Poetry, Nature and Self:

A Quest for Happiness and Acknowledgement during the

Romantic Age

MA Thesis Cultural History

Student: Jacqueline Woudstra, 3113566
Supervisor: Barnita Bagchi
Date: 20-06-2012
Image: Unknown artist, in black (1869) Tintern Abbey, interior
Words: William Wordsworth, Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, fragment

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 Table of Contents

Introduction ____________________________________________________________ - 4 -
The Spirit of the Age ________________________________________________________ - 6 -
Romanticism: a concept _______________________________________________________ - 8 -
Preromanticism _____________________________________________________________ - 10 -
Cultural interactions_________________________________________________________ - 12 -
A history of Romanticism ___________________________________________________ - 13 -
The case-studies_____________________________________________________________ - 14 -
Lyrical Ballads: ________________________________________________________ - 16 -
An experiment in feeling and education _____________________________________ - 16 -
A new language for Wordsworth_______________________________________________ - 18 -
The Lyrical Ballads: a short history_____________________________________________ - 19 -
The Advertisement and Prefaces for justification and defence ______________________ - 21 -
Advertisement (1798) ______________________________________________________________ - 23 -
Preface (1800) ____________________________________________________________________ - 23 -
Preface (1802) ____________________________________________________________________ - 25 -
The poems _________________________________________________________________ - 27 -
Conclusion _________________________________________________________________ - 29 -
Self-development or the household? _____________________________________________
Dilemmas and tradition in the life of a poets sister ____________________________ - 31 -
Romanticism and women _____________________________________________________ - 32 -
William and the other Wordsworth ____________________________________________ - 34 -
The journals______________________________________________________________________ - 35 -
Inspiration to Williams poetry _______________________________________________________ - 36 -
Dorothys poetry ____________________________________________________________ - 39 -
Decay in later life____________________________________________________________ - 42 -
Dorothy and tradition________________________________________________________ - 43 -
Conclusion _________________________________________________________________ - 44 -
John Keats: _________________________________________________________________
The creation of a Romantic Hero __________________________________________ - 46 -
The formation years _________________________________________________________ - 47 -
Self-education ____________________________________________________________________ - 48 -
Social interactions: friends and critics __________________________________________ - 49 -
The omnipresent Nature, senses and sensibility___________________________________ - 51 -
Poetry from Imagination ____________________________________________________________ - 51 -
The poet of senses and sensibility _____________________________________________________ - 52 -
The melancholy poet: Keats the Romantic Hero __________________________________ - 55 -
Conclusion _________________________________________________________________ - 59 -
Sensibility _______________________________________________________________________ - 59 -
The Romantic Hero ________________________________________________________________ - 59 -
Self-education and definition________________________________________________________ - 60 -

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Conclusion ____________________________________________________________ - 62 -
Nature and the natural _______________________________________________________ - 62 -
Imagination ________________________________________________________________ - 63 -
Self-definition and public/social life ____________________________________________ - 64 -
Romantics _________________________________________________________________ - 65 -
Bibliography ___________________________________________________________ - 67 -

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 Introduction

Dreaming and daydreaming in dark grottoes, amid vast wildernesses, or on high mountains,
this is how Marshall Brown described the Romantic nature feeling.1 And he was not far off.
Romanticism had everything to do with dreaming, the imagination and the overwhelming
qualities of nature. The Romantic period was the time of head against the heart, the follow-up to
the Enlightenment, during which all the sacred cows of religion were thrown over. Man was
turned back into the autonomous being that he was by nature and God was no more. Reason
ruled and all belief in magic and the supernatural had been terminated. The Romantic Movement
started as a protest against this cold, new age of reason. Man could live with the fact that there
was no God, but giving up on the magical, imaginative and supernatural was a different story
altogether. Many were left disillusioned, because if there was nothing but reason, what room was
there for emotions, imagination? People needed new ways to give meaning to their lives and a
group of Romantic poets set out to do so. Their goal was, above anything else, to express feeling
in their poetry: they wanted to make their readers feel again.
People needed magic and a retreat from real-life, especially in the second half of the
eighteenth century. Industrialization was leaving its marks in the cities and in the country. The
French Revolution and its ideals, but also its terrible consequences, reached England. Many
hoped and believed that the Revolution would bring a cure for the problems with modern society
and European civilization. When it did not come, they retreated to nature and Romanticism.2 It
became a sanctuary, where they could dream about a better world, revel in the past and imagine
their time away. The outbreak of the French Revolution almost heralded the beginning of
Romanticism. What they had in common was the striving for freedom: freedom from an
oppressive regime and freedom from rationality.3 Romantic poetry wanted to satisfy this need: by
discussing the natural world, filtered through an idealistic imagination, it took people away from
their hardships, offering a refuge or perspective.
The refuge to nature and a more natural life started in peoples own gardens, which had
until then been arranged with the logic and precision of the Enlightenment. Letting go of this
rational gardening and letting nature run loose was the first step.4 Gardens should be wild; a place
where fairies might live and where people could daydream. There they found a divine beauty,
strength, a higher power. Nature, of all things, is closest to an archaic world, in which old values

