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Ⅱ. Romantic Poets of the First Generation
To be considered as
Romantic poets of the first generation, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey
shared many common elements. They are often mentioned together as “Lake
Poets”, because they lived in the picturesque
Lake District in the
northwestern part of England most of their lifetime. They traversed the same
path in politics—that is from worshipped the French Revolutionary ideal to
become afraid of the reality in French Revolution. They shared the same
understanding in poetry such as the significance of imagination and emotion,
which they considered as the soul of poetry, the vital place of stressing
nature. All of their creative life are short: Wordsworth only ten years,
Coleridge within five years, while Southey, although was the
poet laureate,
was not an outstanding poet from the beginning. They together, especially
Wordsworth and Coleridge, fundamentally broke the stubborn ice of
neo-Classicism and opened a new scene of English literature. And in their
hand, Romanticism flourished.
1. William Wordsworth（1770-1850）
Life
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, and
second child of an eminent lawyer who was very educated and liberal for the
time, and encouraged all his children to be the same. William was definitely
the wild one of the family, and his sister Dorothy, a year younger than him,
was usually his only ally in the family. The Wordsworth children had a
pretty happy childhood on the whole, at least until their mother, Ann, died
in 1778. William was sent away to a grammar school some distance away. He
was allowed to run wild, and became intimate friend of nature. When the
father died in 1783, the outlook for the children became really bleak.
Though theoretically the legacy was worth £10,485, that amount included many
debts which people owed him. The largest debt, that owed by the employer of
their father, the Earl of Lowther, amounted to nearly £5,000, and would not
be paid to the Wordsworth for 19 years. The kids were foisted on two uncles
who were deeply annoyed at having to take care of them. These early losses
were recorded in the Prelude, which describes the mixed joys and terrors of
his country boyhood.
Later, he was sent to St. John’s College,
Cambridge, but dislike the academic course. After graduation, William
wandered aimlessly over France for a time from 1790 to 1792. France was then
in the early, glorious stages of the French Revolution, and William was only
one of many Englishmen who were fascinated by the Republican ideals. In the
city of Orleans, he met Annette Vallon and then had a love affair with her,
and soon Annette became pregnant. Before the child was born, however,
William had to go back to England because of being cut out off his financial
source by the relatives. Soon after his going back, the Revolution was
starting to become terror and then England entered the war against French
Revolution. Thus his intention of marrying Annette turned into a dream
forever.
In 1793, he published two poems in heroic couplets,
Descriptive Sketches, a very pro-revolutionary piece, and An Evening Walk,
both conventional attempts at the picturesque and the sublime. Most notably
an old school friend of Wordsworth’s who arranged for a legacy of £900 to
him in 1795 which provided him a chance to concentrate on poetry, which also
allowed him to be reunited with his sister Dorothy. About this time, William
met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
Robert Southey two young poets who were
planning a great socio-political experiment. Robert and Coleridge soon had a
terrible quarrel, the scheme died, and Coleridge became William’s friend. In
1798, they published a joint volume of poetry called Lyrical Ballads, a
landmark in the history of English Romanticism. This publication of Lyrical
Ballads marked the break with neo-Classicism that enveloped the English
literature over a century, and opened a new era—the Romantic era.
Lyrical Ballads
In 1800, Lyrical Ballads was
reworked and a second volume added. William also wrote a preface expounding
his theories of what made good poetry. These theories contain:
1. All good poems should be “ the spontaneous overflow feeling.”
2. The poems should be the reflection of feelings, thoughts, and experiences
of the poets themselves.
3. Poetry should be in high degree of imagination.
4. Poetry should “takes all its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquility.”
5. A poet’s emotion extends from human world to the nature. Namely, nature
should be the living entity of the poet’s feelings.
6. The power of poetry lies in its ability of giving an unexpected splendor
to familiar and commonplace elements. The humble peasants, children, even
outcasts may be used as the subjects of creating poetry. For they are simple
and in nature.
7. The language Wordsworth appealed is “near to the real language of men”,
because people lived in countryside contact with nature most closely and
lead a simple life. That means poetic language should be simple and pure.
The theories were not the whole content, but it
had contained the main elements of poetry. It not only denied the poetry of
neo-classicism thoroughly, but also declared a completely new poetry of
Romanticism. In addition, these principles have not only transcended the
poetic field and literary field, but also up rising to the universal
matters. These theories are the fruit of long musing just as the content of
the poems, which experimented these theories, are the consequence of years.
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