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Use Of Memory And Dreams During The Romantic Era

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Dream, Remember, then Write Imagination and creativity is part of the many influences that attribute to the writings in the Romantic Era. It influenced writers and poets to expand their art to a new horizons and veer away from the Enlightenment Era of tradition and logic. The use and significance of memory and dreams in the Romantic Era helped strengthen the inner emotions within writings, present ideas outside of traditional expectancies, and display the authors creativity and individuality throughout their writings. These works have resonated throughout history and British Literature inspiring new and old writers to explore within themselves and inside their imagination to create art that portrays their personalities in their work. …show more content…

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:
“From the sphere of my own experience I can bring to my recollection three persons of no every-day powers and acquirements, who had read the poems of others with more and more unallayed pleasure, and had thought more highly of their authors, as poets; who yet have confessed to me, that from no modern work had so many passages started up anew in their minds at different times, and as different occasions had awakened a meditative mood.” (2) (paragraph 31).
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. William Wordsworth is another Romantic Writer that uses the recollection of memory and emotions to advance his poetry beyond traditional limits. In the introduction of William Wordsworth in The Norton Anthology, an excerpt describes Wordsworth’s use of memory in his work:
“He frequently presents his poetry as the outgrowth of occasions on which objects or events in the present trigger a sudden renewal of feelings that he has experienced in

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