Comparative analysis of Wordsworth and Coleridge

M.K.B.Uni.   Smt.S.B.Gardi. Department Of English

Assignment sub: Comparative analysis of Wordsworth and Coleridge

Name: Drashti v. Dave

Paper no: 5 – The Romantic Literature

Sem: 2                             Year: 2014

Unit: 4                             Roll no: 7

·      Comparative analysis of Wordsworth and Coleridge

Introduction about Romantic age: The age of romanticism (1800-1850) It is the second creative period of English literature. It is known as an age of poetry and romantic enthusiasm.

There were many creative writers suddenly developed a new creative spirit which shows itself in the poetry.

·       Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and in the prose of Scott, Jane Austen, Lamb and De Quincey, a wonderful group of writers whose patriotic enthusiasm suggests the Elizabethan days.

·       Coleridge and Southey ( who with Wordsworth from the trio of so-called lake poets) wrote far more prose than poetry. In their partnership Coleridge was to take up the “ supernatural or romantic “ while Wordsworth was “ to give the charm of the novelty to things of everyday “

·       The whole spirit of their work is reflected in two  poems of this remarkable little volume ‘ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ‘; which is Coleridge’s masterpiece and ‘ Lines written a few miles above Titntern Abbey ‘; which expresses Wordsworth’s poetical creed.

William Wordsworth: (1770-1850)

·      In his book The prelude we find a dispassionate account of student life. His autobiographical poem ‘ The prelude ‘ William was allowed to run wild in nature, which became for him a kind of mother.

·       Another his most famous poem ‘ Daffodils ‘ opens with the line “ I wandered lonely as a cloud “, loneliness and creativity are at the heart of Wordsworth’s poetry.

·      In 1795, he had met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose both more philosophical and wilder than Wordsworth’s opium and Immanuel Kant,  first published in1798 Lyrical Ballads may be the most influential  book of poetry in English literature.

·      Wordsworth’s poetry is of stunning purity and power. One example that comes from the ‘ Lucy ‘ poem included in later reprints of lyrical ballads.

·      Wordsworth was England’s poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Poetry of Wordsworth:

·       There is often a sense of disappointment when one read Wordsworth for the first time; like Wordsworth’s Lucy,

·       A violet by a mossy stone,

Half hidden from the eye;

Fair as stair, when only one

Is shining in the sky….

·       Wordsworth set himself to the task of freeing poetry from all its “ conceits “ of speaking the language of simple truth and portraying man and nature as they are.

·       No other poets ever found such abundant beauty in the common world. The natural pleasures which a man so easily neglected in his work, and the chief  means by which people expect permanent and increasing joy.

·       In Titntern Abbey, The Rainbow, Ode to Duty, and Intimations  of Immorality, anyone can hardly read one of Wordsworth’s pages without finding it slipped in unobtrusively, like the fragrance of a wild flowers. The truth of humanity, that is the common life which shares the general similes and only the subject of permanent literary interest.

·         Wordsworth continued it in Michel, The solitary reaper, The Highland girl, Stepping westward, The excursion, and score of lesser poems.

·       Joy and sorrow not of princes or heroes, but in widest commonalty spread are his themes.  The excursion, (1814) is the second book of The recluse; and the third was never completed, through Wordsworth intended to include most of his shorter poems in this third part.

·       Lyrical Ballads and in the sonnets, odes and lyrics of the next ten years though The Duddon Sonnets (1820) To a skylark (1825) and Yarrow Revisited (1831) shoe that he retained till past sixty much of his youthful enthusiasm.  Wordsworth’s poems fall into two categories: 1) Poems about nature &

                     2) poems about human life.

In his life his sister’s contribution is important, he gave so much important to his sister

“ She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;

 And humble cares, and dedicated fears;

A heart the fountain of sweet tears;

And love and thought and joy…”

Through this line we are shown that how he gave important to his sister Dorothy.

Wordsworth is the most representative poet and he is a “worshipper of nature”. In his all poems we are shown nature as a common thing and his simple language is understand all types of people.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

·       He was an extraordinary, before he was five; he read Bible and Arabian Nights. One of his association with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, in the Quantico hills, out of which came the famous Lyrical Ballads of 1798. Another was his loyal devotion to poetry fir its own sake.

