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A Comparative Study Between Wordsworth and Coleridge Final
A Comparative Study Between Wordsworth and Coleridge Final
Introduction:
Before one can undertake a comparative study of these two poet's philosophies, their
constraints, I will focus on the little that time permits me to. Wordsworth writes in a
subjective style. He examines his state of mind or consciousness before attempting to write a
creative work. This is largely why he fell in love in nature and became a nature worshipper.
He believes in a primordial relationship between the mind of man and the nature around him.
Coleridge on the other hand is quite objective. His works arise out of the factual and
biographical antecedence that surrounds his life. Wordsworth's writings are highly sequential,
logical and remain in a single thought form all throughout his creative endeavors. Coleridge
writes in fragments and he is unable to maintain a single thought probably due to his opium
use which he is notorious for. Wordsworth isn’t rebellious in his writings. He seeks not to
attack any person but to establish his own views while Coleridge in his 'Biographia Literaria',
he dedicates some chapters just to rebel and criticize wordsworth's ideals. Wordsworth
establishes in his famous preface that there is no difference between the language of prose and
poetry as they both one and the same thing while Coleridge differentiates these two concepts
on the basis that poetry contains metre and rhyme while prose does not contain these.
Wordsworth in his preface believes that a real language that can communicate to the low,
common or rustic people should be the language of poetry while Coleridge admonishes that
there is no 'real' language as language differs based on education, culture, belief, etc, but that a
'lingua communis' should be used. Wordsworth's famous preface can be regarded as the
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manifesto of romanticism because it echoes key feature inherent in the works of the romantics
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Chapter Two
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet
who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature
semiautobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times.
It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as "the poem
to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from
Early life
The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William
part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. His sister, the
poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the
following year, and the two were baptized together. They had three other siblings: Richard,
the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805
when the ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south
coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be
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Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and,
through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. He was frequently away
from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him
and remained distant from him until his death in 1783. However, he did encourage William in
his reading, and in particular set him to commit to memory large portions of verse, including
works by Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser. William was also allowed to use his father's
library. William also spent time at his mother's parents' house in Penrith, Cumberland, where
he was exposed to the moors, but did not get along with his grandparents or his uncle, who
also lived there. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of
contemplating suicide.
Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and attended, first, a tiny school of low quality
in Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families, where he
was taught by Ann Birkett, who insisted on instilling in her students traditions that included
pursuing both scholarly and local activities, especially the festivals around Easter, May Day
and Shrove Tuesday. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else.
It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became
his wife. After the death of his mother, in 1778, Wordsworth's father sent him to Hawkshead
Grammar School in Lancashire (now in Cumbria) and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in
Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for another nine years.
Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European
Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge. He received his
BA degree in 1791. He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at
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Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the
beauty of their landscape. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he
toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.
In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the
Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792
gave birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britain's tense relations with
France forced him to return to England alone the following year. The circumstances of his
return and his subsequent behavior raised doubts as to his declared wish to marry Annette, but
he supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life. The Reign of Terror left
Wordsworth thoroughly disillusioned with the French Revolution and the outbreak of armed
hostilities between Britain and France prevented him from seeing Annette and his daughter
With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais. The purpose of the visit was to prepare
Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson. Afterwards he wrote
the sonnet "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," recalling a seaside walk with the 9-year-
old Caroline, whom he had never seen before that visit. Mary was anxious that Wordsworth
should do more for Caroline and upon Caroline's marriage, in 1816, when Wordsworth settled
£30 a year on her (equivalent to £1360 as of the year 2000). The payments continued until
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The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by Wordsworth, in the collections An
Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1795 he received a legacy of 900 pounds from
It was also in 1795 that he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly
developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxton
House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. Together
Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an
important work in the English Romantic movement. The volume gave neither Wordsworth's
nor Coleridge's name as author. One of Wordsworth's most famous poems, "Tintern Abbey",
was published in this collection, along with Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author, and
included a preface to the poems. It was augmented significantly in the next edition, published
in 1802. In this preface, which some scholars consider a central work of Romantic literary
theory, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of verse, one that is
based on the "real language of men" and avoids the poetic diction of much 18th-century verse.
Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility," and calls his
own poems in the book "experimental". A fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was
published in 1805.
The Borderers
Between 1795-97, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers, a verse tragedy set during
the reign of King Henry III of England, when Englishmen in the North Country came into
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conflict with Scottish rovers. He attempted to get the play staged in November 1797, but it
was rejected by Thomas Harris, the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, who proclaimed
it "impossible that the play should succeed in the representation". The rebuff was not received
lightly by Wordsworth and the play was not published until 1842, after substantial revision.
Wordsworth, Dorothy and Coleridge travelled to Germany in the autumn of 1798. While
Coleridge was intellectually stimulated by the journey, its main effect on Wordsworth was to
produce homesickness. During the harsh winter of 1798–99 Wordsworth lived with Dorothy
in Goslar, and, despite extreme stress and loneliness, began work on the autobiographical
piece that was later titled The Prelude. He wrote a number of other famous poems in Goslar,
including "The Lucy poems". In the Autumn of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister returned to
England and visited the Hutchinson family at Sockburn. When Coleridge arrived back in
England he travelled to the North with their publisher Joseph Cottle to meet Wordsworth and
undertake a proposed tour of the Lake District. This was the immediate cause of the siblings
settling at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, this time with another poet, Robert
Southey nearby. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be known as the "Lake Poets".
Throughout this period many of Wordsworth's poems revolved around themes of death,
In 1802 Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the 4,000 pounds owed
to Wordsworth's father through Lowther's failure to pay his aide. It was this repayment that
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afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry. On 4 October, following his visit with
Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette, Wordsworth married his childhood friend
Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary. The
following year Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased her
and William:
1. Isabella Curwen (d. 1848) had six children: Jane, Henry, William, John, Charles and Edward.
3. Mary Ann Dolan (d. after 1858) had one daughter Dora (b. 1858).
Dora Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847). Married Edward Quillinan in 1843.
William "Willy" Wordsworth (12 May 1810 – 1883). Married Fanny Graham and had four
Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three
parts, which he intended to call The Recluse. In 1798–99 he started an autobiographical poem,
which he referred to as the "poem to Coleridge" and which he planned would serve as an
appendix to a larger work called The Recluse. In 1804 he began expanding this
completed this work, now generally referred to as the first version of The Prelude, in 1805,
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but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole of The Recluse.
The death of his brother John, also in 1805, affected him strongly and may have influenced
works as "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" have been a source of critical
debate. It was long supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge for philosophical
guidance, but more recently scholars have suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been
formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid-1790s. In particular, while
he was in revolutionary Paris in 1792 the 22-year-old Wordsworth made the acquaintance of
the mysterious traveler John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822), who was nearing the end of his
thirty years of wandering, on foot, from Madras, India, through Persia and Arabia, across
Africa and Europe, and up through the fledgling United States. By the time of their
known only for Lyrical Ballads, and he hoped that this new collection would cement his
In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction, and in
1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6 followed six months later by the death of 3-year-old
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Westmorland, and the stipend of £400 a year made him financially secure. In 1813, he and his
family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal
The Prospectus
In 1814 Wordsworth published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part work The
Recluse, even though he had not completed the first part or the third part, and never did. He
did, however, write a poetic Prospectus to "The Recluse" in which he laid out the structure
and intention of the whole work. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's most famous
My voice proclaims
Some modern critics suggest that there was a decline in his work, beginning around the mid-
1810s, perhaps because most of the concerns that characterized his early poems (loss, death,
endurance, separation and abandonment) has been resolved in his writings and his life. By
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Following the death of his friend the painter William Green in 1823, Wordsworth also
mended his relations with Coleridge. The two were fully reconciled by 1828, when they
toured the Rhineland together. Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829 that rendered
her an invalid for the remainder of her life. Coleridge and Charles Lamb both died in 1834,
their loss being a difficult blow to Wordsworth. The following year saw the passing of James
Hogg. Despite the death of many contemporaries, the popularity of his poetry ensured a
Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years. In 1837, the Scottish poet and
playwright Joanna Baillie reflected on her long acquaintance with Wordsworth. "He looks
like a man that one must not speak to unless one has some sensible thing to say. however he
does occasionally converse cheerfully & well; and when one knows how benevolent &
In 1838, Wordsworth received an honorary doctorate in Civil Law from the University of
Durham and the following year he was awarded the same honorary degree by the University
of Oxford. In 1842, the government awarded him a Civil List pension of £300 a year.
Following the death of Robert Southey in 1843 Wordsworth became Poet Laureate. He
initially refused the honour, saying that he was too old, but accepted when the Prime Minister,
Robert Peel, assured him that "you shall have nothing required of you". Wordsworth thus
became the only poet laureate to write no official verses. The sudden death of his daughter
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Dora in 1847 at the age of only 42 was difficult for the aging poet to take and in his
Death
William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on 23
April 1850, and was buried at St Oswald's Church, Grasmere. His widow Mary published his
lengthy autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death.
