Changing Characteristics of Poetry from Modern to Romantics Essay Sample

The features of poesy changed with the changing of epochs and literary periods. Romantics have their ain characteristics and composing manner. Nature and beauty play really of import function in Romantic poesy. Victorian poesy is different from Romantics because its subjects are about Victorian age. which is influenced by democracy. evolutionary scientific disciplines and industrial revolution. After that the Modern age comes and its subjects and manner of Hagiographas are wholly different from Romantic and Victorian poesy. Modern poesy has its ain subjects such as. isolation. anxiousnesss and dissilliounment of modern adult male in the clip of post-World war. This paper purpose to demo the altering features of poesy from Romantic to Modern age.

“Poetry is an inventive consciousness of experience expressed through significance. sound and rhythmic linguistic communication picks so as to arouse an emotional response” . ( Mark Flanagan ) . The Romantic Motion at the terminal of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century was a calculated rebellion against the literary rules of the age of Reason. Romantics poets rejected the neo-classical rules in favour of the Romantics. In making so. they reverted to the Elizabethan or the first romantic age in English literature. The romantic in ordinary life is an flight from its humdrum modus operandi. its conventionality and usage. The three urges of the romantic imaginativeness. passion for nature. longing for the yesteryear. The Romanticism was nil but an extension to the field of literature of man’s quenchless thirst for beauty that lies in the strange. the extraordinary. the distant combination of the strange and beauty constitutes the romantic in literature.

Some of the greatest and most popular English poets like Wordsworth. Coleridge. Byron. Shelley and Keats belong to this period. This period starts from 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads. The of import features of Romantic poesy include love for nature. emotions. beauty. imaginativeness. symbolism and individuality. All these features can be seen in the poesy of romantic poesy. Wordsworth is celebrated as the greatest nature poet of England and his coevalss Byron. Shelley and Keats were great lovers of nature. Wordsworth treated nature otherwise from other poets. He worshiped nature. because he saw in all natural objects the indwelling spirit of the Supreme Being. Nature was besides therapist and soother for him when he was in the clasp of a great religious crisis. England’s declaration of war against France was a great daze to Wordsworth. He saw nature mothering and comforting from the really childhood. He describes this emotion in these lines: Fair seed clip had my psyche. and I grew up

Fostered likewise by beauty and by fright ;
Much Favored in my place of birth. and no less
In that beloved valley to which ere long
We were transplanted ( The Prelude Book 1: 301-305 ) Shelley’s construct of nature in his short wordss varied harmonizing to the temper he was in. Sometimes he saw nature as 1. as an person and at another clip he saw nature non as one being but as many existences as work forces of fabulous times saw it. He made new myths out of the assorted objects of nature. Nature for Wordsworth was a religious world and Shelley agreed with this construct but he endowed nature with mind. In the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. the poet imagines the whole Earth as being illuminated by the glorification of this cosmopolitan spirit and the same thing is present in Hymn to the Spirit of Nature: Lamp of Earth! Where’re 1000 lovest

Its dim forms are clothed with brightness.
And the psyche of whom 1000 lovest
Walk upon the air currents with elation.
Here Shelley has made nature as being permeated. vitalized and existent by a cosmopolitan spirit of love and Beauty. While Shelley intellectualized nature and Wordsworth spiritualized it. Keats merely envisioned it so as to show it as it is felt through our five senses. The Ode to Autumn. in which Keats has glorified Nature. is a verse form which for profusion and colour has ne’er been surpassed. These lines show his love for nature as a romantic poet: Where are the vocals of spring?

Ay. where are they
Think non of them
Though has thy music excessively. ( Ode to Autumn: stanza 3 ) Imagination has much importance in the poesy of Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge formulated the theory that poesy is the self-generated flood of powerful feelings. Wordsworth’s poesy is extremely inventive when he makes ordinary things as high degree through imaginativeness. In A Lone Reaper. Wordsworth’s imaginativeness changed the vocal of a hill miss as a exalted 1. The Prelude is a history of Wordsworth’s imaginativeness: Wisdom and Spirit of the universe…… .

