English Literary Romanticism

English Literary RomanticismFirst Generation: Wordsworth and ColeridgeWilliam Wordsworth (1770-1850) Lake DistrictLyrical Ballads (1798)“Poetry…the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…”Ordinary life depicted in ordinary languageExperience of Nature as the Sublime
The SublimeLonginus (1st century A.D.) – On the Sublime - from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. This greatness is often used when referring to nature and its vastness. Awesomeness“The Daffodils”
I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.…For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
“Tintern Abbey” p. 667“The World Is Too Much with Us” p. 675SonnetSublime?Pagan?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)Collaborated w/ Wordsworth on Lyrical Ballads (1798)Strange, bizarre, and exotic (sublime)Effects of drugs on creativityRime of the Ancient MarinerDreamBalladSupernatural Her lips were red, her looks were free Her locks were yellow as gold Her skin was as white as leprosy The Night-mare Life-in-death was she Who thicks man's blood with cold P. 687