Though it failed to arouse much interest at that time, it has since come to be widely
Major works
o "Simon Lee"
o "The Thorn"
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o "Three years she grew"
o "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal"
o "I travelled among unknown men"
o "Lucy Gray"
o "The Two April Mornings"
o "Solitary Reaper"
o "Nutting"
o "The Ruined Cottage"
o "Michael"
o "The Kitten At Play"
Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
o "Resolution and Independence"
o "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" Also known as "Daffodils"
o "My Heart Leaps Up"
o "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
o "Ode to Duty"
o "The Solitary Reaper"
o "Elegiac Stanzas"
o "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
o "London, 1802"
o "The World Is Too Much with Us"
Guide to the Lakes (1810)
" To the Cuckoo "
The Excursion (1814)
Laodamia (1815, 1845)
The White Doe of Rylstone (1815)
Peter Bell (1819)
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Life sketch of S.T Coleridge:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his
friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a
member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla
Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on
Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to
English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including
transcendentalism.
Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been
speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He
was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other
childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a
Early life
Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England.
Samuel's father was the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), the well-respected vicar of St
Mary's Church, Ottery St Mary and headmaster of the King's School, a free grammar school
established by King Henry VIII (1509–1547) in the town. He had previously been Master of
Hugh Squier's School in South Molton, Devon, and Lecturer of nearby Molland. John
Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the
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Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809), probably the daughter of
John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, in 1726. Coleridge suggests that he "took no
pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself. After John
Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charity school
which was founded in the 16th century in Greyfriars, London, where he remained throughout
his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with
Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles. In
one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote: "At six
years old I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll – and then
I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man who was
compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the
evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I
was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I
used to watch the window in which the books lay – and whenever the sun lay upon them, I
would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read."
However, Coleridge seems to have appreciated his teacher, as he wrote in recollections of his
I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe
master. At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us read
Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons too, which required most time
and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of
the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of
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science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and
more fugitive causes. In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our
sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in
plainer words... In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and
ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh
aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose! [...] Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's,
which I cannot pass over in silence, because I think it ... worthy of imitation. He would often
permit our theme exercises, ... to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over.
Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask the writer, why this or that
sentence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no
satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one
exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same
Throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his
relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by
attention seeking, which has been linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was
rarely allowed to return home during the school term, and this distance from his family at
such a turbulent time proved emotionally damaging. He later wrote of his loneliness at school
in the poem "Frost at Midnight": "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet
birthplace."
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From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the
Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade. In December 1793, he left the
college and enlisted in the Royal Dragoons using the false name "Silas Tomkyn
Comberbache", perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, Mary Evans, had
rejected him. Afterwards, he was rumored to have had a bout of severe depression. His
brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of "insanity" and he
was readmitted to Jesus College, though he would never receive a degree from the University.
At Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered
radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon
of Pennsylvania. In 1795, the two friends married sisters Sarah and Edith Fricker, in St Mary
Redcliffe, Bristol, but Coleridge's marriage with Sarah proved unhappy. He grew to detest his
wife, whom he only married because of social constraints. He eventually separated from her.
Coleridge made plans to establish a journal, The Watchman, to be printed every eight days to
avoid a weekly newspaper tax. The first issue of the short-lived journal was published in
The years 1797 and 1798, during which he lived in what is now known as Coleridge Cottage,
in Nether Stowey, Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In 1795,
Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. (Wordsworth, having visited
him and being enchanted by the surroundings., rented Alfoxton Park, a little over three miles
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[5 km] away.) Besides the Rime of The Ancient Mariner, Coleridge composed the symbolic
poem Kubla Khan, written—Coleridge himself claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a
kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem Christabel. The writing of Kubla
Khan, written about the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and his legendary palace at Xanadu,
was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of a "Person from Porlock" – an event that has
been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction and Nabokov's Lolita.
During this period, he also produced his much-praised "conversation" poems This Lime-Tree
In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads,
which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic age. Wordsworth may have
contributed more poems, but the real star of the collection was Coleridge's first version of The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It was the longest work and drew more praise and attention than
anything else in the volume. In the spring Coleridge temporarily took over for Rev. Joshua
Toulmin at Taunton's Mary Street Unitarian Chapel while Rev. Toulmin grieved over the
drowning death of his daughter Jane. Poetically commenting on Toulmin's strength, Coleridge
wrote in a 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin, "I walked into Taunton (eleven miles) and back
again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that
swallowed up by the tide on the sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere . These events cut
cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical
Christian, – there is indeed a tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly Father.
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The West Midlands and the North
Coleridge also worked briefly in Shropshire, where he came in December 1797 as locum to its
local Unitarian minister, Dr Rowe, in their church in the High Street at Shrewsbury. He is said
to have read his Rime of the Ancient Mariner at a literary evening in Mardol. He was then
contemplating a career in the ministry, and gave a probationary sermon in High Street church
on Sunday, 14 January 1798. William Hazlitt, a Unitarian minister's son, was in the
congregation, having walked from Wem to hear him. Coleridge later visited Hazlitt and his
father at Wem but within a day or two of preaching he received a letter from Josiah
Wedgwood II, who had offered to help him out of financial difficulties with an annuity of
£150 (approximately £13,000 in today's money) per year on condition he give up his
ministerial career. Coleridge accepted this, to the disappointment of Hazlitt who hoped to
In the autumn of 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon
went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. During this period, he
became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism and critical
philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and in the literary criticism of the 18th century dramatist
Gotthold Lessing. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the
dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the German Classical poet Friedrich Schiller into English. He
continued to pioneer these ideas through his own critical writings for the rest of his life
(sometimes without attribution), although they were unfamiliar and difficult for a culture
dominated by empiricism.
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It was at Sockburn that Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem Love, addressed to Sara Hutchinson.
The knight mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church.
The figure has a wyvern at his feet, a reference to the Sockburn Worm slain by Sir John
Conyers (and a possible source for Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky). The worm was supposedly
buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the 'greystone' of Coleridge's first draft,
later transformed into a 'mount'. The poem was a direct inspiration for John Keats' famous
Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like
Lessing, were first to William Godwin's Political Justice, especially during his Pantisocratic
period, and to David Hartley's Observations on Man, which is the source of the psychology
which is found in Frost at Midnight. Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory
events as impressions, and that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences
between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the coincidence of
impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one impression triggers those links and
calls up the memory of those ideas with which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet,
Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative
insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people
In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at
Keswick in the Lake District of Cumberland to be near Grasmere, where Wordsworth had
moved. Soon, however, he was beset by marital problems, nightmares, illnesses, increased
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opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers,
all of which fuelled the composition of Dejection: An Ode and an intensification of his
philosophical studies. He also sprinkled cayenne pepper over his eggs, which he ate from a
teacup.
In 1802, Coleridge took a nine-day walking holiday in the fells of the Lake District. Coleridge
is credited with the first recorded descent of Scafell to Mickledore via Broad Stand, although
this was more due to his getting lost than a keenness for mountaineering.
In 1804, he travelled to Sicily and Malta, working for a time as Acting Public Secretary of
Malta under the Civil Commissioner, Alexander Ball, a task he performed quite successfully.
He lived in San Anton Palace in the village of Attard. However, he gave this up and returned
to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From
1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope
that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce
his consumption of opium. Thomas de Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and
the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict,
using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been
suggested, however, that this reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.
His opium addiction (he was using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week) now began to
take over his life: he separated from his wife Sarah in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in
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1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814.
His addiction caused severe constipation, which required regular and humiliating enemas.
In 1809, Coleridge made his second attempt to become a newspaper publisher with the
publication of the journal entitled The Friend. It was a weekly publication that, in Coleridge’s
typically ambitious style, was written, edited, and published almost entirely single-handedly.
Given that Coleridge tended to be highly disorganised and had no head for business, the
publication was probably doomed from the start. Coleridge financed the journal by selling
over five hundred subscriptions, over two dozen of which were sold to members of
Parliament, but in late 1809, publication was crippled by a financial crisis and Coleridge was
obliged to approach "Conversation Sharp", Tom Poole and one or two other wealthy friends
for an emergency loan to continue. The Friend was an eclectic publication that drew upon
politics, history, and literary criticism. Although it was often turgid, rambling, and
inaccessible to most readers, it ran for 25 issues and was republished in book form a number
of times. Years after its initial publication, The Friend became a highly influential work and
its effect was felt on writers and philosophers from J.S. Mill to Emerson.
Between 1810 and 1820, Coleridge gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – those on
Shakespeare renewed interest in the playwright as a model for contemporary writers. Much of
Coleridge's reputation as a literary critic is founded on the lectures that he undertook in the
winter of 1810–11, which were sponsored by the Philosophical Institution and given at Scot's
Corporation Hall off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. These lectures were heralded in the prospectus
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as "A Course of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, in Illustration of the Principles of
meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of
quality from one lecture to the next. As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to
prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into
extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow. However, it was the
lecture on Hamlet given on 2 January 1812 that was considered the best and has influenced
Hamlet studies ever since. Before Coleridge, Hamlet was often denigrated and belittled by
critics from Voltaire to Dr. Johnson. Coleridge rescued the play's reputation, and his thoughts
In August 1814, Coleridge was approached by Lord Byron's publisher, John Murray, about
the possibility of translating Goethe's classic Faust (1808). Coleridge was regarded by many
as the greatest living writer on the demonic and he accepted the commission, only to abandon
work on it after six weeks. Until recently, scholars were in agreement that Coleridge never
returned to the project, despite Goethe's own belief in the 1820s that he had in fact completed
a long translation of the work. In September 2007, Oxford University Press sparked a heated
1821).