·       With the exception of his tragedy remorse, whish through Byron’s influence was accepted at Drury lan theater in his poetry we find a note of human sympathy, more tender and profound than can be found in Wordsworth or indeed any other great english poets.

·       Works of Coleridge: The works of Coleridge devided into three classes- i) the poetic ii) the philosophical and iii) the critical..

·       Coleridge begins his “ Day dream “ with the line; My eyes make pictures when they’re shut…. The quality of this early poetry with its strong suggestion of Blake, may be seen in such poems, like; A day dream, The devil’s thoughts, The suicide’s argument, and The wanderings of Cain.

·       His later poems wherein see his imagination bridled by thought may best appreciated in Kubla Khan, Christable, and The Rime of The Ancient Mariner.

·       Kubla khan is a fragment painting a gorgeous oriental dream picture the whole poem came to Coleridge one morning when he had fallen asleep;

In xanadu did Kubla khan, A stately pleasure- dome decree;

Where alps, the sacered river, ran

Through caverns measurlel to man down to a sunless sea…..

He was interpreted after fifty –four lines were written and he never finished the poem. “ Christabel “ is also a fragment which seems to have been planned. The story of a pure young girl it is full of a strange melody and contains many passage of exquisite poetry.

·       The Rime of The Ancient Mariner is Coleridge’s chief contribution to the Lyrical Ballads of 1798 and is one of the world’s master-piece.

·       An orphans curse would drag,

To hell a spirit from on high;

But oh! How more horrible that that

Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!

--- The rime of the ancient mariner

Among Coleridge’s shorter poems there is a wide variety and each reader must be left largely to follow his own taste.

Ode to France, Youth and age, Dejection, Love poems, Fears in solitude, Religious Musings, Work without hope, and The glorious hymn before sunrise in the vale of chamouni.

The latter is one of the best poetical translations in english literature. His collected Lectures on Shakespeare 1849 and Aids to reflection 1825 are the most inserting from a literary view point. The first is an explanation and criticism of Wordsworth’s theory of poetry.

·       Coleridge’s prose work the Biographia Literaria in this prose work he criticize many points of Wordsworth’s work he differentiate like; two cardinal points of poetry, poetical creed, he also differentiate prose, poem and poetry.  In his philosophical work he introduce the idealistic philosophy of Germany into England. The aids reflection is Coleridge’s most profound work but it is more interesting to the student of religion and philosophy than to readers of literature. Hs collaborative work with Wordsworth is still famous in literature study of their work and comparison between them is a good practice.

Comparative Analysis:

·       Coleridge was also living in the Lake district at this time close by Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s famous one line creation of poetry is “ the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility “

·       Coleridge supplied the spontaneous power while Wordsworth offered the tranquility the reflection.

·       A perfect example of Coleridge’s spontaneity is found in “Kubla Khan” the short poem he began under the influence of a narcotic dream.

·       Coleridge in contrast, left in his chaotic wake a collection of fragments, short works, and prolegomena.

·       Like Wordsworth, he compiled an autobiography-prose, in his case-Biographia Literaria, the biography of a literary sensibility.

·       The work fuses Coleridge’s towering intellect, extraordinary 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.

·       Coleridge’s agenda was different, in the Rime of The Ancient Mariner, the first work in Lyrical Ballads, he compacts into short-lined, four line stanzas an amazingly pregnant and mystical natural universe.

·       Un writing this poem Coleridge drew on gothic fiction and an extraordinary range of reading in theology, philosophy, and travel. His description of the arctic regions are almost photographic. The narrative of the Rime of the ancient mariner indicates the new directions that poetry would take over the next two centuries. A revaluation had taken place and arguably is still taking place in english literature as a result of Lyrical Ballads.

·       In Wordsworth’s poem 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 well 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 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 represented.

·       Wordsworth felt in the divine spirit pervading the object of nature, Coleridge also noticed the spirit of god permanting the object of nature. Coleridge’s whole life- a sad, broken, tragic  life in marked contrast with the peaceful existence of his friend Wordsworth.  Wordsworth says of him that though other men of the age had done some wonderful things, Coleridge was the only wonderful men he had ever known of his lectures on literature a contemporary says: “ His words seem to flow as from a person repeating with grace and energy some delightful poem.”

Natural philosophy of Wordsworth adds a mystic element the result of his own belief that in every natural object there is a reflection of the living God. Nature is everywhere transfused and illumined by spirit. So both are the great poet of the romantic age.