WORDSWORTH

LIFE AND WORKS:he was born in Cumberlan in the lake district. He studied at ST.Jhon’s College and in 1790
he went to France. He was influenced by ideals of France’s Revolution. He fell in love with Annette Vallon
and was born his daughter,Caroline.

The desctructive developments of the revolution and war brought him to the edge of a nervous breakdown.
He went to live in Dorset with his sister Dorothy in 1795. In this year he collaborated with Samuel
Coleridge:they produced a collection of poems called “Lyrical Ballads”. The second edition also contained
Wordsworth’s famous Preface which was the Manifesto of English Romanticism. In 1802 he married Mary
Hutchinson and they had 5 children. In 1805 he had finished “The Prelude”, an autobiographical poem. In
1843 he was made Poet Laureate. He died in 1850.

THE MANIFESTO OF ROMANTICISM: he proposed poetry as a radically solitary act originating in the
ordinary. He belonged to the first generation of Romantic poets. His poetry is composed by everyday
situations with ordinary people. The language should be simple. The reason for Wordsworth’s choice lies in
the fact that in humble rural life man is nearer to his own purer passion.

MAN AND NATURE: he has got a phanteistic point of view of nature and for him nature comforts man in
sorrow, it is a source of pleasure and joy, it teaches man to love and to act in moral way.

THE SENSE OF MEMORY:he was influenced by Hartley in his belief that our moral character develops during
childhood as a result of the pleasure and pain caused by our physical experience.

RECOLLATION IN TRANQUILLITY:he claimed imagination as his supreme gift. For him imagination is
synonym of intuition, of seeing into reality.

COLERIDGE

LIFE AND WORKS: Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772. He firs studied medicine. He was influenced by
French Revolutionary ideals but after disillutionment with the French Revolution he planned to estabilish in
a community of “Pantisocracy” where every economic activity was in common. For health reasons he used
opium. In 1797 he meet Wordsworth and settled in Somerset. In this years he composed “The Rime of
Ancied Mariner”, “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan” He travel to Malta and returned in London, he died in
1834.

Coleridge’s poetry is passionate and mysterious, almost surrendering to an uncontrollable vision. For him,
poetry is the product of the unconscious, which brings about kind of ecstasy that can reproduce memory.

For Coleridge IMAGINATION had its origin in the poet’s mind itself, so it was internally induced.

THEORY OF IMAGINATION: He also developed his own theory of imagination, based on his studies in
German philosophy. Imagination is divided in two types:

-PRIMARY IMAGINATION:IS THE FACULTY BY WHICH WE PERCEIVE THE WORLD AROUND US. IT WORKS
THROUGH OUR SENSES AND IS COMMON TO ALL HUMAN.

-SECONDARY IMAGINATION: IS THE POETIC IMAGINATION, THE FACULTY THAT ONLY THE POET HAS TO
INTERPRERET, SHAPE AND RE-CREATE HIS EXPERIENCES.

COLERIDGE IS THE MOST ROMANTIC OF THE TWO, BECAUSE IN HIS WORKS THERE ARE ALL ROMANTIC
ELEMENTS:

-Ballad structure and themes, -Medieval setting,-mystery and supernatural,-nature(he describe anhostile
nature),-exoticism.
TRAMA “THE RIME OF ANCIENT MARINER”

This poem is divided into seven parts and it was composed

between 1797 and 1798. It tells about a story of a mariner who kills an albatross.
This story is told by a mariner during a marriage, which tells of how his ship had
been blocked by ice at the South Pole and how the arrival of an albatross has
brought a good luck with breaking the ice, but the fleet was hit by a curse and all the
sailors died except one, who had killed the bird, and he tells his story to the people he
met.
This poem is written in the form of a medieval ballad. In the
poem reality and supernatural events coexist, and the landscape is described as a
mysterious place.
At the end, “Death” and “Life in death” come to play dice. Death wins the lives of
the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner: he has to wander the
earth and tell eternally his story.