In April 1816, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family
alienated, took residence in the Highgate homes, then just north of London, of the physician
James Gillman, first at South Grove and later at the nearby 3 The Grove.[25] It is unclear
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whether his growing use of opium (and the brandy in which it was dissolved) was a symptom
or a cause of his growing depression. Gillman was partially successful in controlling the
poet's addiction. Coleridge remained in Highgate for the rest of his life, and the house became
In Gillman's home, Coleridge finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria (mostly
notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and
other writings while he was living at the Gillman homes, notably the Lay Sermons of 1816
and 1817, Sibylline Leaves (1817), Hush (1820), Aids to Reflection (1825), and On the
Constitution of the Church and State (1830). He also produced essays published shortly after
his death, such as Essay on Faith (1838) and Confessions Of An Inquiring Spirit (1840). A
number of his followers were central to the Oxford Movement, and his religious writings
Coleridge also worked extensively on the various manuscripts which form his "Opus
synthesis. The work was never published in his lifetime, and has frequently been seen as
evidence for his tendency to conceive grand projects which he then had difficulty in carrying
through to completion. But while he frequently berated himself for his "indolence", the long
list of his published works calls this myth into some question. Critics are divided on whether
the "Opus Maximum", first published in 2002, successfully resolved the philosophical issues
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Coleridge died in Highgate, London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded
by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium. Coleridge had spent 18
years under the roof of the Gillman family, who built an addition onto their home to
Faith may be defined as fidelity to our own being, so far as such being is not and cannot
become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication to being
generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses; and again to whatever is affirmed
or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best
peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other
words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula
maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could,
without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational
Carlyle described him at Highgate: "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those
years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of
life's battle ... The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly
reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had
this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma;
his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain
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Poetry
Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and
deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a
meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any
other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His
Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilising common,
everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth
became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to
imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, The Excursion or The Prelude, ever having been written
critic. His philosophy of poetry, which he developed over many years, has been deeply
influential in the field of literary criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics as A. O.
Coleridge is probably best known for his long poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and
Christabel. Even those who have never read the Rime have come under its influence: its
words have given the English language the metaphor of an albatross around one's neck, the
quotation of "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" (almost always rendered as
"but not a drop to drink"), and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser man" (again, usually rendered
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as "a sadder but wiser man"). The phrase "All creatures great and small" may have been
inspired by The Rime: "He prayeth best, who loveth best;/ All things both great and small;/
For the dear God who loveth us;/ He made and loveth all." Christabel is known for its musical
Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known.
Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional "Romantic" aura because they were never
finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite
The eight of Coleridge's poems listed above are now often discussed as a group entitled
"Conversation poems". The term itself was coined in 1928 by George McLean Harper, who
borrowed the subtitle of The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798) to describe the seven
other poems as well. The poems are considered by many critics to be among Coleridge's finest
verses; thus Harold Bloom has written, "With Dejection, The Ancient Mariner, and Kubla
Khan, Frost at Midnight shows Coleridge at his most impressive." They are also among his
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Harper himself considered that the eight poems represented a form of blank verse that is
"...more fluent and easy than Milton's, or any that had been written since Milton". In 2006
Robert Koelzer wrote about another aspect of this apparent "easiness", noting that
Conversation poems such as "... Coleridge's The Eolian Harp and The Nightingale maintain a
middle register of speech, employing an idiomatic language that is capable of being construed
as un-symbolic and un-musical: language that lets itself be taken as 'merely talk' rather than
rapturous 'song'."
The last ten lines of "Frost at Midnight" were chosen by Harper as the "best example of the
peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as natural-seeming as prose, but as
exquisitely artistic as the most complicated sonnet." The speaker of the poem is addressing his
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Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
In 1965, M. H. Abrams wrote a broad description that applies to the Conversation poems:
"The speaker begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the
landscape evokes a varied by integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling
which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the
lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or
resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds itself to end where it began, at the
outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the
intervening meditation."[39] In fact, Abrams was describing both the Conversation poems and
later poems influenced by them. Abrams' essay has been called a "touchstone of literary
originating what Abrams called the 'greater Romantic lyric', a genre that began with
Stanzas Written in Dejection and Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, and was a major influence on
more modern lyrics by Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and W. H. Auden."
Literary criticism
Biographia Literaria
In addition to his poetry, Coleridge also wrote influential pieces of literary criticism including
published in 1817. The work delivered both biographical explanations of the author's life as
well as his impressions on literature. The collection also contained an analysis of a broad
range of philosophical principles of literature ranging from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant and
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Schelling and applied them to the poetry of peers such as William Wordsworth.[41][42]
academic communities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and T.S. Eliot stated that he
believed that Coleridge was "perhaps the greatest of English critics, and in a sense the last."
Eliot suggests that Coleridge displayed "natural abilities" far greater than his contemporaries,
brought the subject of his criticisms away from the text and into a world of logical analysis
that mixed logical analysis and emotion. However, Eliot also criticises Coleridge for allowing
his emotion to play a role in the metaphysical process, believing that critics should not have
emotions that are not provoked by the work being studied.[43] Hugh Kenner in Historical
Fictions, discusses Norman Fruman's Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel and suggests that
the term "criticism" is too often applied to Biographia Literaria, which both he and Fruman
describe as having failed to explain or help the reader understand works of art. To Kenner,
Coleridge's attempt to discuss complex philosophical concepts without describing the rational
process behind them displays a lack of critical thinking that makes the volume more of a
In Biographia Literaria and his poetry, symbols are not merely "objective correlatives" to
Coleridge, but instruments for making the universe and personal experience intelligible and
spiritually covalent. To Coleridge, the "cinque spotted spider," making its way upstream "by
fits and starts," [Biographia Literaria] is not merely a comment on the intermittent nature of
creativity, imagination, or spiritual progress, but the journey and destination of his life. The
spider's five legs represent the central problem that Coleridge lived to resolve, the conflict
between Aristotelian logic and Christian philosophy. Two legs of the spider represent the
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"me-not me" of thesis and antithesis, the idea that a thing cannot be itself and its opposite
simultaneously, the basis of the clockwork Newtonian world view that Coleridge rejected.
The remaining three legs—exothesis, mesothesis and synthesis or the Holy trinity—represent
the idea that things can diverge without being contradictory. Taken together, the five legs—
with synthesis in the center, form the Holy Cross of Ramist logic. The cinque-spotted spider is
Coleridge's emblem of holism, the quest and substance of Coleridge's thought and spiritual
life.
Coleridge wrote reviews of Ann Radcliffe's books and The Mad Monk, among others. He
comments in his reviews: "Situations of torment, and images of naked horror, are easily
conceived; and a writer in whose works they abound, deserves our gratitude almost equally
with him who should drag us by way of sport through a military hospital, or force us to sit at
the dissecting-table of a natural philosopher. To trace the nice boundaries, beyond which
terror and sympathy are deserted by the pleasurable emotions, – to reach those limits, yet
never to pass them, hic labor, hic opus est." and "The horrible and the preternatural have
usually seized on the popular taste, at the rise and decline of literature. Most powerful
stimulants, they can never be required except by the torpor of an unawakened, or the languor
of an exhausted, appetite... We trust, however, that satiety will banish what good sense should
have prevented; and that, wearied with fiends, incomprehensible characters, with shrieks,
murders, and subterraneous dungeons, the public will learn, by the multitude of the
manufacturers, with how little expense of thought or imagination this species of composition
is manufactured."
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However, Coleridge used these elements in poems such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
(1834), Christabel and Kubla Khan (published in 1816, but known in manuscript form before
then) and certainly influenced other poets and writers of the time. Poems like these both drew
inspiration from and helped to inflame the craze for Gothic romance. Coleridge also made
Mary Shelley, who knew Coleridge well, mentions The Rime of the Ancient Mariner twice
directly in Frankenstein, and some of the descriptions in the novel echo it indirectly.
Although William Godwin, her father, disagreed with Coleridge on some important issues, he
respected his opinions and Coleridge often visited the Godwins. Mary Shelley later recalled
hiding behind the sofa and hearing his voice chanting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Collected works
A current standard edition is The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by
Kathleen Coburn and many other editors (1969–2002), which appeared (from Princeton
University Press and Routledge and Kegan Paul) in Bollingen Series 75, in 16 volumes,
broken down as follows into further volumes and parts, to a total of 34 separate printed
volumes:
3. Essays on his Times in the Morning Post and the Courier (1978) in 3 vols;
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7. Biographia Literaria (1983) in 2 vols;
16. Poetical Works (2001) in 6 vols (part1 Reading Edition in 2 vols; part 2 Variorum Text in
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Chapter Three
The Renaissance
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1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites
The early collaboration of the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge marked the
beginning of the Romantic period of poetry. Together, these two poets laid the groundwork
for this new style in the Preface to their work Lyrical Ballads. Later, though, Coleridge
expressed his disagreement with some of the ideals Wordsworth had professed in their early
work. In this paper, I will explore the discrepancies in Wordsworth's and Coleridge's ideas on
poetry.
