THE ENGLISH ROMANTICS

The romanticism beginning in 1789, when Coleridge and Wordsworth published their Lyrical Ballads.
English romantic poets are divided into two generations:

• the poets of the first-generation, with Coleridge and Wordsworth, were more concern with nature and
they wrote about subjects of common life;

• the poets of the second-generation, with Shelley and Byron, were more concern about social issues.

THE SUBLIME

The sublime was an idea associated with fear, intense emotion typical of Romanticism. Burke explained the
differences between the “beautiful” and the “sublime”. For him the beautiful was something with
harmonic, delicacy and balance, while the sublime was something with pain and danger. The sublime is
about terrible things that can make us feel strong emotions and feelings.

WILLIAM BLAKE

Blake was born in London. He was a poet, an engraver and a painter. He illustrated his poems. His fist
collection of poems was “Songs of Innocence” and then “Songs of Experience”, that became a classic of the
romantic poetry. He also wrote “prophetic” poem, because he was a revolutionary poets in favour of
French and American Revolutions. He believed in the ideals of liberty, justice and equality.

The role of imagination

Blake thought that only with imagination people could understand the injustices and could rebels against
them. With the Industrial Revolution, poor people lives in bad conditions. Blake was against the power
exercised by the church and by the government, because it destroyed the imagination of men. He did not
believe in rationality and he thought that imagination was the only way to see over physical reality. He
refused also knowledge and classicism, because he wanted to follow his original style. Indeed his pastoral
setting and simple style were taken from biblical source and nursery rhymes. Blake's poetry is full of
complex symbol, but his language is simple.

“Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”

His first important work was the Songs of Innocence in 1789 ( same date of French Revolution ), and in
1794 he added the Songs of Experience.

Some poems inside a collection are meant to be read together with the other collection: The Chimney
Sweeper is in the Songs of Innocence but also in the Experience because you have to compare it.

Innocence corresponds to the world of childhood and represents the love, the compassion and the
sympathy; all of these qualities are a biblical symbol. Experience corresponds to the adulthood with all the
responsibilities and the knowledge of the evil. In the experience’s world there are tyranny and injustice
instead of freedom, punishment instead of forgiveness and selfishness instead of sympathy for the poor.
Innocence and experience are both in the world inside the human: they coexist because human nature is
innocent but also corrupt.

The most known poem in the Songs of Innocence is “The Lamb”, while the most known poem in the Songs
of the Experience is “The Tyger”.

“The lamb”

The poem is composed by two stanzas. Lamb is a cute animal, little and helpless. Blake used a simple
language. There are a lot of repetitions and the alliteration of l and m, that made a slowly sound. It is a
typical pastoral setting, with Christian theme. The lamb is compared to Jesus Christ and the poet identifies
the child with the lamb, simbol of innocence.

In the first stanza the poet asks the lamb "who made thee?". The answer is in the second stanza, it was
created by God.

“The Tiger”

The poem is composed by six stanzas. The tyger is a terrible animal, strong and fearful. We do not know if
his creator is the same of the lamb, because there's not an answer. The word burning, in the first stanza,
may evoke the image of the animal's eyes, burning with range and violence, but the addition of "night",
turns the tyger into something shining which may also symbolized the light of spirit or of genius,
overcoming error and ignorance represented by the "forest of the night" (an image that remind us of
Dante's "selva oscura"). The wings may represent the capacity of the artist to rise about the material world
creating unthought of things.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Wordsworth was born in and live in the Lake District. He studied at Cambridge. He went to French and
approved the Revolution. He married a young woman and then they came back to England. He met Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and with him wrote the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. He became a Victorian England’s Poet
Laureate in 1843.

He declared that the poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. He put feelings at the centre
of the poetry and he used a simple language. He talked about new theme like loneliness, poor people and
children and nature. He saw the soul inside of the things.

