The Romantic Era: Wordsworth & Coleridge Comparison/Contrast - Research Paper Example

Wordsworth believed that poetry was the outcome of “the spontaneous overflow of feelings” (Abrams 8), originating from emotion recollected in a tranquil state of mind. He emphasized the importance of using natural everyday expression in literary works. Coleridge considered the poet’s imagination to be important, and did not promote compliance to arbitrary literary rules. Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the two poets Wordsworth and Coleridge from the Romantic Era, examining the similarities and differences in their lives and works.

Romanticism in the Poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge Romantic elements were known in English literature from the times of Elizabethan dramas (1576-1648). However several critics date English Romantic movement in literature from the publication of William Wordworth’s (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) anthology Lyrical Ballads in 1798 (Abrams 69), an important landmark which changed the course of English literature and poetry. In Wordsworth’s Prelude (Abrams 137) , the poet engages with nature, and expresses “profound experiences of the transcendent” in symbols. . Barth (p.133) reiterates that later, a distinctly spiritual tone emerges through the development of a theology of prayer, which supports hope and aspiration to reach the realm of blessedness ultimately achieved.

Although Coleridge was the theorist of the concept of imagination, Wordsworth was its greatest practitioner. Thus, there was a symbiotic relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, with the former working within the range of Coleridge’s thought; and the latter deriving the basis for his theory from Wordsworth’s poetry. This is a classic example of medieval philosophers’ “mutual causality”, states Barth (p.2). The root of romanticism in poetry is considered to be “an autonomous creative imagination”, and romantic poetry was denoted as religious, dramatically asserting authentic religious experience while simultaneously raising doubts about the “genesis, ontological status, and social value of the experience” (Barth 2).

Wordsworth’s phrase “the feeding source” (Abrams 136) in the passage in book 14 (188-205), is used in the poet’s description of the relationship between spiritual love and imagination, that the former cannot exist without the latter, and is another name for “absolute power/ And clearest insight, amplitude of mind/ And reason, in her most exalted mood./ This faculty has been the feeding source of our long labor/ We have traced the stream… . And lastly, from its progress have we drawn Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought of human being, Eternity, and God” (14.188-205). The poet follows the “feeding source” from “blind cavern” to “light and open day”, loses sight of it, and greets it “as it rose once