But with high objects. with digesting things
Wordsworth’s bud-nesting escapade that led him to reflective rapture: Dust as we are. the immortal psyche grows…… . In one society. Imagination has a existent relation with Keats’s poesy. In Keats we find “imaginative phrases” which have power to please the aesthetic sense. Ode to a Greek Urn contains graphic imaginativeness. In the Eve of S. t Agnes. he draws the images of the statues of male monarchs and Queenss and represents them as capable of experiencing cold through his imaginativeness: The sculptur’d dead on each side. seem to stop dead. He passeth by and his weak spirit fails

To believe how they may hurt in icy goons and mails. ( Eve of St. Agnes: 14-18 ) Shelley has used symbols through his inventive power. The West air current is a symbol of many things such as nature. God-head. Resurrection and revolution. Shelley. at the terminal of Adonais. symbolized the boat as human psyche such as: The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me ; my spirit bark is driven

Far from the shore. far from the shaking multitude Whose canvass were ne’er to the storm given. ( Adonais: LV. 487-490 ) The function of beauty is really much evident in Romantic poets. Wordsworth. Coleridge. Shelley and Keats. all poets of Romanticism praised beauty in their poesy. In his young person. Wordsworth took up the physical beauty of nature. He was attracted by the outward visual aspects of nature and her magnificence in colour and beauty. He described the external characteristics of nature. The magnificence of the mountain’s downpour entreaties to him because he can associate its beauty in his head with the beauty of clouds with the appeal of a immature girl’s face. Keats can be said as a poet of beauty as he praised it through his symbols. For Keats. beauty was the chief rule of life. Keats related the beauty with the mighty abstract thought of beauty. This passion. Shelley called “intellectual beauty” . The first line of Endymion work stoppages Keats’s inspiration of nature: The thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Shelley. another lover of beauty did non give his life to the chase of physical beauty but for the ideal love and Beauty which he yearned for all his life. This spirit he has attractively described in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty: Spirit of Beauty. that dost consecrate

With thine ain chromaticities all thou dost shine upon Of human idea or signifier. _ where art thou gone?
Why dost 1000 base on balls off and go forth our province.
This dim huge valley of cryings. vacant and desolate?
( Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 11. 13-17 ) Therefore each one of Romantic poet gave his ain reading of the existence. the relation of God. the connexion between the seeable and the unseeable. nature and adult male. They refused to accept the thoughts of other work forces on trust or to give imaginativeness to statement. By agencies of their originative art they tried to wake up the imaginativeness of the reader to the world that lies behind and to bestir him from the dead and dull modus operandi of imposts of life. After the Romantic age. the Victorian age starts and the poesy written in this epoch was different in subjects. manner and enunciation from Romantic poesy. The Victorian age in English literature began in 2nd one-fourth of the 19th century and ended by 1900.

It was the age of democracy. individuality. rapid industrial development and material enlargement. It was the age of uncertainty and pessimism. following the new construct of adult male formulated by scientific discipline and Evolution. The most of import poets during Victorian period were Tennyson. Browning and Arnold. The three of import motions of the age were these: industrial revolution. the rise of democracy and the rise of evolutionary scientific discipline and its impact on faith. It was an age in which the democratic spirit was lifting and the people were clamouring for equal rights and political freedom. Tennyson represents the Victorian lip service and the spirit of via media in his intervention of love. sex and matrimony. He was a moralist and mouth piece of the Victorians. The legendary Ulysses gives message of action to readers: Strike. to seek. to happen. and non to give.

Victorian’s anxiousnesss of life and depression due to evolutionary scientific discipline are presented in Tennyson’s poesy. He gives a via media between scientific discipline and faith. In Memoriam he says: Let knowledge turn from more to more

And more of fear in us dwell
That head and psyche. harmonizing good.
May do one music as earlier.
Browning expressed the spirit of Victorian age in Rabbi Ben Ezra. He gave rather accurate and graphic images of human life and fortunes of that age. There is a robust optimism reflected in all his poesy. His house belief in the immortality of psyche which is attractively expressed in the undermentioned lines of Pippa Base on ballss: The year’s at the spring

And day’s at the forenoon ;
Morning’s at seven ;
The hill side’s dew pearled ;
The lark’s on the wing ;
The snails on the irritant
God’s in his Eden
All’s right with the universe.
Arnold’s poesy is most representative of the Victorian age. He complained about the struggle between scientific discipline and faith: The sea of religion
Was one time ; excessively. at the full. and circular earth’s shore Lay like the creases of a bright girdle furl’d But now I merely hear
Its long. melancholy. retreating boom.