Wordsworth nature has 3 different meaning:

1. He saw nature as the countryside and it’s the setting of his poems. It’s opposed to the noise of the town.

2. He saw nature as a source of inspiration ( like the daffodils ): the poet tries to describe the relationship
that joins man to nature. Our best feeling are inspired by nature and in nature we can find moral and
spiritual values. Nature is not a power external to men, we are part of it.

3. He saw nature as a life-source: the natural world has itself a life and men can communicate with nature.
This view that sees God inside the nature is also called Pantheism.

   “I wandered lonely as a cloud..”

The poet is walking alone in the countryside. Crows is compared to the flower. There is a personification of
the daffodils. The flower are infinities like the stars of the milk way. The nature aspects are considered
living being. Wordsworth composed the poem at home. The subject is the poet and the object is the
nature. All the emotion that nature give to the poet are personifications.

“SAMUEL COLERIDGE

Coleridge studied at Cambridge’s university, but left it. He became friend with Wordsworth and they wrote
together the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. He wasn’t healthy and he became addicted to opium, a medicine.

He is a poet of the first-generation. He introduced supernatural events into poetry with fantastic characters
but with a bit of reality, that could give a surprise. He believe that the divine was situated inside the nature
and in all the living things.

Coleridge meant the imagination that can took to the truth. He thought that there were two type of
imagination:
• The primary imagination was the way humans could sense the world around them common to
everybody. It helped to imagine thing that existed but couldn’t been seen.

• The secondary imagination is a creative faculty that could shape new realities. It is a superior ability that
could have the poet and the artist.

“The Rime of an Ancient Mariner”

 One of his most known poems is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". This is a traditional ballad: it was a
typical style of the middle ages that was told orally with an accompany of songs and dances; they were
usually about love, death and supernatural events... exactly what he wanted to represent. Coleridge’s
ballad is different in symbolism and quality. It is much more longer than a typical ballad, has a difference in
the stanzas and the rhyme scheme and it has a moral at the end. The poem is about the story of an old
mariner and his journey. With the killing of a bird, the mariner committed a heavy crime against the divine
in nature and so strange events started. For the rest of his life he had to expiate for his fault.

Summary

• Part I: An old sailor tells to a young man his story, at a wedding feast. The sailor tells how the storm drove
his ship towards the South Pole. Only when an albatross appeared was the ship able to break free from the
ice. They all believed the albatross brought good luck, but the sailor shot the bird.

• Part II: The crew blame the sailor for killing the albatross, but when the wind continues to blow and clears
the fog and mists, they say he was right because the bird must have been the cause of them. But later,
when the ship is becalmed and haunted by a spirit, the thirsty crew hang the dead bird his neck as a sign of
the Mariner's guilt.

• Part III: A skeleton ship appears in the distance. As a propelled by a spirit, it needs no wind to approach
the Mariner's ship and to place itself between them and the setting sun. On board the spectres "Death" and
"Life-in-Death" cast dice and "Life-in-Death" wins the Mariner's soul. The other sailors die.

• Part IV: The young guest fears the Mariner is a ghost, but he reassures him. He isn't a ghost, but his
punishment was worse than death: he was alone among slimy creatures, under the accusing eyes of his
dead companions, unable to pray. When the moon rose, its light enabled the Mariner to admire the beauty
of nature which appeared to him in the form of water snakes. He blessed the creatures unaware and the
albatross suddenly feel off and sank into the sea.

• Parts V, VI, VII: In part V angelic spirits enter the dead bodies of the crew and "work the ropes"; the ship
moves on. In part VI the ship returns to its port. In part VII, the Mariners penance begins: forever isolated
from his kind, he will travel from land to land to tell his tale.

• Part VII: In part seven the Mariner's tale draws to an end. He tells the wedding guest how his first man he
met when he landed was a hermit, to whom be felt compelled to tell his tale. At that very moment his life
penance began: to wonder forever and teach the love of all living beings through his tale.

The “Lyrical Ballads”

When he wrote the Lyrical Ballads together with Wordsworth, they decided to divide their duty. While
Wordsworth wrote about common things but unique thanks to the imagination, Coleridge wrote about
supernatural and made it looks real.