By, in order of presenter:
Sean
Yuri
Puja
Susan
Wesley
Robin
 William Wordsworth (April 7th, 1770 – April 23rd, 1850)
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Aged 80
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21st, 1772 – July 25th, 1834)
Aged 61
Both lived in the Romantic Era, and helped launch the
movement through their writings and works.
The Romantic Era took place in the second half of the 18th
century in Europe, focusing on artistic, literary and
intellectual movement.
Romanticism expressed visual arts, music and literature
strongly.
Romanticism focused on Nature, and emphasized
intuition, imagination and feeling.
 Ludwig van Beethoven ( December 17th, 1770 – March 26th,
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1827), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( January 27th, 1756 –
December 5th, 1691), & Joseph Haydn ( March 31st, 1732 –
May 31st, 1809) were all present during the Romantic Era
and were considered “The Three Romantic Composers.”
This era was considered the true age of Romanticism in
music.
The 18th century was also considered as the Age of
Enlightenment, where the power of reason was emphasized
to rebuild society and advance knowledge.
George Washington crossed the Delaware on December
25th, 1776, which is an iconic event in the American
Revolution.
Storming of the Bastille took place as well, July 14th, 1789,
an iconic event in the French Revolution.
 Even before meeting each other, both were familar with
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each other’s work. Coleridge detected signs of genius in
Wordsworth’s work.
Coleridge and Wordsworth first met in Racedown,
Dorsetshire in 1797.
Immediately became friends and collaborated in writings
together and shared the same vision in creating a new type
of poetry.
In 1798 joint published “Lyrical Ballads”.
However, due to different views, style of writing, and
personal issues, their friendship came to an end.
 Preferred natural,
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common language.
Emphasised on feeling
and simplicity.
Emotioned over
abstract thought.
Experience of natural
beauty over urban life.
Simply stated themes
instead of elaborate
symbols.
Nature, common
people, children, and
imagination.
 Wordsworth was the poet of nature, the purity of
childhood, and memory.
 Coleridge became the poet of imagination, exploring the
relationships between nature and the mind.
 Their new style of writing changed the course of English
poetry, replacing the elaborate classical forms with a new
Romantic sensibility.
 Influenced later writers such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and Lord Byron in England, and Emerson and
Thoreau in America.
Historical Background on
William Wordsworth
 Born 1770
 Age 8 Mother passes away
 William had 3 brothers
 William was a moody boy
 He read an immense amount of books
 His father died when he was 13
 He went to St. Johns and Cambridge
 Travels with his good friend Robert Johns
 Mastered French
 Supporter of the French Revolution
 He fell in Love with Anette Vallon
 His guilt and Abandonment of his family
 His meeting with Samuel Coleridge.
 Married Mary Hutchinson
 1843 Poet Laureate
 Died In 1850
 Info and Analysis of the
text, "Lyrical Ballads"
 four versions published
 first was published in1798 anonymously
 second published under Wordsworth's name in 1800
 third in 1802 with enlarged preface
 final in 1805
 negatively received by critics because of uninteresting
subjects but later praised for same thing
 Wordsworth's intentions
-revolutionary view on what to represent
-interest in capturing how human mind responds
through senses in nature
-use of common language
 What makes a poet
-someone who is more sensitive and thoughtful than
the average person
 Emphasis on the Individual
 Comparison:
-Past and present
-Speaker and Simon Lee
-Young and old
 Theme contrasts with "Simon Lee"
 preoccupation with death
 contrast between speaker's perception of death and
the cottage girl's
"To her fair works did
Nature link
The human soul that
through me ran;
And much it grieved my
heart to think
What man has made of
man"
"The birds around me
hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot
measure:But the least motion
which they made,
It seemed a thrill of
pleasure."
•Fascination with nature
•contrasting diction emphasizes the emotions associated
with nature and with civilization
 Friend asks why William sits there alone wasting his time
and where are his books
 he claims it is not a waste of time because all the senses of
the body are being utilized in a "wise passiveness" and
things can be learned from nature as well.
 support of social reform
 emphasis on nature
 "Let Nature be your teacher.
...Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.“
 shows that Wordsworth is potentially in between this
aspect of the Romantic movement and being educated
solely by books
 Symbols:
The Thorn
- the woman's suffering
The beautiful moss hill
- the happiness that left with the death of the baby
 "Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration"
 Fascination with Nature
-how nature affected the speaker as time passed
 Historical Background
on Samuel Coleridge
 Born in the country town of Ottery St. Mary in rural
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Devonshire, England
Was a "hippy“
English poet, Romantic, literary critic, philosopher,
founder of the Romantic Movement in England, and a
member of the Lake Poets
Best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, Kubla Khan, and his major prose work
Biographia Literaria
Major influence via Emerson on American
transcendentalism
 His father, Reverend John Coleridge, was a well
respected vicar of the parish and headmaster of Henry
VIII's Free Grammar School at Ottery
 John had three children with his first wife.