1 Brown, Marshall, Romanticism and Enlightenment, in: Curran, Stuart (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British
Romanticism (Cambridge, 2010) [1993] p. 37
2 Schenk, Hans Georg, The Mind of the European Romantics (Oxford, 1979) p. 11-12
3 Ibidem, p. 1
4 Ibidem, p. 241

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and magic are still somewhere hidden. And most of all, nature has a tranquillity that the city
lacked, especially during the Industrial Revolution. Nature was fighting a losing battle against the
modernization, with all its artificialities.5 Because of the hardships of the time, poets wanted to
offer their readers an escape: a turn away from the modernisation of society, the loss of rural life,
the beginning of life in the city. David Duff wrote how these poets would project their readers
onto an imaginative plane, where the time and place are forgotten.6 Return to nature and wild
gardening had everything to do with the call for a more natural life. This call was answered in
peoples own lives and a new reverence for natural scenes, but also in the language used for
poetry. William Wordsworth was a revolutionist in that respect, wanting to do away with all the
artificialities in his life as well as his poetry.
New genres emerged during Romanticism, but this thesis will focus on Romanticism in
nature poetry and self-definition, in the works of William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth
and John Keats.

5Hans Georg Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics, p. 175

6Duff, David, From Revolution to Romanticism: The Historical Context to 1800 in: Wu, Duncan (ed.), A
Companion to Romanticism (Oxford, 1998) p. 23

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The Spirit of the Age
The Romantic period was an age of repression, censorship and legal threat.7 Women were
repressed into their traditional role of matriarch: staying at home and taking care of the children.
People from the lower classes and women in general had a hard time defending their rights, and
their potential careers. Critics were inexorable on these writers, whether their critique was
justified or not. These harsh critiques caused authors to feel the need to defend themselves. This
was easiest achieved by their practice of self-definition, justifying both themselves and their
poetry or prose. They did this through a preface or essay preceding a large work. Especially
William Wordsworth, with his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, used this means as a defence.
Many other changes presented themselves, most importantly the Industrial Revolution.
From a mainly agricultural society, England developed into an industrial and modernised nation.8
Instead of working on the land and living a rural life people now had to move into the city and
work in factories. The natural of everyday life was oppressed more and more. Nature was
fenced in and no longer a place to roam freely. It is not hard to imagine how all these changes
made people nostalgic for the days when they were still living their tranquil, unlimited lives. They
needed nature as their haven once more. City life was harsh and a retreat into the countryside was
limited by the fenced in agricultural fields. Nature poets jumped into the gap that was thus left by
the industrialization. Romantic poetry had a hint of the nostalgic in it, as it romanticised a period
that no longer was: the time before the industrialization, when nature was still free and vibrant.
Nature poetry turned into an idealization of the nature scene as it had been before the
urbanization:

As a site where the individual could find freedom from social laws, an idealization that
was easier to sustain when nature was () represented not as cultivated fields but as
uninhabitable wild wastes, unploughed uplands, caves and chasms.9

Poetry became an escape, mostly from the terrible reality of the war between England and
France, which started in 1792 as the French Revolutionary Wars but continued into the
Napoleonic Wars until 1815. Nature poetry could create a mental sanctuary. Especially John
Keats was skilled in that respect, mostly because he created mental sanctuaries for himself.10 He
fled into his imagination, which was usually filled with melancholy thoughts.

7 Curran, Stuart, Romantic Poetry: why and wherefore?, in: Curran, Stuart (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British
Romanticism (Cambridge, 2010) [1993] p. 223
8 Lynch, D.S. & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period in: Greenblatt, S. (ed.) Norton Anthology of English Literature vol. 2