Lyrical Ballads marked a departure from mainstream poetry when it first appeared in 1798.
Although both Coleridge and Wordsworth had contributed poems to the work and had
conceived of the foundations of their new style together, it was Wordsworth alone who wrote
the formal testament to these ideas, the Preface to the 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads. This
work outlined several distinctions between this new Romantic style of poetry and its
preference for the use of common language, and a distinct effort to reproduce emotional states
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and influence the feelings of the reader. Wordsworth explained that scenes from common life
were well suited to be poetic subjects for several reasons. First, he believed that common or
rustic scenes would be understandable to all readers. Second, he thought that since rustic life
had a closeness with nature, images from rustic life would be well suited for illustrating
nature’s fundamental substance. As Wordsworth explained in the Preface, "Low and rustic
life was generally chosen . . . because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist
in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and
Along with his use of common scenes in poetry, Wordsworth preferred to use common
language in his verses. The language of common or rural people, Wordsworth believed, was
by necessity well suited to portraying nature in poetry. Since common people had regular
first-hand interaction with nature, and since nature played such an important role in their
lives, their language appealed to Wordsworth as being constructed to convey the emotions
associated with nature. As stated in the Preface, "The language, too, of these men is adopted
... because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of
The final innovation Wordsworth introduced in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads was the concept
that the goal of poetry was to influence the emotions of the reader. This idea was related to the
Romantic notion that feeling was as much an integral part of consciousness as reason, and that
feeling, rather than reason, was the dominant language of the soul. Thus, by distilling an
emotion into verse and creating an impression of that feeling in the reader, a poet was
communicating with the reader's soul rather than just his or her rational mind. This important
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revelation was the basis for all of the three other conventions adapted by the Romantic poets.
Since this emotional communication was the goal of their poetry, the Romantics used
foundations of the Romantic style, not all of his ideas went uncontested by the other Romantic
poets. Coleridge, who had been Wordsworth's friend and collaborator, later summarized his
personal differences with Wordsworth in his Biographia Literaria. Coleridge's main dispute
with Wordsworth was about what constituted proper poetic language. While Coleridge agreed
with Wordsworth on the purpose of poetry and the idea that nature and scenes of common life
close to nature were fitting subjects of poetry, Coleridge did not agree with certain sentiments
Firstly, Coleridge asserted that common language was not the best language for poetry, and
that the best parts of language resulted from educated reflection rather than a familiarity with
simple and natural things. Coleridge confirms this in Biographia Literaria, stating: "The best
part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind
itself' (1548). Next, Coleridge argued that there is no true common language, but that
language varies from person to person, even within classes. The universal concepts of
language, however, were common to all classes and not exclusive to the lower and rural
classes. As Coleridge explains: "Every man's language has, first, its individualities; secondly
the common properties of the class to which he belongs; and thirdly, words and phrases of
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Finally, Coleridge pointed out that good poetry could not be wholly written in natural,
everyday language. Since the goal of poetry was to strongly affect the emotions of the reader,
a poet had to use words more artfully than an everyday person would, and therefore poetic
language could never be identical to common language. These differences between Coleridge
and Wordsworth demonstrate that the Romantic style was not concrete and rigid, but was
In conclusion, Wordsworth and Coleridge, though they were two of the founders of Romantic
poetry, disagreed about the particulars of the style. While Wordsworth considered common
life and language to be in tune with nature, Coleridge believed that more refined and artistic
language best fitted poetry. Although they disagreed, both pursued the Romantic goal of
capturing and manipulating emotions, and their differences showed that it was this goal, rather
than the particulars of poetic theory, which defined the Romantic style.
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Chapter Four
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is often discussed in association with his peer, William
Wordsworth. This is due in part to their friendship and joint ventures on works such
there are several differences in Coleridge’s poetic style and philosophical views.
Coleridge’s poetry differs from that of Wordsworth, and his association with
Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a poetic diction unlike that of William Wordsworth, he
relies more heavily on imagination for poetic inspiration, and he also incorporates
religion into his poetry differently. Coleridge’s different views, combined with his
Although Coleridge and Wordsworth did not meet until the year 1797, they were
familiar with one another’s work prior to that date. As early as 1793 Coleridge had
read the poetry of Wordsworth, and he was specifically drawn to the political elements
of his poem Descriptive Sketches. Their first meeting occurred in 1795 atBristol
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impressions of Coleridge, but upon meeting him in 1795 he’s recorded as mentioning,
“I wished indeed to see more [of Coleridge]- his talent appears to me very great”
(Newlyn, 5). Their friendship truly began to flourish when Coleridge visited
Wordsworth in March of 1797 at Racedown, and after that visit the two had a much
Despite any difference, the two poets were compatible because they were both
ways”(Newlyn, 31). In 1798 the publication of their joint effort, Lyrical Ballads,
signified the height of their relationship. This came at a time when they were together
in Alfoxden, where they had enjoyed the simple pleasures of spending time together,
discussing ideas, and devising schemes for publications. “Never again would the two
poets have the sort of compatibility which allowed for major differences of opinion,
Following this time period, their friendship began to slowly deteriorate; beginning
with criticisms of each other’s poetry, then growing into conflicting views on
opinions” concerning poetry (Newlyn, 87). However, their friendship could have been
spared, had Coleridge not been misinformed by Basil Montagu that Wordsworth
the last straw, and had deeply upset Coleridge, who was by this point addicted to
liquid opium and very sensitive about the topic. Thus, after 1810 their friendship
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would never be the same, and although Wordsworth and Coleridge had once been
compatible, and are often paired together as Romantic poets, it was ultimately their
Coleridge’s different perception of poetry is what sets him aside from Wordsworth. In
fact, Coleridge even reflected on the difference between his contributions and those of
persons and characters supernatural – Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was…to
simplistic division of labor, it nonetheless proves that Coleridge viewed his poetic
Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner uses very deliberate phrases in order to
describe images. The descriptions portray a bleak atmosphere with vivid images of the
“rotting deck” where “dead men lay”(Romanticism, 530). His lines directly address the
despair of the situation with very concise language, leaving little to the imagination.
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The essence of the poem is summed up in the lines, “The many men so beautiful/ And
they all dead did lie! / And a thousand slimy things/ Lived on – and so did I
(Romanticism, 534).” The detail throughout the poem is painstakingly precise, yet still
saying, “…the language of real life should be refined to give poetry its intenseness
(Newlyn, 88).” Somber and lonely feelings are expressed through the intenseness, and
the exact diction of Coleridge is what makes it possible for this to be conveyed.
Even Wordsworth recognized that Coleridge’s poetic diction in this poem differed
from that of his own. In Note to ‘Ancient Mariner’ he criticized some of Coleridge’s
stylistic approaches. This criticism proves that Wordsworth and Coleridge were not
completely compatible, and it points out how Coleridge developed his own
Wordsworth’s opinion, “The poem of my friend has indeed great defects,” and he goes
on to say, “the principle person has no character…[the mariner] does not act, but is
345).
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poem, but his prior criticism made it clear that he would have taken a different
The poem Written in Early Spring exemplifies Wordsworth’s poetic style, which often
components of nature, Wordsworth uses personification and thus avoids imagery that
Wordsworth uses a common literary device to portray the images. He refers to birds
that “hopped and played” and twigs that “catch the breezy air,” in order to depict
nature. This draws on the imagination of the reader to fill in the rest of the image,
whereas Coleridge in Ancient Mariner provides much of the detail by invoking his
also central to his poetic style. He believed that high quality poetry is the result of
imagination being involved in the process. The imagination is broken into two sectors,
according to Coleridge, the primary imagination and the secondary imagination. In the
primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human
primary in the kind of its agency, differing only in degree, and in the mode of its
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aware of the conscious act of the imagination, is thus hindered and imperfect in
upon which the addicted Coleridge grew to rely. One of Coleridge’s most notorious
The liquid opium, known laudanum, was a double edge sword for Coleridge; it was
the source of his tragic addiction and the potion that enthused his imagination. This
was because the drug increases blood flow to certain parts of the brain, inducing a
The poem Kubla Khan was inspired by opium use, and this is evident because
Coleridge devised a completely original setting that had an undertone of darkness. The
setting was described with very innovative images, in lines such as, “A damsel with a
dulcimer/ In a vision [he] once saw” (Holmes, 17). The event is described in the
context of a vision, not a dream or a thought, and this implies that the opium caused
the “vision.” Moreover, the poem refers to an evil Mongol ruler, Kubla Khan, who
does not represent peace or joy. That creates an under tone of darkness, and with
opium the visions may have been glorious but the reality of the addiction was very
“dark.”
On the other hand, Wordsworth had been known to dabble with opium but he did not
have the same type of dependence, nor was his opium use overly evident in his poetry.
