Wordsworth and coleridge
Wordsworth and coleridgeWordsworth and Coleridge
Poems in the Romantic Period can be referred to as incidents of life. They involve every aspect of life such as love, guilt, sinning, and even death. Specifically William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge have written many poems that have dealt with great emotions and imagination but they do not exclude the society or common man in their imaginations. This is why sometimes these two poets have even been called "visionary poets." They can relate their lives, imaginations, and emotions to the rest of the ordinary man and hopefully deliver some kind of "pleasure" to the reader from their works. In Preface to Lyrical Ballads and Rime of The Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth and Coleridge chose to focus on the "common man" instead of the self. They do not only concentrate on personal response and rejection of the outside world. Therefore, Wordsworth and Coleridge can not be accused on the charge of solipsism.
William Wordsworth was very concerned with others in the subject of his poems as well as in his real life. In "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," he would not have written, "I have pleased a greater number than I ventured to hope I should please" (141) if he was only concentrating on the self. Wordsworth was concerned for all responses from all mankind and not only his personal response. He emphasized and focused on the common man in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads by writing in a common language that the ordinary man can easily understand and appreciate. There are no phrases or figures of speech in his poems that would not be found in conversation between the ordinary, working man. "Because men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best object is derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness of their intercourse, being less influence of social vanity they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions."(143) Wordsworth was obviously not as subvert as he was accused to be since he wrote the ballads that followed this preface with these men in mind. He also took the time to explain for whom they were written....
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