The Poetry Of Alexander Pope And William Wordsworth

Over the course of the next several days, you will complete a writing assignment. In the assignment, you will demonstrate your understanding of the tenets of modernist literature by rewriting a Romantic poem in a way that incorporates typically modernist qualities in terms of language, style, literary elements, and themes. The assignment is broken down into four parts.

In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.

Unlike other forms of literature, poetry can be so complex that everyone who reads it may see something different. Two poets who are world renowned for their ability to transform reader’s perceptions with the mere use of words, are TS Eliot and Walt Whitman. “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” by TS Eliot, tells the story of a man who is in love and contemplating confessing his emotions, but his debilitating fear of rejection stops him from going through with it. This poem skews the reader’s expectations of a love song and takes a critical perspective of love while showing all the damaging emotions that come with it. “Song of myself”, by Walt Whitman provokes a different emotion, one of joy and self-discovery. This poem focuses more on the soul and how it relates to the body. “Song of myself” and “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” both explore the common theme of how the different perceptions of the soul and body can affect the way the speaker views themselves, others, and the world around them.

The text proceeds from analyzing each poem individually, and later draws parallels between the two. It tries to answer the questions whether the poems are a call to social irresponsibility, and if the object of the poem, the common man should be scorned or pitied. That the common man who is busy conforming to the norms of the state and the society has lost connection with his natural surroundings evokes sympathy for him. Materialism has subsumed his capacity to think to an extent that he cannot even decide whether he is free to do as he wishes – can he say no to enlisting for war? Or can he hold an opinion that did not coincide with the larger public?

The pastoral tradition is the literary celebration of life among nature -- whether it is on a farm, in the English countryside, or deep within a forest -- and stretches back to the time of Virgil in ancient Rome and through the works of William Wordsworth in the 18th century to contemporary writer Rick Bass’ short stories. Bass carries on the pastoral legacy established by his predecessors through his admiration for the pastoral lifestyle involving physical labor and specialized knowledge, his establishment of both fear and beauty as essential elements of the pastoral experience, and his skillful use of memorable pastoral moments.

Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and John Henry Newman were all great poets of the Victorian Era. Though all three of these poets were successful and well known, they did have their differences. This paper is going to show the different views each of these poets had on religion. All three of them had different views; some were against the strict religion of the Victorian Era and more open to a relaxed version that would focus more on the body and the spirit and what it wants. Others didn’t have too much of an opinion on them and were open

For as long as it can be remembered people have used multiple forms of literature in order to gain knowledge, entertain, and even express a certain idea. Poetry is in fact one of those forms of literature, and before people began to write it, it was known to be told verbally by many. A person would tell a tale and those who listened would memorize it, what eventually caused poetry to spread around. Still to this day, many come to fall in love with the magic poetry possesses. It is the writer’s decision to either have a specific rhythm to it or just have a simple list of words. This essay argues that poetry is a creative way of expressing one's emotions and that it should be, not only preserved, but celebrated, even by those who have not considered themselves poetry fans in the past.

Coleridge sees the effect the writings of the Romantic Era has on those who are not writers which make the assistance of memory and dreams in the writings much more significant. Along with Coleridge’s significance to the Romantic Era, William Wordsworth also contributed to the movement of memory and dreams in the writings of the Romantic Era.

In Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he writes, “I have wished to keep my reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him” (297). With this assertion, Wordsworth highlights his desire that readers of his poetry respond with sentiment when presented with genuine, unembellished characters. His attempts to prove this claim can be seen in the poems Michael and The Ruined Cottage. Observing how the two poems handle certain rhetorical devices—a frame of narration, personification of nature, meditation on ordinary objects, and Biblical allusion—reveals their intended purpose as promotions of empathy. Discerning the similarities and differences between Michael and The Ruined Cottage allows the moral lessons within Wordsworth’s poetic experimentation to be uncovered.

The friendship of Coleridge and Wordsworth is one of the most literary, productive relationships among the poets of the Romantic Period. Coleridge and Wordsworth were “together on daily basis since July 1797” (Matlak 72). Wordsworth’s poetic career was “reconstructed, if not entirely created through the process of a poetic exchange that made his earlier importance an affective power” (73). At the same time, Wordsworth contributed similarly to Coleridge’s literary career. For example, many of Rime of the Ancient Mariner’s imagery and narrative events were suggested by Wordsworth (Matlak 83.) An early important example of their literary partnership was their Lyrical Ballads. As this friendship lasted until the death of Coleridge, many of the

Pastoral poetry is a lyric poem that idealizes nature while criticizing urban life.These two pastoral poems are example of the contrast between the easygoing countryside and the hustle bustle of a city. In the famous pastoral poetry, “The Passionate Shepherd to his love,” the Shepherd happily describes the beautiful natural image of a perfect life. He wholeheartedly believes that love is always joyful and nothing can ruin the serenity. This poem is criticized for its deluded perspective by the Nymph in a taunting way. She mocks his fantasy life that has everlasting flowers, melodious birds and finest wool gown. The Nymph’s view on her ideal love is infinite, nonmaterialistic and realistic which contradicts the Shepherd’s view on ideal love—youthful, acquisitive, and blinding; these incompatible views tear a relationship into pieces especially when the problem is addressed in a cynical tone.

Romanticism is a style of art or literature during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that emphasizes a love for nature, distrust of society, organized religion, celebration of the child or individual, and emotion over reason. In William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us” Wordsworth speaks about how society is so materialistic while speaking on the significance of nature. Ironically the title of this sonnet exemplifies one of the Romantic ideas and expresses one of Wordsworth’s main points regarding nature. Wordsworth uses a connection to nature as well as religion to emphasize Romanticism in his work.

How does William Wordsworth's poetry fit into the literary tradition of Romanticism? Q. How does William Wordsworth's poetry fit into the literary tradition of Romanticism? A. Romantic poetry was an artistic movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. It dealt with nature, human imagination, childhood and the ability to recall emotional memories of both happiness and sadness.

Pastoral poetry came into place during Queen Elizabeth's reign. Pastoral poems, is a form of poetry that deals with the lives of shepherds and shows a contrast between the innocence and simplicity of rural life compared with the city life. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is a type of pastoral poem composed by Christopher Marlowe in the late sixteenth century. This poem entails shepherds and the country life. This poem was written in a shepherd’s point of view who thinks idealistically and romantically. Marlowe, received many responses to his poem; one being from his friend Sir Raleigh Walter. Raleigh in his poem ‘The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd‘ is a direct response to ‘The Passionate shepherd to His Love.’Marlowe emphasized on the claim that the shepherd is attempting to woo the young woman through his pleasure and idealistic love but overall does not reach his purpose through the invention, arrangement, and appeal which is brought to light by Raleigh.

Where Wordsworth focused too on love and nature at first, he then took on more spiritual subjects. Further, if we assume that Wordsworth’s imitation of “The Retreat” was intentional, then Vaughan may have even been a poetic model (in some sense) for Wordsworth later in life. True, Wordsworth is not generally considered a religious poet; he would never have originally considered Vaughan a model because of the latter’s extreme religiosity. Yet if these two poems don’t echo in godly gestures per se, they do in a more spiritual sense—and perhaps Wordsworth, as a man confronted with his own mortality, found Vaughan’s treatise on the spirit’s immortality a sympathetic sentiment. Thus by comparing the two, we also might better understand Wordsworth’s poetic progression.