Poetic Revolutionaries: Blake and Wordsworth Mrs. Cumberland

1. Poetic Revolutionaries: Blake and WordsworthMrs. Cumberland Objectives: To become acquainted with the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth To detail the differences between Neoclassicism and Romanticism To understand the political context for the Romantic Movement To reflect on effecting change

2. Probably every again human history has spawned several philosophical approaches to the questions of life. • Despite the dominating influence of Neoclassicism, the 18th century was no exception

3. As the works of poets such as Thomas Gray and Robert Burns demonstrate, Romantic tendencies cropped up amidst the more prevalent Neoclassical trends of the century

4. However, just as the “hippies” of the late 1960s deliberately set themselves against the “Establishment,” so did some thinkers and poets o the late-18th and early 19th centuries face off against Neoclassicism and against courtly, monarchical status quo that accompanied it

5. It is difficult to imagine the Romantic Movement outside the context set by the American and French Revolutions • Just as explorations of the New World had inspired Rousseau’s reflections on the “noble savage,’ so exhortations of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” resonated with the young minds of the age

6. Poetry and art could scarcely be business as usual in the face of the democratizing force of these political revolutions. • However disappointing the French Revolution turned out to be the idealistic English, it- along with the earlier revolution in America- provided an external and communal context for the Romantics’ poetic expression of individuality and freedom

7. Two prominent examples of poets inspired by the Revolutions are William Blake and William Wordsworth

8. From an early age, Blake opposed tyranny • He avidly supported the goals of the French and American revolutions ( though he abhorred war) and wrote poems entitled “The French revolution” and “America: A Prophecy”

9. He also actively opposed slavery • His class views were likewise revolutionary; shunning the values of the elite, he championed the common man ( of which he emphatically was one)

10. It was in his psychology, however, that he was most revolutionary; Blake exalted imagination, freedom, and individuality, and downplayed or denigrated reason and common sense

11. In fact, aside from his political support of the great revolutions of the late 18th century, he represented these events as allegories for the transformation of individual lives

12. Blake was poor and outspoken • He regularly suffered ridicule, was tried for sedition after a conflict with one of the Royal Dragoons, and had few adherents over the course of his career • Thinkers he initially admired, such as Swedenborg, he often outgrew and renounced

13. Most of Blake’s poetry is very difficult • Questioning for eternal truth, he regarded surface obscurity as a shield for his mythical poetic visions • Even his most-straightforward, most-reprinted works, The Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience, are heavily symbolic

14. By contrast, Wordsworth’s poetry, though rich with imagery and not devoid of symbols, is straightforward in its championing of imagination and individuality • Like Blake, Wordsworth supported the French Revolution ( he was only six in 1776), and he too found applications for the emotional life of the individual in the revolution’s political aims

15. Wordsworth also overtly rejected the artistic values of Neoclassicism, but in contrast to Blake, he conveys his views in an expository way accessible to most readers • Like Blake, Wordsworth experienced ridicule, but his Cambridge-educated, manor-born expression spared him Blake’s harsher experience,