This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Essay

BibliographyAsbee, S. (2006) Approaching Poetry, Milton Keynes, The Open UniversityReid, N. (2006) Coleridge, Form and Symbol, Or the Ascertaining Vision, Aldershot, Ashgate PublishingWellek, R. (1963) The Concept of Romanticism in literary historyin Bygrave, S (2006) Romantic Writings London, The Open UniversityZuk, E. Coleridges Blank Verse [online], http://www.expansivepoetryonline.com/journal/cult072004.html (Accessed 28th April 2008)

Imagine a candle-lit dinner on a starry night in Paris, the Eiffel Tower just in view with dazzling lights shining into the night. This image is probably what you think of when you hear the word “romantic,” correct. However, this image is a stumbling block when people think of the “Romanticism Period” in literature. Where “romantic” means having a lovely time with the person you love the most, “Romanticism” is a piece of literature written with key themes in mind. Those themes tend to be a strong emotion, imagery or worship of nature, and individuality and subjectivity. The peak of inspiration for these pieces was in the years 1800-1850, and there are famous poems that are well loved today from this period. Many of the poets that you enjoy reading and know are, in actuality, Romanticism writers, and instill the themes above in our minds.

Another ideal of Romanticism is the valuing of nature as the best habitat rather than the city life. Nature became an important key of inspiration for the Romantics. It was becoming more appreciated by people as it began to appear in art, music, poems, literature, and many other works. Nature was not just a place in the minds of Romantics. Nature meant several

Cummings showed carelessness through tone. The Tone in this poem is selfish but the poem still showed carelessness. The first piece of text evidence said in the poem to show selfish and carelessness is “One day anyone died i guess.” “””( and noone stooped to kiss his face)””” (Cummings 25-26). This showed carelessness because on the literal meaning of the poem when anyone dies no one comes and visit them or tell them goodbye but on the love story of the poem when anyone died no one came to kissed him and tell him bye.

At the end of chapter 20 in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Coleridge describes his own experience with poetry and its effect on others’ imagination from an outsiders point of view:

To the Romantics, the imagination was important. It was the core and foundation of everything they thought about, believed in, and even they way they perceived God itself. The leaders of the Romantic Movement were undoubtedly Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his close friend, William Wordsworth. Both were poets, and both wrote about the imagination. Wordsworth usually wrote about those close to nature, and therefore, in the minds of the Romantics, deeper into the imagination than the ordinary man. Coleridge, however, was to write about the supernatural, how nature extended past the depth of the rational mind.

Coleridge’s ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison’, is a poem describing a man’s changing views as he contemplates the natural word which he has been prevented from seeing. Coleridge’s poem demonstrates the ability of individuals to modify their morals and values upon receiving a cathartic release from their relationship with nature, as predicated almost entirely on the imagination. Through allowing the persona to visualise the encounters his friends are making with nature along their journey, Coleridge first demonstrates the capabilities of the imagination in allowing us to picture things in certain detail, as shown through “now my friends emerge,” which in all exemplifies the presence of imagination in our relationship with nature. Furthermore, the description of their journey demonstrates the liberation received from engaging with nature, as shown where they “wander in gladness,” which relates to the cathartic release obtained from viewing nature that pushes us to reassess our ideas and perceptions. By showing his gradual change in tone, the influence of the persona’s imagination is shown, which when in conjunction with his exclamation of “yes!” reveals our emotional capabilities if becoming engulfed in our imaginations of nature. Also, by choosing to allow the persona to speak in a melodramatic tone, the poet is able to again explicitly demonstrate his

In his poem “Acquainted with the Night,” Robert Frost describes a character who spends his nights wandering the city streets. The reader can infer from both Frost’s tone, and the time of day in which the speaker chooses to walk, that the character is in a world of isolation. This is especially evident in the lines, “When far away an interrupted cry/ Came over houses from another street,/ But not to call me back or say good-by” (Frost 898). From this line, the reader understands that the poem’s speaker feels as if he is completely isolated in the world. In a similar way, E. E. Cummings poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” expresses the loneliness felt by people of this era. Cummings creative use of pronouns gives the poem a double entendre. The characters, anyone and noone, can represent their literal meanings, or a single man and woman. Therefore, when Cummings writes that “noone loves him more by more,” he could mean that anyone is being loved greatly, or not at all. This loneliness is expressed yet again when Cummings informs the reader, “Women and men (both little and small)/ cared for anyone not at all” (Cummings 922). The works of both Frost and Cummings both portray the hardship that accompanied the feeling of loneliness during the modern

During the Romantic Period, poets believed themselves to be very politically aware and important. William Blake and Charlotte Smith are those amongst those Romantic Poets who took it upon themselves to educate the public on the events of the time; particularly the established Church, the Industrial Revolution and the Slave Trade in Haiti: ‘[Poetry] speaks to a divided society in an attempt to constitute its readers as citizens of what [Geoffrey] Hill calls… the just kingdom… and the commonwealth’.

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.

The major writers in Romanticism are Percy Shelly, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I will be examining two second generation Romantic poets Lord Byron, Percy Shelly, I have chosen to examine the poems; She walks in beauty, and A Lament based on the ideas most valued by Romantic poets; Love and beauty, and youth and inevitable death.

A new chapter in the history of English poetry opened with the publication of “Lyrical Ballads” which were the results of Wordsworth and Coleridge friendship after the revolution. They included two different kinds of poetry in these ballets. Wordsworth talked about the subjects that were chosen from ordinary life and he

With the formation of a “rare device”, symbolizing his masterpiece of poetry, Coleridge acknowledges that poetry forms through the combination of nature and human perception. In the end, Coleridge demands the readers to “beware” (49, p.1634) of the power of the inspired poet, who recreates his own “sunny dome” (47, p.1634) in the protection of a “circle round him thrice” (51, p.1634). The energy from nature is eventually transferred to the poet, the poet to use his imagination to create his own “Paradise” (54, p.1634), which resembles Xanadu of Kubla Khan. Through the metaphors developing in the poem, Coleridge pieces together the process a Romantic poet creates a poem from the inspiration of a nature scene.

One of the most popular themes for Romantic poetry in England was nature and an appreciation for natural beauty. The English Romantic poets were generally concerned with the human imagination as a counter to the rise of science. The growing intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries placed scientific thought in the forefront of all knowledge, basing reality in material objects. The Romantics found this form of world view to be restrictive. They felt that imagination was crucial to individual happiness. The imagination also provides a common human bond; a means of sympathy, of identification. However, the absence of imagination, the Romantics felt, would lead

Some aspects of Romantic poetry were; there was an increasing interest in nature; there was an increased interest in landscape and scenery; human moods were connected to the moods of nature. Although the six poets cohered to create the English Romantic movement they were all extremely different with