Industrialism, expansion, profit, production and individualism were the feelings which took place during the period of the Industrial Revolution in England. People in Great Britain were led by the streams of progress, but the modernizations in technology had some important consequences on people: especially on the simplest kind of people, poorer people, those who lived in the country. While bourgeoisie and gentry only wanted to make profits and getting richer; while new classes of people were created, like merchants and tradesmen; farmers and country workers knew radical life transformations. Such changes induced a new form of literature, created by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This new movement in poetry, called Romanticism, was illustrated, at the time, by the collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads. An analysis will be made to determine in what extends this new genre in art was representing some specificities of Great Britain in the beginning of the nineteenth century. We are going to see in a first part that the topics of Romantic poetry were focusing on very simple people and very simple subjects.
[...] He tried to rouse spirituality in the mind of readers, and this, in a very simple way, by making people reflect on every simple things in life, and encouraging people to imagine all kind of stories with simple elements and events that surrounded their environment: "you would fin a tale in every thing.” Both Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted country people to react to their poems; they were encouraging them not to be passive readers. Moreover, most of the poems were dealing with feelings of ordinary people, such as the loss of a relative and the sensation of culpability. [...]
[...] Personal introspection was also glorified in "Lines, Written at a Small Distance from my house, And Sent by my Little Boy to the Person to Whom They Are Addressed", in which nature is eulogized. The poetical voice invites his sister and told her to do not worry about everyday preparations of the morning, and to leave, enjoy and praise nature. "Come forth and feel the sun”. Nature is here the most essential need of every human being. Readers could easily analyze this poem, it was the celebration of nature. [...]
[...] During the Industrial Revolution, the social structure of the family tended more and more to disappear. This was a new phenomenon and people never knew such changes in a rural environment. Before this time, life was easier for children, they were only helping their parents, often by staying at home and providing help to spinners, who were always female relatives. With the emergence of factories and mines, children knew very hard conditions of work. Such circumstances were not human for the writers of Lyrical Ballads, who praised childhood as an intense period of life. [...]
[...] Such scenes were not very numerous in Lyrical Ballads, because Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote much more about nature and feelings but it was important and relevant to mention it, due to the fact that Wordsworth was in France during the French Revolution and was imbued with the principles of Rousseau and republicanism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and William Wordsworth had some common ideas : the same semi mystical faith in the goodness of nature as well as in the excellence of the child. [...]
[...] Wordsworth and Coleridge also emphasized the fact that nature could be a teacher, in the poem "Lines - Written at a Small Distance from my house, And Sent by my Little Boy to the Person to Whom They Are Addressed" where books are left behind and nature is praised as an idleness moment of spirituality. It is also the same in the poem "The Nightingale" where birds and natural manifestations are inviting people to grow up in harmony with nature. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
