White doe enter the churchyard and lie down by one particular grave, where it is recognized as a regular visitor by the Parishioners. The poem moves at Rylstone Hall, back at the time of Emily Norton. Emily encounters the White Doe by moonlight at Rylstone Hall. There was war with those of Earl of Northumberland and other catholic rebels. As per the command of her father, Emily embroiders a banner for his followers, who are in rise in rebellion.

Emily send an old friend to get the news of her Father, but she gets bad news that her father is taken prisoner, and that he has told to his son Richard to regain the banner and take it to Bolton Abbey. Richard almost accomplished this task, but has been killed by the party of the royal army. When Rylstone Hall suffers devastation Emily flees and return after so many years. There the white Doe becomes her faithful friend, and always remains with her. When Emily died, she buries at Bolton Abbey and therefore the white doe visits the grave. Hence the mystery of the visit of white Doe gets resolved. (wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2018)

9.The Prelude (1850)

The subtitle of prelude is “The growth of a poet’s mind”. It was published in 1850. Book I establishes Wordsworth’s sense of life as a journey, both literal- as the poet leaves the city to be settled in Lake District. The poet eventually decides to focus on his own life. His vivid accounts of boyhood incidents- skating on frozen lakes in the winter twilight, flying kites etc gives to this poem immediacy. The poem is suffused with the beauty of the Cumberland landscape. There are also hints of nature troubling power where the young Wordsworth is struck by the “huge and mighty forms” of the mountains. There is action of ideas in the entire poem.  The poem falls in three sections: Book I-7 offer a half literal, half fanciful description of his boyhood and youthful environment; Book 8 is a kind of reprise, Book 9-11, in a more fluid and narrative style, depict his exciting adventures in France and London. Book 12-14 are mostly metaphysical and are devoted to an attempt at a philosophy of art, with the end of the last book giving a little summary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

The Prelude describes the creation of a poet, and one who was pivotal in English letters. The general procedure in The Prelude is to record an experience from the poet’s past and then to examine its philosophical and psychological significance and relate it to nature and society at large.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Birth-

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England and died on 25 July 1834. Coleridge was also the founder of Romantic Movement along with Wordsworth and a member of the lake poet.

Family-

Reverend John Coleridge was the father of Samuel and he had three children by his first wife, and ten with his second wife. Coleridge was the youngest among the ten.

Education and friendship with Charles lamb

After his father’s death, Coleridge was sent to Christ’s hospital, a charity school, at that school Coleridge becomes friend of Charles lamb and also studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles.

From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge.  He left the College and enlisted in the 15^th Light dragoons using the false name “Silas Tomkyn Comberbache”, perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, Mary Evans, had rejected him.

Wife-Sara Hutchinson

Coleridge joined RobertSouthey in a plan to found Utopian Commune- like society called Pantisocracy, but soon abandoned. In 1795, the two friends Coleridge and Robert married with two sisters Sara and Edith Fricker, but Coleridge’s marriage with Sara Proved unhappy and eventually separated from her. At Sockburn Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem Love, addressed to Sara Hutchinson.

Friendship with William Wordsworth

In 1795 Coleridge met the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. And in 1798 both published joint volume of poetry, Lyrical ballads. Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in Germany in 1798; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in University towns. In 1799 both the poets stayed at Thomas Hutchinson’s Farm on the River Tees at Sockburn. (wikipedia the free encyclopedia, 2018)

Popular works and famous poems-

1.     The Rime of Ancient Mariner (1798)

2.     Kubla khan (1816)

3.     Christabel (1797-1800)

4.     Biographia Literaria (1817)

1.The Rime Of Ancient Mariner (1798)

The real star of the collection of Lyrical Ballads was Coleridge’s first version of “The Rime of Ancient Mariner”. It was the longest work. Its words have given the English language the metaphor of an Albatross around one’s neck.

“water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”

This poem is full of symbols, imagery and wordplay. It begins with the mariner telling his tragic story to one of the wedding guest. It relates the experience of the Ancient Mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner story begins with his ship departing on its journey. Afterwards the ship is driven south by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctic waters. There appear an Albatross and the weather automatically cleared, when all started praising Albatross, the mariner shoots the bird. At first the weather is becomes more clear, but soon started showing its disastrous face. In anger, the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck.  One by one all crew member die, but the mariner lives on. As penance for shooting the Albatross, the mariner was in guilt. After completing the story the mariner leaves, and the wedding guest returns home.

2.  Kubla Khan (1816)

Coleridge composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is composed as a dream vision, after eating opium. It is about the Mongol Emperor Kubla khan and his legendary palace at Xanadu.  The poem couldn’t be completed according to its original lines plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. The poet describes the Emperor palace as a “pleasure dome.” He tells us about the river that runs across the land and then flows through some underground caves and into the sea, about the fertile land surrounds the palace. The speaker describes past vision he has had, and hence makes the poem more mysterious.

3. Christabel (1797-1800)

It is also an unfinished poem like Kubla khan. It begins with the awakening of the protagonist Christabel from the dream. Afterwards she journeys into the gardens outside of her father’s castle, as because she was unable to sleep. She is lovely little young woman. She went to the forest in midnight to pray, there she is startled by another young woman Geraldine. Geraldine claims that she has been kidnapped and left beneath the true, and hence Christabel provides her shelter. At home Christabel shares her bed with Geraldine. At one night, the truth revealed that Geraldine is not strikingly beautiful but a witch. Christabel is wrestling with the feeling that something sinister has happened, and goes to introduce Geraldine to her father Sir Leoline. And it turns out that Geraldine the daughter of Leoline’s long-lost best friend. Although, Geraldine is working some kind of magic, and convincing Leoline that she is just an innocent victim. This poem doesn’t have any end, and remains an unfinished poem.

4.Biographia Literaria (1817)

It is an autobiography written by Coleridge in two volumes, published in 1817. This work explains and justified Coleridge’s style and practice in poetry. It is an extended criticism of William Wordsworth’s theory of poetry as given in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads. He discards the belief that the mind is not a passive but an active agency in the apprehension of reality. The later chapters of the book deal with the nature of poetry and the question of diction raised by Wordsworth. Coleridge gives distinction between “imagination” and “fancy” and also gave a famous critical concept of a “willing suspension of disbelief”.

Conclusion

The two poets Coleridge and Wordsworth are the breath of romantic age. They were in close, daily contact. They took long walks together and spent hours discussing poetry and Literature. Their friendship survived for many years. The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist and these two poets are fits into this nature.  Wordsworth’s job was to write poems about everyday topics’ Coleridge would tackle poems about “persons and characters supernatural.”

     

Works Cited

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