In The Memorial Verses. the Victorian age is described as “the Fe age” . Victorian poesy besides represents the position of nature but different from Romantics. Tennyson’s position of nature lies in its atmospheric subjectiveness. In The Lotos-Eaters. the comrades of Ulysses read their ain feelings into the milieus ; while suggest the dreamy. languid ambiance of the topographic point. They have eaten of the indolence-giving fruit and sing vocals: There is sweet music here that softer falls.

Than petals from blown roses on the grass.
Or dark dews on still Waterss between walls
Of shady granite. in a agleam base on balls.
( Choric vocal. 1. 1-4 ) . Browning’s nature description is widely distributed as nature in his poesy is non of one state. but of many states. In Grammarian’s Funeral. he makes us experience the presence of the objects of nature like fresh air. top extremum. silent meteors. rolling clouds. blinking lightning and flashing stars. Here’s the top-peak ; the battalion below

Live. for they can. there:
This adult male decide non to populate but cognize
Bury this adult male at that place?
Here_ Here’s his topographic point. where meteors shoot. clouds signifier. Lightening are loosened.
( A Grammarian’s Funeral. 137-142 ) . Arnold’s description of nature is something near the Romantics. In Quiet Work and Self-Dependence. nature Teachs Arnold wisdom and repose. In Resignation. Arnold describes nature as a beginning of peace instead than joy: That general life. which dose non
cease.

Whose secret is non joy. but peace.
His description of nature is graphic in these lines:
The sea is unagitated to –night
The tide is full. the Moon lies just
Upon the passs ; _ on the Gallic seashore the light Gleams and is gone. the drops of England base. Gleaming and huge. out in the tranquil bay. ( Dover Beach ; 1-5 ) . Victorian poesy besides has imagination and emotions. Tennyson’s usage of simile and metaphor is characterized by originality and propensity. His imaginativeness is present in these lines every bit good: To woolgather and woolgather. like yonder gold visible radiation

Which will non go forth the myth-bush on the tallness? Tennyson has used the clean poetry in The Princess. the idylls of male monarch and the English idylls. Browning is so gifted with an limitless power of imaginativeness which is ever embracings every existent thing go oning in human life. His verse forms such as Fra Lippo Lippi. Cleon. The Bishop Orders His Grave. have images of important inside informations. Browning’s theory of art is in Andrea Del Sarto. Arnold is somewhat different from other Victorian poets in resuscitating classicalism in signifier and content. Clarity. clarity and brevity are present in his poesy. He ever aimed at aristocracy of idea and look. He described in Scholar Itinerant: Still nursing the unconquerable hope

Still seizing the inviolable shadiness. ( 211-212 ) Expression is attractively presented in these lines:
Eyess excessively expressive to be bluish.
Excessively lovely to be grey.
The Victorian poesy is excessively much represented of its age specially that of Tennyson. In The Princess. he dealt with an of import job of that clip _ that of the higher instruction of adult females and their topographic point in the society. In Maud. he gave look to the loyal passion aroused on history of the Crimean War. Thus in all verse forms. the altering tempers of the Victorian age are in turn represented such as uncertainties. misgiving. hopefulness etc. Modern poesy. of which T. S. Eliot is the main representative. has followed wholly a different tradition from the Romantic and Victorian tradition of poesy. A survey of 19th century poesy reveals the fact that its chief feature was preoccupation with a dream universe as we find in Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. The poesy of Victorian epoch could non happen favour with the critics and readers of the twentieth century because of extremist alterations that had taken topographic point. Poetry for modern poets is non a medium for doctrine and other immaterial affairs. nor is it singing for its ain interest. It is a method of detecting one’s ego so it is indispensable to present new technique of communicating to detect the significances.