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Furthermore, the primary and secondary imagination is a concept that was unique to
powerful feelings” and “spots of time.” This is what he judges to be essential in the
creation of poetry. The “spots of time” are moments from the past that are forever
present in the mind, therefore they can constantly be reflected upon. The
on “spots of time,” such as when he recalled the stormy weather that coincided with
the death of his father. In addition, he allows nature to influence the mood of his
poetry in works such asTintern Abbey. For example, Wordsworth wrote about “waters,
rolling from their mountain springs,” and “the quiet of the sky,” which gave him
Coleridge asserts that “a poet ‘s heart and intellect” should be “combined with
appearances in Nature – not held in…loose mixture in the shape of formal similes”
(Newlyn, 91). This quote comes from his criticism of Bowles, but can also be applied
to Wordsworth because his experiences with nature are based on mood, such as in the
aforementioned Tintern Abbey. Passion, to Coleridge, was much more important than
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Coleridge criticized Wordsworth’s occasional exploitations of nature, and Wordsworth
However, apart from differences in their poetic diction and the ways in which they
derived poetic inspiration, the two poets also had different outlooks on religion.
Especially in his later years, Coleridge concerned himself a great deal with God,
religion and faith. His “ill health had led him to read the New Testament in a new
light,” and he then began to look for “proof of God in the natural world” (Holmes, 71).
He believed that men habitually needed “to look into their own souls instead of always
looking out, both of themselves and their nature” (Holmes, 72). Coleridge not only
examined the Bible, but he also studied the Trinitarian view of Christianity along with
The poem Spots in the Sun is an example of how Coleridge incorporated God into his
poetry. The poem is filled with constant religious references, and begins “My father
confessor is strict and holy” (Romanticism, 511). Coleridge goes on to say, “Good
father, I would fain not do thee wrong” (Romanticism, 511). The stress Coleridge
placed on religion and God is ironic because this poem intended to address the strain
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on his relationship with Wordsworth. This poem addressed God and referenced
religious anecdotes (i.e. “Mi fili peccare noli” or “Sin not, my son” Romanticism,
511), and overall the poem is referred to the strain in his relationship with
contrasted the ideals of Wordsworth. One would imagine that if Coleridge were
Wordsworth, and refrain from involving ideology different from that of Wordsworth.
On a very deep level, this may be an attempt by Coleridge to use juxtaposed concepts
However, it is important to note that Coleridge integrated God into this poem. It
displayed that even though he was concerned about his relations with Wordsworth, a
very worthwhile topic, he felt that he could best address the situation by incorporating
religious references.
God or religion. He wrote, “What happy moments did I count,” and wonders “what
God into the issue, but instead used a literary device to convey his sentiment. He
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Wordsworth comments on the situation from a simple standpoint and does not involve
God or a higher being; however, Coleridge makes the situation more intricate by
reluctance to overlook the role of God. However, to truly understand why Coleridge
involved God in his poem and why Wordsworth did not, one must understand how
included the lines, “Even in their fixed and steady lineaments/ He traced an ebbing and
flowing mind, / Expression ever varying”(Newlyn, 44). Had Coleridge written this
verse the “ebbing and flowing mind” would be interpreted as that of God, because he
constantly searched for proof of God’s existence outside of himself. Nonetheless, the
verse was written by Wordsworth, in his linguistic ambiguity suggested that the
“ebbing and flowing mind” was in fact his own. In contrast, he is looked inside
himself but not inside his soul, while Coleridge asserted that man must look inside
poetic diction, it is evident that these two poets were uniquely individual. Moreover,
although Samuel Coleridge is often paired with William Wordsworth, upon further
examination one can plainly see that the two poets are undoubtedly different. The
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similarities between them often overshadow their individual achievements, ideas, and
styles. Due to the fact that Samuel Coleridge sought out the acquaintance of William
Wordsworth and had his appreciation for Wordsworth’s poetry well documented,
Coleridge is considered the lesser of the two poets. Additionally, before the men
understudy. Combined with the fact that his opium addiction crippled his poetic
conveyed original theories about the imagination, and distinctly incorporated his
religious philosophies into his poetry. It is for these reasons that Samuel Taylor
This source focuses on the relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth, both as
friends and as collaborators. Newlyn mentions that the friendship eventually faded but
the reason the two were so complementary was because they were very different. They
were different in terms of their ideas about imagination and intellect, and perhaps they
eventually had a falling out because they had “unrealistic expectations” of what their
between the two poets, and that will help in contrasting Coleridge with Wordsworth.
In addition, this source will allow me to examine the men as friends and co-workers,
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and that can help me to see if either of those two relationships affected the other. The
shortcomings of this source would have to be the fact that some of the information is
not supported very strongly. This seems to be because some points in the book are
more of the author’s opinion; however, much of the book seems to have reliable
arguments that are supported with examples from poetry or real life occurrences. It is
also critical that I focus on how Coleridge’s differences are what gain him recognition
This source concentrates on the complexity of the lyrical dialogue between Coleridge
and Wordsworth in their poetry. One must read between the lines in order to identify
the dialogue between these two men in their poetry. The author contends that this
dialogue arose due to the fact that Coleridge and Wordsworth recognized similar
themes and styles in their writing. This source is of value to me because it we help me
grasp a better idea of the poetic relationship that existed between the two. In addition,
the dialogue is hard to interpret so this source will make it easier to understand.
ideological differences as peers. Nevertheless, this source still holds value because it
will break down the dialogue between the two men in several of their well-known
poems.
The lives, letters, and criticisms of Coleridge and Wordsworth are covered in this
particular source. The two poets are examined in accordance to their era and the events
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in politics, education and literature at the time. The most important information that
this source contains is about the growth of the poet’s ideas. This will aid me in
breaking Coleridge away from Wordsworth, and discovering exactly where his ideas
differ from those of Wordsworth. Moreover, the criticisms of the poets are much
needed because they will spur new thoughts and perspectives for me when
approaching this topic. Did people have the same criticism of both poets? If not, where
did the criticism differ and why? These types of questions will make it easier for me to
contrast the poets, and it will give me a good idea of Coleridge’s strengths and
weaknesses. The book does cover background information about the period in which
the men lived, and that is both good and bad. It is good because it will provide me
with a grounds for examination, that is to say, I can see how both men reacting
My final two sources focus more on Coleridge as an individual, and that is what my
paper is basically aiming to cover. Aside from Wordsworth, Coleridge has his own
However, he is still most often discussed in context with Wordsworth. This source
provides exactly what the title suggests, and the ideas of Coleridge often seem to be
very complex and in depth. I want to examine that in this source because it seems to
Wordsworth.
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This source also discusses all of Coleridge’s poetry in great detail, and that provides a
helpful interpretation and breakdown of the ideas behind the poetry. The one downfall
to this source would be that it is the oldest of all my sources and some of the ideas
might be out dated in comparison to my more updated sources. The basics are covered
in this source and an older source may be able to actually provide perspectives that go
overlooked today.
This is my most complete source on Samuel Coleridge, including both his life and
works in a biographical format. The title accurately reflects the tone of this book, as it
delves into Coleridge’s family life, poetry, and opium addiction. A full view of his life
allows me to see why he may have thought differently than Wordsworth, and it also
Many of his poems are inspired by something he has seen or experienced, and this
source provides information as to when, why, and how those inspirations occurred.
This source however does not cover Coleridge’s early life, it only covers the last thirty
years of his lifetime. Although that is not necessarily “complete” it is sufficient for my
topic because that is the time period in which he grew apart from Wordsworth and
their differences were magnified. When I see what makes him different from
Also, many of the poems I intend to examine for my paper were written around this
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This is the text that we used in class and it provided me with brief biographical
information about Coleridge and Wordsworth. More importantly, this text supplied
Comparing Wordsworth and Coleridge is a huge task, and I suggest you start a
Discussion Group question with this to get as much information and as many ideas as
took some of the formal language out of poetry and replaced it with simple, concrete
words. "Common" may be too strong of a word when you compare Wordsworth with,
Coleridge, in contrast, emphasized the imagination. His poetry dwells in the land of
fantasy. Whereas nature may receive the most emphasis in Wordsworth's poetry, the
Those are some basics to get you started, but there is much, much more to this
comparison. I think that the basic premise of work from both Wordsworth and
Coleridge has to start out on their beliefs of Romanticism. They both felt that the
artist had to carve out a new identity through their work. This is part of the reason
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why their work is so distinctive, not seeking to follow any sort of established and
accepted conventions, but rather seeking to create something new and different. Their
style of writing seeks to forge links with the audience, bringing them into a story
telling reference point about experiences and one's own subjectivity. For example,
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is meant to create intrigue and sense of wonderment within
the reader. Wordsworth's poems accomplish much the same as they highlight a
reverence for internal subjectivity emotions, and natural beauty. In both writers, the
Wordsworth and Coleridge were also part of a larger group called the Lake Poets.
Nature and redefinitions of nature are at the heart of the Romantic revival, and nature
itself is, perhaps, nowhere more beautiful than in the region of England known as the
lake country. According to his autobiographical poem The Prelude, William was
allowed to run wild in nature, which became for him a kind of mother. Throughout his
poetry, we see a pantheistic refrain: God inheres in the natural world around us. God is
in nature. He tells us in The Prelude that there was much loneliness in his childhood.
solitude was a vital element in his psychological makeup. Another of his most famous
poems, “Daffodils,” opens with the line “I wandered lonely as a Cloud.” Loneliness
and creativity are at the heart of Wordsworth’s poetry, and loneliness, for him, is a
creative state.
