The Romantic Imagination in Wordsworths Tintern Abbey Essay

The Romantic Imagination, Wordsworth, and Tintern Abbey Historical Context The Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, immediately preceded the time in which the Romantics were writing. In Britain, the work of Locke and Newton, who were proponents of empiricism and mechanism respectively, were central to Enlightenment philosophy. Locke was the founder of empiricism, the belief that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience; Newton ushered in a mechanistic worldview when he formulated a mathematical description of the laws of mechanics and gravitation, which he applied to planetary and lunar motion. In The Mirror and the Lamp M.H. Abrams notes that†¦show more content†¦Shelleys A Defence of Poetry comes to mind. The title itself, A Defence indicates the tensions surrounding the relative values of poetry and the imagination versus science and reason. In the essay itself, he argues that imagination is more important than reason because the imagination lends itself to empathy, creative vision, and the power to create a harmonious society. A General Overview of the Romantic Imagination C.M. Bowra points out that the Romantic poets diverged significantly from earlier eighteenth-century writers such as Pope, Johnson, and Dryden who thought that the poet is more an interpreter than a creator, [and should be] more concerned with showing the attractions of what we already know than with expeditions into the unfamiliar and unseen (1). In another vein, the Romantic concept of the imagination ran counter to the Lockean view that in perception, the mind is wholly passive, a mere recorder of impressions from without (Bowra 2). Generally speaking, the Romantics viewed the imagination as an active and creative power, a power that could interact with the natural environment rather than simply react to it. These interactions were central to the inspiration that the poets needed in order to write. In writing, the poets would often move into the realm of the unfamiliar and unseen, which in turn yielded the kind of intuitive insights into humanity and the universe that eighteenth century empirical thoughtShow MoreRelated Romanticism in Tintern Abbey and The Thorn Essay1964 Words   |  8 PagesTintern Abbey + The Thorn Romanticism is a core belief. It can be demonstrated in a complicated format, with themes and subjects that qualify a piece of writing as ‘Romantic’, however in the context of Romantic writing, Romanticism is indefinable by those who wrote it. A set of beliefs and literary practices nonetheless, however the main Ideas of tranquility, beauty in nature and humanity cannot be classified. As Wordsworth states ‘We Kill to Dissect’ the same can be said with his poetryRead MoreRomantic Period -Williom Wordsworth2416 Words   |  10 PagesWordsworth’s Romantic Values The Enlightenment, a period of reason, intellectual thought, and science, led some writers to question those values over emotion. Instead, as the Romantic movement gradually developed in response, writers began to look at a different approach to thought. The Romantic period, roughly between the years of 1785 to 1830, was a period when poets turned to nature, their individual emotions, and imagination to create their poetry. Romantic poets such as Wordsworth, ColeridgeRead MoreThe Great Writers From The Romantic Era1389 Words   |  6 Pageshad a great influence on many of the great writers from the romantic era, and it is evident that his definition of the sublime â€Å"mind to grasp at something towards which it can make approaches but which it is incapable of attaining† did in fact influence Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein (Wordsworth, â€Å"From Enlightenment† 84) From the picturesque images of Mount Blanc and Lake Genva, to the frozen North Sea, i t feels like Wordsworth’s hand is guiding Shelley’s pen as the foundation for the novelRead More Millennial Themes in The Prelude and Mont Blanc Essay1534 Words   |  7 PagesMillennial Themes in The Prelude and Mont Blanc On reading Book VI of Wordsworths thirteen-part version of The Prelude, I was particularly struck by the passage in which, following his crossing of the Alps, the poet describes the sick sight / And giddy prospect of the raging stream (VI. 564-565) of the Arve Ravine as both an apocalyptic foreboding and an expression of millennial unity in his theory of the One Mind: The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, Tumult and peace,Read MoreFew Miles Above Tintern Abbey Essay2283 Words   |  10 PagesLines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey Full Title: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798. Man and the Natural World This is one of the most important ideas of Tintern Abbey. The speaker of this poem has discovered, in his maturity, that his appreciation of natural beauty has allowed him to recognize a divine power in nature. Wordsworth comes up with this idea in Tintern Abbey, and then really explores and developsRead MoreThe Age Of Manufacturing That Preceded The Romantic Movement1387 Words   |  6 PagesThe 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 reportRead More Comparison of the Portrayal of Nature in Blake and Wordsworth1518 Words   |  7 Pages the most popular themes for Romantic poetry in England was nature and an appreciation for natural beauty. The English Romantic poets were generally concerned with the human imagination as a counter to the rise of science. The growing intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries placed scientific thought in the forefront of all knowledge, basing reality in material objects. The Romantics found this form of world view to be restrictive. They felt that imagination was crucial to individual happinessRead MoreContrast and Comparison of Wordsworths Tintern Abbey and Colderidges Kubla Khan1591 Words   |  7 PagesContrast and Comparison of Wordsworths Tintern Abbey and Colderidges Kubla Khan When comparing William Wordsworths Tintern Abbey, and Samuel Colderidges Kubla Khan, one notices a distinct difference in the use of imagination within the two poems. Even though the two poets were contemporaries and friends, Wordsworth and Colderidge each have an original and different way in which they introduce images and ideas into their poetry. These differences give the reader quite a unique experience whenRead More Wordsworths and Keatss Treatment of Nature1629 Words   |  6 Pages The Romantic period is perhaps the most complex and diverse period in human history. What makes Romantic period so special is that the Romantic poets took a completely different to approach to look at things from the previous era – the Enlightenment. People from the Enlightenment regarded nature as scientific and orderly principals governing the universe. On the other hand, the Romantics saw nature as the antithesis of inherited and institutionalized practices of thought, self-alienated ways ofRead More Theme of William Wordsworth as a Prophet in Tintern Abbey1494 Words   |  6 Pagesmonk or priest-like figure zealously converting Dorothy and, by extension, the reader into a position within his vision of the world. But even more than priest, Wordsworth often depicts the romantic poet as prophet. This depiction is demonstrated more clearly in The Prospectus to the Recluse than in Tintern Abbey. In the 1814 version of the Prospectus he writes: Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields -- like those of old Sought in