Music and Poetry
The poetry of William Wordsworth initiated the Romantic Era by emphasizing emotion, intuition, and pleasure rather than form and affectation. His poems set the stage for John Keats, a central figure in early 19th century Romanticism. The fundamental themes in the works of both poets include: the beauty of nature; the consanguinity of dreams/visions and reality and yet the tendency of dreams to mask reality; the intense emotions brought about by beauty and/or suffering; and the transience of both sensation and human life. Although William Wordsworth and John Keats wrote poetry with entirely different senses of purpose, they came together in the worship of a song that each found in nature. Both Wordsworth and Keats
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Wordsworth’s persona in “The Solitary Reaper” explores the limitations of language as he watches the maiden in the field, enthralled by her “melancholy strain” (6). Unable to know of what she sings, he is forced to rely only on musical characteristics to influence his reaction. Such things as tone, quality, audible key, and tempo make it possible for one to grasp the essence of music. Although the maiden’s words flow from her lips in Gaelic, the persona is able to identify the emotions underlying her song from the melodic nature of the lines she sings. Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things . . . Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; (lines 17-25)
Wordsworth’s persona’s reliance on the melancholy sound of the maiden’s song also forces him to open his mind and his ears, leaving him free from any possible language-based influence and entirely enraptured by the sheer loveliness of the lass’s simple, soul-filled music.
John Keats’ wrote his “Ode to a Nightingale” in the typical style
William Wordsworth, regarded by many as the pioneer of romantic poetry, focused many of his works on the
and emotion. William Wordsworth was generally acknowledged as the father of Romantic poetry and was one of the most
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.
Listening to poetry and music can be a mind-altering experience. The reader or listener becomes “enchanted” by their work. By enchantment their work seeks actively to impact the consciousness of his readers and listeners. La Belle Dame Sans Merica, written by John Keats in 1884, characterizes an “enchanting” folk ballad. Folk ballads are usually about the destructiveness of love. The speaker, a knight in despair, rejects the real world for the ideal beauty and enchantment the dame, whom he is seduced by, represents.
With a prior appreciation of nature, Wordsworth took this appreciation to another level as he obtained a great interest in scenery and the countryside. Adding sensibility and imagery to his works, his reader could gain a dominant amount of culture from his writings. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau’s most famous and introductory works on the course of nature are allegedly owed to growing up on William Wordsworth's romantic approach and nature and the beauty of it all. “Nature” has said to have been the finishing product of Wordsworth’s beginning poems. Becoming more conservative as time went on, William Wordsworth only found tranquility in writing and nature as events in his life took a turn for the worse.
Lyrical Ballads published in 1798 is considered to be the fist mark of the English Romantic movement in literature. The Romantic period of literature, covered from about “1798 to 1832 and emphasizes nature, imagination, and the move from strictly scientific knowledge to the knowledge of experience” (A Guide to the Study of Literature). According to the International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities, Wordsworth explained his writing style
The Romantic Period centered on creative imagination, nature, mythology, symbolism, feelings and intuition, freedom from laws, impulsiveness, simplistic language, personal experiences, democracy, and liberty, significant in various art forms including poetry. The development of the self and self-awareness became a major theme as the Romantic Period was seen as an unpredictable release of artistic energy, new found confidence, and creative power found in the writings of the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, who made a substantial impact on the world of poetry. Two of the Romantic poets, William Blake, and Percy Bysshe Shelley rebelled against convention and authority in search of personal, political and artistic freedom. Blake and Shelley attempted to liberate the subjugated people through the contrary state of human existence prevalent throughout their writings, including Blake’s “The Chimney Sweepers,” from “Songs of Innocence”, “London,” from “Songs of Experience” and Shelley’s A Song: “Men of England.”
Comparing Wordsworth and Keats’ Romantic Poetry. Both Wordsworth and Keats are romantic Poets, they express ideas on nature and send us the message to respect it. They say we have to admire the beauty of nature in different ways. Wordsworh uses simpler language in his poems wether to express simple or complex ideas, by which we understand he aimed his poems to lower classes. Keats instead, uses much more complex language to describe and express his ideas, so we know he aimed his poems to the educated.
Internalization and self-consciousness seem to be at the root of Romantic poetry. The first generation of Romantic poets struggled to comprehend the complexity of mortality, the natural world and the imagination, thus challenging and inspiring them to express their personal understandings through poetry. Common solutions among the poets came through internalizing their beliefs or to try to escape the burden of self-consciousness. William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are similar in this way, yet they each have different poetic styles.
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
The age of manufacturing that preceded the Romantic Movement was characterized by industrialization and scientific, professional thinking. The philosophy of the era teaches that thoughts and assertions are only meaningful if they can be confirmed with evidence or valid reasoning. As a result, any assertion about entities from the abstract or conceptual alike, whether a statement about mermaids and unicorns or God and nature, is considered meaningless since they cannot be confirmed by factual report. This all started changing when the future leaders of the enlightenment decided that we should resort to more emotional thinking. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the leaders of the enlightenment observed that science was transforming Europe into unemotional machines. He says, "Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains...Let us return to nature.” (Schaeffer 154) Rousseau foresaw a threat to general freedom of thought, which thus sparked the Romantic Movement. Two poets that romanced nature during this era were: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and John Keats (1795-1821). “To Autumn” by John Keats and “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth are both comparable and representative of the Romantic Movement. They have separate techniques and application, but are both recognized as significant works of Romanticism. The themes in both poems emphasize nature, emotion, and the capacity for wonder and imagination, which reiterate the sentiments of the era.
John Keats – Keats notions of nature is easier than that of others sentimental people. He remains totally impacted by the polytheism of Wordsworth and P.b Shelley. It was his impulse to love and translate nature more for her purpose, and less for purpose of the sensitivity which the human personality can read into her with its own particular working and desires. He cherish nature as a result of her feeling of sight, exotic claim, her engage feeling of sight, the feeling of smell and the feeling of touch.
When delving into the historical music and sounds of the South for research purposes one might need to encounter a website with all the content they require. According to the website, https://folkways.si.edu/ known as “Folkways”, a subset page from the archives of the Smithsonian museum discusses material relating to the American South, but most of the content pertaining to music. With music being the primary focus of the website, it did not exclude text to appear and offer further insight to the topic. A web site containing audio and textual resources for furthering one’s knowledge about the South can be deemed as being an educational site. Offering audio tracks of Southern Blues and
William Wordsworth’s 1798 poem “Nutting” was not incorporated into his later great poem, The Prelude, but as a singular piece it reflects The Prelude’s recurring themes of reflection and memory. Considered to be the Romantic Era’s great poet of memory, Wordsworth aimed to publish an autobiographical work of poetry which would detail events which he felt had contributed to the growth of his mind as a poet. “Nutting,” written at the same time as several other childhood recollections which would later appear in The Prelude, details an event from his past which contributed to his present. The past held an attraction for Wordsworth, as he believed that “the child is the father of the man,” or, in other words, that childhood experiences define the
It has always been highlighten the kinship between literature and other types of art. Described, a play in drama, while read, a play is literature. Many adaptations on screen are based upon literature, mostly novels, even if, the majority of great plays were already filmed by which, it stimulated the growing process in a young individual. In prsent day, the requirements in writing a film has affected many writers in their style and structure of the novel. Most of modern fiction is written with the purpose of having “movie rights”, another account taken by most publishers. Literature assures the libretto for operas, the theme for most tone poems – even so anomalous, a form as Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra was interpreted in