In 1795, he had met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose muse was both more
philosophical and wilder than Wordsworth’s: opium and Immanuel Kant, the great
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German philosopher fed that imagination. First published in 1798. Lyrical Ballads
Coleridge was also living in the Lake District at this time, close by Wordsworth.
perfect example of Coleridge’s spontaneity is found in “Kubla Khan,” the short poem
he began (but never finished) under the influence of a narcotic dream. Among
Coleridge’s utopian projects was his failed “pantisocratic” community, based on free
love and philosophical ideas. Coleridge, in contrast, left in his chaotic wake a
powers of criticism, and feeling for poetry. His greatest complete poem, The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner, was composed during his collaborative years with Wordsworth.
At its best, Wordsworth’s poetry is of stunning purity and power. One example comes
from the “Lucy” poems, included in later reprints of Lyrical Ballads. Breathtakingly
simple and with only eight lines, the poem nonetheless conveys compelling emotion.
Coleridge’s agenda was different. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the first work
natural universe. A religious order exists in this universe, but it is an order that is
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Coleridge drew on gothic fiction and an extraordinary range of reading in theology,
philosophy, and travel. His descriptions of the arctic regions are almost photographic..
The narrative of The Rime is simple. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner indicates the
new directions that poetry would take over the next two centuries. A revolution had
taken place and, arguably, is still taking place in English literature as a result of
Lyrical Ballads.
On one hand, Coleridge was a romantic poet who believed that inner nature can shape
what the beauty of nature. He thought that nature is a mirror that reflects what our
within is what create our happiness or sadness in each side of our real life. On the
other hand, Wordsworth believed that nature is beautiful and its beauty has an impact
sensibilities and heightend imaginative feeling Emotion and imagination are the
bedrock of Romanticism. Romanticism stands for freedom and liberty, and has
therefore been designated as 'Liberalism in Literature'. The poetry of this age was
heart.
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- Willam Wordsworth
- Coleridge
Wordsworth and coleridge were the two great poets of Romanticism and it was by
their joint efforts that the romantic revival in poetry was brought about during the nineteenth
century. The meeting of coleridge and wordsworth in 1797 at Nether stowey was a
momentous meeting in the history of English poetry. This meeting made, then intimate
friends. Both the friends decided to transform the old currents of classicism and give a new
Wordsworth (1770-1850) and coleridge were unhappy with the decorative language of
the eighteenth century poets and were completly dissatisfied with the kind of poetry that was
written by the pseudo - classical poets of the eighteenth century. Both the poets felt that the
type of poetry produced was neither desirable nor pleasing to the heart and soul of man. Both
the poets were gifted with the qualities of imagination, sensibility and creative power of
"Coleridge's intellect was quick, versatile, and penetrating. Wordsworth was less
versatile but more deeply meditative coleridge was idealistic and ranged for in the realms of
abstract thought; wordsworth though he changed them by the imagination, sought his
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The first piece of work of their close association was the 'Lyrical Ballads'. The
publication of the 'Lyrical Ballads' was a land-mark in the history of English poetry. Their
joint venture brought about a transformation in poetry and introduced a new way in poesy
thought. Myres humorously calls. The Lyrical Ballads as the Lurical Blasts since its
publication created a profound sensation in the mind of the contemporary poetry reading
public.
Studying the Lyrical Ballads minutely shows some similarities and contrasts in the
outlook of wordsworth and Coleridge as poets. William wordsworth studied the simple
objects of nature and gave them the imaginative colours. It wasn't his business to make
excursions in the world of supernaturalism. It was left to Coleridge to introduce the world of
supernaturalism, mystery and magic in poetry in this way, wordsworth liked to give to the
objects of Nature, the colour of his imagination, it was left to coleridge to make the
supernatural natural. As coleridge remarks : "It was agreed that my endeavors should be
propose to himself as his subject to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday" so he
aimed at representing "Perfectly that side of the romantic imagination which seeks to lose
itself in dream and marvel" Coleridge introduced the dream-like quality which Romanticism
upheld and clarified By the power of his imagination he created a world a supernaturalism,
magic and mystery in 'The Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kublakhan. Some of his verses
are -
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The Mariner hath his will
- Christabel
Wordswoth, on the other hand, presented the common and simple life of peasants and
shepherds, and realistically described what he felt and experienced in his own life. Insted of
going to the world of imagination, mystery and magic, wordsworth lived on the plan of
common life concentrating on the life that he saw around him, some of him. Some of his
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with a soft inland murmur"
- Lines
Coleridge went to the mediveal period for creating the atmosphere of magic and
mystery. Wordsworth lived on the pain of common life concentrating on the life that he saw
around. He did not leave the earth and his own times. The call of the middle Ages was not for
"In wordsworth's poems we find an imaginative record of the pastoral life as well as
the pastoral beauties of place he lived in. This is not so in the case of coleridge. He lived in a
world of his own thoughts and fancies, and did not take care of the external suggestions"
One special thing about william wordsworth and coleridge was that both of them
always loved and appreciated Nature. Wordsworth saw the spirit of joy in Nature and at least
in the early poems of coleridge the spirit of joy in nature is represented. Wordsworth felt the
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divine spirit prevading the objects of Nature. Coleridge also noticed the spirit of God
In April, 1802, Wordsworth visited coleridge at Keswick and read to him the first four
stanzas of his Immortality ode coleridge replied with the ode. On Dejection, Structurally the
ode on Dejection is a magnificent performance in a very difficult kind, finer even than the ode
to France. But it markes a porting of the ways. In the Nether stowey days coleridge had
accepted wordsworth's view of Nature as living being and a Divine Figure; sence that Nature
Figure; since that time he had learned from kant that Nature Furnishes its own forms of
thought.
And in our life alone does Nature live. He tells wordsworth that the celestial light in
which he had once seen the earth apparelled came from the eyes of the beholder.
A new Earth and new Heaven for wordsworth Germany winter was crucial That
melancholy dream, as he calls it, thought him that his passion for Annette and for France was
dead. He yearned for England and his first love; The Lucy poems were born of that yearning.
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The ghostly language of the ancient earth; and finally that he had a sense of space so
remarkable that he seems almost to have felt the earth as a solid globe and sensed its divrnal
Such perceptions made up, or contributed to, that sense of the material sublime in
Wordsworth continued to believe throughout his life that the spirit of God lived
through the objects of Nature and formed the fountain of joy to humanity. A change came in
the attitude of Coleridge towards Nature in the latter period of his life. Coleridge later on
started believing that Nature had no life of its own, nor there was a soul moving in the objects
in Nature. He puts Forth this idea in one of his odes where he says -
Wordsworth was a teacher throughout his life holding out moral lesson for the
Coleridge was greater artist than wordsworth and the claims of art were more on this poet
than the clims of morality and teaching. In this respect he stands apart from wordsworth.
wordsworth, coleridge, dreamt of the political regeneration of mankind and hoped that
humanity will advance on the path of nobility and virtue. Wordsworth's love for humanity is
present almost in all his poems of human life coleridge's love for humanity is expressed in
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'Reflections on Having. Left a place of Retirement' Where he bids farwell to his cottage in
order to go to the city and work for the relief of human distress. He condemns those
been called an 'epicure - in sounds. The Ancient Mariner is one of the best example of the
witchery of his music. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner contains a series of cunning sound
pattern Quiller couch speaks highly of the lyrical genius of coleridge. Wordsworth on the
other hand was deficiant in music. He did not have that ear for fine sounds as coleridge
Wordsworth did not have the high imaginative power which coleridge had his poems
because he had not to deal with themes of imaginative character, but was mainly concerned
with the life of the simple people. The imagination of wordsworth was of a high character in
poems concerning philosophy, but in poems of Nature, coleridge was for superior to
wordsworth.
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Coleridge was the master of narration verse. The Ancient Mariner is a fine example of
narrative perfection. Wordsworth lacked the narrative skill. The ballads of wordsworth do not
have the fire and till of scott and the free flow of coleridge.
Wordsworth believed in the simplicity of diction and brought poetry to the level of the
common speech of common life. Coleridge disagreed with wordsworth's theory of poetic
diction and considered that the kind of language that wordsworth found to implement for the
composition in the poetry was not the fitting vesture for poetic thought.
Whatever difference between wordsworth and coleridge, the two poets considerably
wordsworth with great honor and felt a 'little man' by his side.
If we give little attention to the cholonological study it will show that coleridge gave
more to wordsworth than he actually received from him. In 1797 coleridge worte 'this lime
tree bower' and 'Frost at Midnight'. The following lines are from the two poems.
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That nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure
In certain respects it was coleridge. Who had a better flowering of genius than
wordsworth. Unfortunately the poetic imagination of coleridge soon came to an end and the
poet felt that he could not write much wordsworth continued to compose poems with the
result that before his mighty production, coleridge poems appeared to be very feeble and
slender. Still in the little gold that coleridge has left behind, thereis much to find than in the
whole mass of the poems that wordsworth has left for posterity, leaving a few great poems the
ode on the Intimations of Immortality, Laodamia, character of the happy warrior, Lines
composed above Intern Abbey etc. Both the poets contributed to the healthy growth of poetry
proccupations had given effect on coleridge's wavering will and rambling tendencies. Yet,
wordsworth could not stop the decline in coleridge's poetic power, but one can say that their
Literature is so vast that it is abandoned with the poets. In this area, every writer is
much more contributed to every single field. In the romantic era, both have worked a lot and
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both are called the true love of nature. In this article we will side by side do the comparative
study of both the poets that are mainly and closely related to the romantic period of 19 th
century. This post will reveal the difference between William Wordsworth and Samuel
Coleridge.