This necessity brought the motions known as Imagism and Symbolism. Symbolism is used to show the single emotions of the poet in a linguistic communication which seems best adapted to convey his indispensable quality without caring for metres and constructions. Imagism on the other manus is used to give lucidity of looks through difficult. accurate and definite images. Among the Modern poets. Gerard Manley Hopkins has a great name. Hopkins tested to resuscitate the “sprung rhythm” in the poesy. This beat follows the system of beats and emphasiss unlike the quantitive metres where every syllable is counted. This beat is nearer to natural address. so the Modern poets appealed by this usage of beat. Hopkins was endowed with extremely sensuousness but had an staying religion in God. He could comprehend God in every object and tried to happen its interior meats of its being or its really psyche which was expressed by its outer signifier. This quality in every thing which is the manifestation of Beauty was called by Hopkins as “inscape” . The verse form of Hopkins are about God. nature and Man. His greatest verse form The Wreck of Deutschland is full of storm and torment. uncovering the enigma of God’s manner to work forces: Thousand get the hanging me

God! Giver of breath and staff of life ;
World’s strand. sway of the sea ;
Lord of life and dead.
Hopkins’s sprung beat is seen in his verse form pied Beauty:
Glory be to God for mottled things
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow ; For rose-moles all in stipple up on trout that swim. Fresh-fire coal chestnut-falls ; Finches’ wings ( Pied Beauty. 1-4 ) . Symbols are besides really much nowadays in Hopkins’s poesy. In The Caged Skylark. he uses the symbol of coop like a human organic structure in which psyche is poisoned. It besides deals with Resurrection of iniquitous psyche of adult male. As a dare-gale Alauda arvensis scanted in a dull coop Man’s mounting spirit in his bone house. average house. dwells That bird beyond the retrieving his free hides. This in plodding. day-laboring-out life’s age. Among Modern poets. Yeats is one who used imagination and symbols absolutely. A Vision gave Yeats a philosophical model for his verse form as Phases of the Moon. Shepherd and Goatherd. Byzantium and All Soul’s Night.

Legends and individuals in Irish mythology find a large topographic point in yeat’s poesy such as: An Irish Airman foresees His Death. Easter 1916 etc. Nostalgia for old Ireland is vividly present in his poesy such as these lines: Before that ruin came. for centuries. Rough men-at-arm. cross-gartered to the articulatio genuss Or shed in Fe. climbed the narrow steps. And certain men-at-arms these were Whose images. in the Great Memory stored ( The Tower ; 81-85 ) . Magic and Occultism have a major function in Yeat’s poesy. His Autobiographies is filled with narratives of unexpected events. spirit contact and other extrasensory activities witnessed by Yeats. The subject of old age is present in his verse forms such as: Sailing to Byzantium. the Tower and why non old Work force should be Mad. Among the Modern poets. T. S. Eliot is the greatest who has influenced modern poesy every bit good. Eliot is acutely cognizant of the present jobs which face world in the modern times. His verse form The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock expresses the disenchantment. sarcasm and disgust of the modern age. The status of modern adult male is seen in his Hollow Men such as: We are the hollow work forces.

We are stuffed work forces.
Leaning together.
His Headpiece filled with straw.
The chief characteristics of twentieth century are anxiousness. perturbation and decomposition. The World war resulted anarchy and loss of religion and moral values. Eliot’s poesy expresses vividly the status of modern society. The best reverberation of the post-war age of disenchantment is heard in his The Waste Land. The lines express the scene at that clip: April is the barbarous month. breading

Lilacs out of the dead land. blending
Memory and desire. stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
( Burial of the Dead. 1-4 ) . Because of modern poet. Eliot’s poesy is full of symbols and Metaphors and they have an individualism of their ain. Such as in lines from Prufrock in which flushing fog is compared to a cat: The xanthous fog that rubs its dorsum upon the window window glasss. The xanthous fume that rubs its muzzle on the window window glasss. Licked its lingua into the corners of the eventide. Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains. ( 15-18 ) . The waste land itself is a symbol of sterility and the look of acrimonious sense of disenchantment of the post-war coevals. He made his age conscious of itself and aware of the dangers in modern civilisation. So the subjects. features. enunciation and poetic manner changed throughout from Romantics to Moderns.

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