 Samuel was the youngest of the ten children by John's
second wife Anne Bowden
 After his father died, Samuel was sent to Christ's
Hospital at the age of 8 and would remain there
throughout his childhood studying and writing poetry
 From 1791-1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College,
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Cambridge
Enlisted in the Light Dragoons under the alias of Silas
Tonkun Comberback perhaps because of debt or because of
a girl he loved that had rejected him
Brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later
under the reason of "insanity" and was readmitted into
Jesus College although he would leave again and never
receive a degree
Met Robert Southey in 1794
His radicalism eventually waned and took an 180 degree
shift from radical to conservative in politics
Met Wordsworth at 23 years old in 1795 and judged him at
once to be "the best poet of the age“
 After the joint publication of Lyrical Ballds, he spent a
winter in Germany with Wordsworth and attended the
University of Gottingen
 Went back to England in 1800 with Wordsworth to the
Lake District and setled at Greta Hall, Keswick to be
near Wordsworth
 Took laundanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) to ease
the physical pains he suffered from an early age
 Beset by various problems such as marital problems,
tensions with Wordsworth, and opium dependency,
this led to the composition of Dejection: An Ode
 Took a break and went to the Mediterranean island of Malta in
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hopes of recovering but this instead completed his decline
Returned to 1806 a broken man
A bitter quarrel in 1810 with Wordsworth marked the nadir of
his life and expectations
From 1808-1819, gave public lectures in London along with
literary and philosophical topics
Wrote for newspapers while single handedly wrote, published,
and distributed The Friend, a journal that lasted for ten years
Wrote a tragedy, Remorse, that had a twenty successful
performances at the Drury Lane theater
1816, took up residence in Highgate, northern suburb of
London, under the supervision of physician James Gillman
who managed to control his opium consumption but not
elminate
 The next three years would be a sustained literary period for Coleridge
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published Biographia Literaria Zapolya (drama), a book consisting of
three essays in The Friend (revised and greatly enlarged), two
collections of poems, and several treatises on philosophical and
religious subjects
Established a philosophical basis for the Trinitarian theology
Spent the remaining years of his life with Dr. and Mrs. Gillman
His rooms at Highgate became a center for friends, the London literati,
and for a steady stream of pilgrims from England and America
Even in his decline, he never lost the incantatory power that Hazlitt
immortalized in My First Acquaintence with Poets
Died on the 25th of July, 1834 (age 61) in Highgate, England
Friends express an incomparable intellect vanished from the world
when he died
Coleridge's influence is strongly evident in the nineteenth-century
English and America
 Info and Analysis of the
text, "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner"
 The story begins very suddenly when the Mariner stops a
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man who is heading to a wedding
The man asks why he has been stopped, to which the
Mariner only begins his story
The man tries to brush him off but the mariner prevents
him and tells his tale
The Mariner recites a story of how he and his shipmates
were blown off course and sent south to the
Antartic
They find a south wind to blow them north by following an
albatross; a bird that is a symbol for good fortune
 The Mariner shoots and kills the bird, angering the spirits
 The spirits drive them far north into uncharted waters,
angered further by the crews acceptance of the crime
 Death takes the souls of the crew while “Life-in-Death”
takes the soul of the Mariner
 The mariner suffers the stares of his dead crewmates for
seven days until angelic spirits raise them to sail the ship
home
 Once home the Mariner is compared to rising from the
dead, being the devil, and is condemned to walk the earth
and recite his tale
 “He holds him with his skinny hand, -‘there was a
ship,’ quoth he. –‘Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard
loon!’ –Eftsoons[at once] his hand dropt he. –he holds
him with his glittering eye- -the wedding-guest stood
still, -and listens like a three years’ child: -the Mariner
hath his will.”
 “At length did cross an albatross, -Thorough the fog it
came; -as if it had a christian soul, -We hailed it in
God’s name.”
 “Her lips were red, her looks were free, -Her locks were
yellow as gold: -Her skin was as white as leprosy, -The
Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, -Who thicks man’s
blood with cold. –the naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; -‘the game is done!
I’ve won! I’ve won!’ –Quoth she, and whistled thrice.”
 “ ‘I fear thee Mariner! –I fear thy skinny hand! –And
thou art long, and lank, and brown, -As is the ribbed
sea- sand. –I fear thee and thy Glittering eye, -And thy
skinny hand, so brown’- -Fear not, fear not thou
wedding-guest! –This body dropt not down.”
 “ ‘I fear thee mariner!’ –Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!
-’Twas not the souls that fled in pain, -Which to their
[corpses] came again, -But a troop of spirits blest:”
 “ ‘Is it he?’ quoth one, ‘Is this the man? –By him who
died on cross, -With his cruel bow he laid full low –
The harmless Albatross.”
 “ I moved my lips-the Pilot shrieked –And fell down in
a fit; -The holy Hermit raised his eyes, -And prayed
where did he sit. –I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy, -Who
now doth crazy go, -Laughed loud and long, and all
the while, -his eyes went to and fro. –‘Ha! ha!’ quoth
he, ‘full plain I see, - The Devil Knows how to row.’ ”
THE END