A glimpse to the French Revolution and the Romantic Era: If we look at the review on
the life of these two romantic poets. We see that their lives are highly influenced by French
revolution. When machinery, lives, literature, religion, church, society all was in vain and
people started finding their identity. In this state of agony, nature was also destroyed and these
two poets beautifully picked up the subjects of nature so that they can become close to the
nature
How can we find a major difference between these two poets? Well, when we talk
about Coleridge, he thinks that nature is something that is to be preserved. Basically in his
poem, ‘the rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Qubla Khan’ he portrayed nature as something
On the other hand, when it comes to Wordsworth, his poetic imagination is so vast that one
could get baffled that what’s going on. He is famous for his famous poem boos of Lyrical
Ballads, among that Studying the Lyrical Ballads minutely shows some similarities and
contrasts in the outlook of words worth and Coleridge as poets. William words worth studied
the simple objects of nature and gave them the imaginative Colours. It wasn’t his business to
make excursions in the world of supernaturalism. It was left to Coleridge to introduce the
world of supernaturalism, mystery and magic in poetry in this way, words worth liked to give
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to the objects of Nature, the color of his imagination, it was left to Coleridge to make the
supernatural natural.
In short, both are more close to the nature in general. In “Prelude” he is defining nature as
mother, a guide, a sister and peaceful soul.For him, man is destroying nature as he is a social
animal by nature. He is supposed to preserve the nature but he himself is ruining it day by
day. His poem can be learnt into various steps like staring from physical delight leads you
towards the mental delight and finally the stage of spiritualty comes and knocks the door of
word worth.
In contrast, when we put a glance on Coleridge’s work Qubla khan is famous which is full of
vivid imagery, imaginary mountains, castle, splashing water, which is beyond the reality.
And also the Rime of Ancient Mariner is all related to the fake description of a man, who has
killed a bird and bearing the consequences which nature is giving him. He shows that how
nature takes its revenge. He has shown spirits, vivid imagery and drowsiness. Here, the
sensation.”
“Good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” “taking its origin from
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From the “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads, in which “Tintern Abbey” was published:
The sublime is a quality that an individual feels. The individual observes a combination
of beauty and power, usually in a beautiful natural scene that is on a grand scale. The scene
triggers an inner awareness of God and God’s beautiful and powerful works. Experience of
the sublime can be triggered by nature that is untouched by humans, esp where there are huge
waterfalls, views, mountains, powerful rivers, etc. Sensitivity to these feeling responses was
One’s inner voice and one’s personal, subjective experience of it were valued:
3. the “still small voice” that one hears when one gets away from human-made
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4. Spontaneous feelings, intuitions of one’s “better” (kinder, more generous)
impulses.
Naturalness and spontaneity were valued. Thus poetry should begin with acts
poetry.
“Wordsworth made poets break free of conventions and neoclassical rules and “find
Creativity was valued: the human creative imagination was viewed as a God-given
In Romanticism, “the primary cause of poetry is not a formal cause, [caused by what’s
imitated or represented] nor a final cause [the effect intended on the audience], but instead an
efficient cause—the impulse within the poet of feelings and desires seeking expression, or the
‘compulsion’ of the ‘creative’ imagination, which, like God the creator, has its internal source
of wisdom.” M. H. Abrams quoted in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 646
different approach than that taken by John Donne and other metaphysical poets.
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Donne’s work is, in contrast, a detailed exploration of carefully worked out and
Against the rationality of the Enlightenment, and against neo-classical views of what
“the best” poetry should be: Neo-classical poets valued order, restraint, logic, striving
for disinterested objectivity, balance, and moderation, rather than emotion. They
valued “decorum,” and what they saw as enduring rules that characterize the best
literature, and so they gave attention to classical models. Thus for them, a “classical”
Against the rationality of the Industrial Revolution: Romantic poets deplored the
growing industrial cities, the anonymous, mechanical ordering of people, the treatment
values.
Romanticism changed notions of what the “best” poetry and the “best’ poets are like for more
than 100 years, beginning in the late 18C and early 19C.
Lyric poetry was made the predominant and most valued form of poetry.
Examples of other forms, now less valued: narrative, dramatic, and epic poetry.
Definition: A lyric poem is an outburst of the personal feeling of the speaker in the
poem.
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The adjective “lyrical” means song-like. (etymology: from the classical Greek
“lyre”) Therefore, beautiful, often song-like effects with words were a quality of the
best poetry
Wordsworth “made the poet’s own subjectivity” “the prevalent topic of poetry”
Harold Bloom
The symbol was given priority over supposedly ordinary, human-made allegory:
Thus, the spontaneous feeling in the poem is part of a sublime whole. It is not
states of the soul and the outward aspect of nature.” Paul de Man “The Rhetoric of
The poet is unusually sensitive, and works to express these spontaneous feelings
William Wordsworth:
He was the exemplar of “plain living and high thinking.” He lived fairly humbly
and insisted that he spoke for the common man, but he expressed the exalted. This
humble yet exalted combination exemplified what became an enduring notion of what
He was seen as a great poet of nature, and he made the Lake District a tourist spot.
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Wordsworth was a close friend of, and worked and published with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Together they produced “a new style and a new spirit” in poetry. Later the
Wordsworth as a young man was living in France during the year of the storming of
the Bastille, 1789. He admired the impulse for change in the French Revolution, but
“For Coleridge the creative work of every poet springs from an imaginative power
at once available for analysis yet mysterious in its sources. He sees a poem as organic
[Norton’s emphasis], true to itself, acquiring it shape like a plant from a seed and
This theory “honours the creative capacity of persons while remaining steadfast to
organically unified, fusing the particular and the general, the temporal and the
eternal.”
as far superior.
The first is “the ‘primary’ imagination, the ‘living power’ of God, in the eternal act
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“The ‘secondary’ imagination echoes the primary; in conjunction with the will and
‘fixities and definites’.” It simply reproduces what one has already seen, in memory,
without creativity.
Romanticism was not realism, which predominated after the Romantic period, in the
Examples of realism in literature are the great Victorian realist novels, such as
those by Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Bronte sisters, and Charles Dickens.
Other currents of English Romanticism were also not focused on “realism.” This “romantic”
lack of realism can be seen in the etymology of the word “romance”: There is a genre called
A “romance” is characterized by
In verse or prose
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Characters are idealized, or “romanticized”: The hero saves the day, does great
deeds; the heroine is lovely; the main characters are “cool.” A cult of personality is a
possible effect.
many genres, such as popular escapist romance novels, action adventure settings,
fantasy settings (Lord of the Rings), Gothic, some sci-fi, the “wild west” in American
“John Wayne” movies, and many detective stories. It covers any long ago and far
The medieval chivalric romance was the most influential type at the beginning of
dashing fantasies about King Arthur, Queen Guinivere, the knights of the Round
Table, etc.
than a later version of one, and it is anti-“romance.” The “Knights Tale,” just before
it, is a chivalric romance, where idealized knights vie for an idealized lady and one
dies selflessly for love. Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale” is like cold water thrown by
Chaucer over the preceding “romance,” since in the “Miller’s Tale,” the good are not
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Romanticism privileged rural life over city life.
preference for the supposedly free and contented existence found in a ‘primitive’ way
Literary Terms).
It was “often connected with nostalgia for a lost Eden [biblical source] or a lost
Rousseau “argued that the freedom and dignity of the ‘noble savage’ had become
tradition.
Traditional ballads, Celtic epics, [see “Ossianism”], and other more ‘primitive’
works from the supposedly better, simpler medieval past, were sought and valued.
The result was that a few famously fraudulent “authentic” traditional works became
popular in the late 18C and early 19C. Two popular examples were the supposedly
translated, but actually carefully edited and rewritten works of Ossian, a figure from
Irish legend, and the supposedly ancient poetry “discovered” by Thomas Chatterton,
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Romanticism was influenced by sensational, emotional literary “romance” genres that were
The “sentimental” novel and the “cult of sensibility” were popular. The 18C
version of “sensibility” was, according to Baldick, “an important 18C term designating
moral.”
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Wordsworth and Coleridge: Emotion, Imagination and Complexity
The 19th century was heralded by a major shift in the conception and emphasis of
literary art and, specifically, poetry. During the 18th century the catchphrase of
literature and art was reason. Logic and rationality took precedence in any form of
written expression. Ideas of validity and aesthetic beauty were centered around
concepts such as the collective "we" and the eradication of passion in human behavior.
