Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats: nature and imagination

BLAKE, WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, BYRON, SHELLEY AND KEATS

IMAGINATION: Blake: Ability to see more deeply into the life of things.

Creative and spiritual power in man peculiar to the poet, children and man in a state of innocence. A divine power. It enables man to see beyond physical reality.
Wordsworth: a certain colouring of imagination, imagination coloured reality and also modifies the object observed.
Coleridge: is divided in two parts: primary, possessed by men to read and understand, secondary possessed only by poets, it’s strong and creative, it starts from experience, creative a god, you can reach an ideal world.
Byron: a way to reach freedom.
Shelley: universal power, it has a moral essence, it is revolutionary because you can reach freedom. Keats: goes over sense and create a medieval world that doesn’t exist, like in his ballads.

Natura e immaginazione nel Romanticismo inglese: riassunto

BYRON SHELLEY KEATS: RIASSUNTO

TASK OF THE POET: Blake: is a visionary man gifted with imagination. The prophet of imagination. He warns man against the evils of society. He is on the side of the weak and oppressed.
Wordsworth: the poet is a man speaking to men but he is more sensitive, he can understand men in a deeper way, he teach to enter into community with nature.
Coleridge: he start form ordinary experience to create a timeless world full of striking images. The reader is naturally led to a willing suspension of disbelief.
Shelley: the poet has a poetic status and the poet has the function of making the world feel in harmony with hopes and fears. The poet is a prophet of social changes.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley e Keats: tabella di comparazione

NATURA PER BYRON

NATURE:  Blake: for him is realistic, not a source of inspiration. Man both in armony or against nature.
Wordsworth: he is the poet of nature, three different meanings: as a countryside opposed to town, as a source of feelings, as an active force expression of god.
Coleridge: it’s a divine power and all natural creature must be respected. Is not a comfort for man but something that destroys.
Byron: it’s a projection of the poet’s feelings. Several elements are personified.
Shelley: an invisible power which governs the universe. It’s never confined to a purely physical existence.
STYLE: Blake: simple lexis and syntax, musical, metaphorical, symbolic in images. Nursery rhymes style.
Wordsworth: familiar, simple language really used by people.
Coleridge: traditional form of a ballad with variations; sound effects. Symbolic and evocative.
Byron: social satire, language artifical and affected, natural and conversational.
Shelley: variety of terms, highly figurative language.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley e Keats: appunti

BYRON E SHELLEY: CONFRONTO

THEMES: Blake: God not outside man. Imagination as man’s highest  faculty. Refusal of any kind of limit, constraints and rule. The contrary aspects of innocence and experience. Childhood.
Wordsworth: nature as a source of inspiration. Childhood.
Coleridge: juxtaposition of ordinary experience and supernatural events.