In 1798 all of those ideas about literature were challenged by the publication of
Lyrical Ballads, which featured the poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
Wordsworth and Coleridge both had strong, and sometimes conflicting, opinions
about what constituted well-written poetry. Their ideas were centered around the
origins of poetry in the poet and the role of poetry in the world, and these theoretical
concepts led to the creation of poetry that is sufficiently complex to support a wide
Wordsworth wrote a preface to Lyrical Ballads in which he puts forth his ideas about
poetry. His conception of poetry hinges on three major premises. Wordsworth asserts
To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in
which without any other discipline than that of our daily life we are fitted to take
the use of lofty, poetic diction, which in his mind is not related to the language of real
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life. He sees poetry as acting like Nature, which touches all living things and inspires
Wordsworth calls for poetry to be written in the language of the "common man," and
the subjects of the poems should also be accessible to all individuals regardless of
class or position. Wordsworth also makes the points that "poetry is the spontaneous
tranquility" .
These two points form the basis for Wordsworth's explanation of the process of
the sublime. The senses are overwhelmed by this experience; the "spontaneous
It is only when this emotion is "recollected in tranquility" that the poet can assemble
words to do the instance justice. It is necessary for the poet to have a certain personal
distance from the event or experience being described that he can compose a poem
that conveys to the reader the same experience of sublimity. With this distance the
poet can reconstruct the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" the experience
Wordsworth's critical ideas are manifested in his writing. He uses the language and
subjects of the common man to convey his ideas. As he writes in "The Tables
Turned," "One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral
evil and of good, / than all the sages can" (136). These lines show that Wordsworth
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that any person with exposure to Nature can learn the secrets of the world, regardless
uses the sonnet form to express his ideas about poetry being the spontaneous overflow
This stanza comes after Wordsworth has described experiencing in the natural world
the wonderment that the night creates. In the poem he meditates on the stars and the
light bouncing off waves on the water. He is unable to truly comprehend the beauty
reconstruct the event in his mind. This remembrance brings him a wave of emotion,
and it is out of this second flood of feeling that the poem is born. In Wordsworth's
poetry, these ebbs of emotion are spurred on by his interaction with Nature. In
"Tintern Abbey" he writes that "Nature never did betray / the heart that loved her"
(139). Indeed, Wordsworth is continually inspired and led into transcendent moments
by his experiences in Nature. These experiences bring to his mind a wide variety of
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While Wordsworth's critical ideas obviously worked for his poetry, Coleridge differed
in his take on the art. Coleridge did not agree that poetry is the language of the
common man. He thought that lowering diction and content simply made it so that the
poet had a smaller vocabulary of both words and concepts to draw from. Coleridge
focused mainly on imagination as the key to poetry. He divided imagination into two
The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human
perception, and as a repetition in the finite of the eternal act of creation of the infinite I
AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious
will, yet still identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in
It is the imagination involved in the poetry that produces a higher quality verse.
The primary imagination is a spontaneous creation of new ideas, and they are
introduces his concept of fancy. Fancy is the lowest form of imagination because it
fanciful poet simply reorders concepts, putting them in a new and, possibly, fresh
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relationship to each other. Coleridge also writes that poetry "reveals itself in the
juxtaposition ideas, concepts, and descriptions are made clear. The more
imaginative the juxtaposition is, the more exciting the poem becomes.
As with Wordsworth, Coleridge also combines his theoretical ideas in his poetry.
He abandons Wordsworth's notion of poetry for the common man, and uses lofty
language, poetic diction, and subject matter that is specialized. While he still holds
a reverence for Nature inherent to romantic literature, his poems are not
exclusively based around the natural. He makes use of primary imagination in his
work, because it is the kind of imagination he values most, and avoids secondary
primary imagination:
The poem is the manifestation of a drug-induced vision. The lines have come to
creates these instances throughout the poem. Especially notable is the vision he
describes in the last stanza, "A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision I once saw: / It
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Both of these segments create entirely new scenes in the reader's mind. Coleridge also
uses highly imaginative images to create juxtaposition in the poem. He writes, "A
sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!" , and uses this image twice in the poem. The
"sunny" implies warmth, while "ice" is cold. Together they hint at a darker side to the
surfacially idyllic pleasure dome. The simple fact that it is Kubla Kahn's pleasure
dome is a juxtaposition as well. The leader of the Mongols is not colloquially thought
of as a kind or benevolent man. This discordance, too, hints at the underlying darkness
of the poem, thereby exposing a truth that all is not perfect in neither the pleasure
Coleridge and Wordsworth valued artful poetry. Although they had some different
theoretical opinions, both of them succeeded at making poetry that is complex and
dense enough to withstand two centuries of analysis, and modern critical practice has
not yet fully distilled the potential meaning to be found in their work.
It is easy to see how their work places them firmly in the realm of the Romantics, but
it is quite difficult to come up with a single form of modern criticism that can fully
deal with these two poets. Mimetic forms of criticism, including contemporary
Platonists and Aristotelians, could offer observations about how the poetry of
Wordsworth seeks to imitate Nature and the effects of Nature on the individual. He
Likewise, these same critics could say that Coleridge's imitation of human beings in
poems like "Christabel" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" teaches us something
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Unfortunately, purely mimetic criticism would miss much of the rhetorical devices
and aesthetic qualities embedded in the work. Pragmatic forms of criticism, which
focus on the rhetorical purpose of the author, could offer insight as to how the poetry
of Coleridge and Wordsworth seek to instruct the reader, and could also elucidate the
rhetorical structure of their works. Both of the poets seek to reinforce the individual,
the glory and value of Nature, and induce revelations in their readers.
Also, as with all of the Romantics, Coleridge and Wordsworth are constantly seeking
the sublime. This period follows the rediscovery of Longinus' ideas about the sublime,
which describe how rhetorical structure is used to gain the same feeling of
the text would pick up. The expressive forms of criticism could offer valuable insights
into the poems of Coleridge and Wordsworth by focusing on the texts as products of
the poets.
imagination. Objective critics like the New Critics and formalists could shed light on
the synergy created by the interaction of the various parts of Coleridge and
cohesive unit, with every part working together to build into a whole .
Both poets pay close attention to form and diction in their work, and create poems that
precipitate Marxist criticism, which could provide insight about the elements of class
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in his poems, and could also discuss the connection between form and content in the
poetry.
Coleridge and Wordsworth, who each create their own micronarrative of the world
complexity of their poetry. It is impossible to name one form of criticism that could
sum them up entirely, because ultimately they are working with a large number of
weighty concepts.
This is why their poetry is still read and analyzed. Since Aristotle claimed in his
Poetics that the complexity of a work is directly proportional to the greatness of the
work, we have sought out literature that withstands multiple intense readings. Because
we can look at the poems of Coleridge and Wordsworth in a large variety of ways, we
are constantly finding new meaning, which gives the poetry a re-readability not found
in lesser work. Re-readability is the hallmark of good literature and of the sublime.
Coleridge and Wordsworth knew this, and they wrote toward that goal.
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Chapter Five
Conclusion:
The real blossoming of Coleridge’s poetical genius was brief indeed, but the fruit of it was
rich and wonderful. His first book was “Poems on Various Subjects” (1796), issued at Bristol.
Then, in collaboration with Wordsworth he produced the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (1798). This
remarkable volume contains nineteen poems by Wordsworth and four by Coleridge, and of
these four by far the most noteworthy is “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.
Wordsworth has set on record the origin of ‘The Ancient Mariner’. He and Coleridge
discussed the poem during their walk on the Quantock Hills. The main idea of the voyage,
founded on a dream of his own, was Coleridge’s, Wordsworth suggested details, and they
thought of working on it together. Very soon, however, Coleridge’s imagination was fired
with the story, and his friend was sensibly left him to write it all. Hence we have that
marvelous series of that dissolving pictures, so curiously distinct and yet so strangely fused
into one. The voyage through the polar ice, the death of the Albatross, the amazing scenes
during the calm and the storm, and the return home. In style, in swift stealthiness of narrative
speed , and in its weird and compelling strength of imagination the poem is without parallel.
In 1797 Coleridge also wrote the first part of ‘Christabel’, but though the second part was
added in 1800. Christabel is the tale of a kind of witch, who by taking the shape of a lovely
lady, wins the confidence of the heroine Christabel. ‘KUBLA KHAN’, written in 1798 but
remained unpublished until 1816. It is the echo of a dream- the shadow of a shadow.
Coleridge averts that he dreamt the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration, threw the words on
paper, but before the fit was over was distracted from the composition, so that the glory of the
dream never returned and Kubla Khan remained unfinished. In the same year Coleridge
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composed several other poems, including the fine ‘Frost at Midnight’ and ‘France: an ode.
In 1802 he wrote the great ode ‘Dejection’, in which he already bewails the suspension of his
accepted by the management of the Drury Lane Theatre and produced in 1813. It succeeded
Concluding, we can say that, Wordsworth is a man who loves nature as the creation of God,
he can feel a soul, a friend, a guide and a true companionship in the nature so he is a kind of
poet who keeps secondary imagination as it also provides with the soulful effect of a nature.
On the other side, Coleridge is a man who is totally different from him, is a primary
fake or artificial just writing it down. So both are travelling from consciousness to
unconsciousness. Wordsworth steady nature and moral preoccupations had given effect on
Coleridge’s wavering will and rambling tendencies. Yet, words worth could not stop the
decline in Coleridge’s poetic power, but one can say that their contribution to English was a
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Chapter -Six
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