(New York & London, 2006) [1962] p. 2

9 Ibidem, p. 15-16
10 Stuart Curran, Romantic Poetry: why and wherefore?, p. 211

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 The gloom of industrialization caused a new movement in literature, the Gothic novel, in
which the most horrible subjects were treated. This fascination with immorality and coldness was
felt as a disgrace by William Wordsworth. He was a Romantic poet and he believed that
Romantic poetry could make people feel again, turn them back into sensible, loving beings that
enjoyed beauty and not cruelty. Not only gothic writers were gloomy, however. A typical
development of the Romantic period was the appearance of the Romantic Hero. This man, who
seemingly had everything that could make him happy, would turn away from his happiness to
revel in melancholy. The hero turns away from established norms and conventions and is in turn
rejected by society, living a self-centred life. The focus is on the thoughts of the character, rather
than on his actions. Books like Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Goethe and the poem Childe
Harolds Pilgrimage by Lord Byron have a Romantic Hero as the protagonist. That the Romantic
Hero was not just a concept from fiction will become clear in relation to the young poet John
Keats, who knew exactly how to evoke a melancholy atmosphere in his works and was, very
much, rejected by society.
It was also the time of man against nature. The Romantic poet could ramble through the
countryside for hours, experiencing its beauty and power. The Romantic period induced a trend
of going out alone to face nature, seeing it in all its might and gaining knowledge and peace from
it. Nature was a powerful source that man could try to overcome or retreat to. Romantic
paintings, more than anything else, tried to grasp this aspect of man against nature. In Romantic
poetry, there was a negotiation between the individual, nature and society.11 The poetry came
forth out of a desire of the individual to get away from society, and a desire to change that society
for the better. The authors discussed in this thesis all had their own relation to nature and the
natural. This determined how they dealt with or tried to influence society.
Rambling through nature became known as the Romantic Wanderlust. The poets,
especially Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, wandered through the countryside for hours.12
William Wordsworth could cover as much as forty miles a day, no matter what the weather was.
Just like many others poets, he used his walks to mediate and compose. It was nature that could
give him inspiration, and fill the void of disillusionment that was left after the French Revolution
and industrialization.13 The Wanderlust also caused an increase of tourism, a trend that all the
poets discussed in this thesis followed and encouraged, sometimes unintentionally.

11 Ferguson, Frances, Solitude and the Sublime. Romanticism and the aesthetics of individuation (New York, 1992) p. 125
12 Hans Georg Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics, p. 164
13 Ibidem, p. 165

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Romanticism: a concept
But what exactly is this Romanticism? Already in 1924, Arthur O. Lovejoy stated that [T]he
word romantic has come to mean so many things that by itself, it means nothing.14 That is
why it is important to look at the concept in a context, to see what it means in relation to other
things. The important things that were part of Romantic culture were conceptions of man and his
relation to nature, the poetic style with a use of symbolism, imagination and myth, the workings
of nature and poetic imagination.15 This thesis will look at Romanticism in that connection with
nature and the imagination, but also from the perspective of the poet in their relation to society
and practices of self-definition.
Lovejoy, in his article On the Discrimination of Romanticisms, offered a nice summary
of what Romanticism meant for many: A passion for moonlight, for red waistcoats, for Gothic
churches, for futurist paintings, for talking exclusively about oneself, for hero-worship, for losing
oneself in an ecstatic contemplation of nature.16 Romanticism was all about the imagination,
daydreaming and escaping into nature, which were effective means to reconnect with the feelings.
After that, Lovejoy quoted a Professor Ker who named Romantic poetry the fairy way of
writing17, indicating that it had much to do with imagination and supernatural things. John Keats
is a great example of this fairy way of writing, as he often used folkloric tales about fairies in his
poetry. The imagination played that big a part for him, that he lived more in it than in reality.
Professor Ker also stated that Romanticism implies reminiscence, and that it is dependent
on the past. Romanticism romanticises the past, so that lovely memories will never die. Geoffrey
Scott claimed that it is the cult of the extinct18, which adds to this idea. Memorizing the past, and
the notion of Romanticism as a cult that reveres the past, has much to do with the idealization of
nature by the Romantic poets. Hans Georg Schenk wrote how [t]hose who feel apprehensive
about the future will often cast a nostalgic glance back at the past and will at times even try to live
in some bygone era. This is one of the most characteristic features of Romanticism.19 The
Romantics feared the things to come; they did not believe that progress would bring any good.
Modern society would lead to the destruction of man and therefore, they revelled in the past,
casting nostalgic glances back. This revelling in the past caused a glorification of ruins and even
started a European-wide fashion of constructing artificial ruins.20 This preoccupation with ruins

14 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Discrimination of Romanticisms, p. 232

15 Wellek, Ren, The Concept of Romanticism in Literary History II. The Unity of European Romanticism
Comparative Literature, vol. 1, no. 2 (1949) p. 147
16 Arthur O. Lovejoy, On the Discrimination of Romanticisms, p. 232
17 Ibidem, p. 231
18 Ibidem, p. 231
19 Hans Georg Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics, p. 33
20 Ibidem, p. 44

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was reinforced by some nature poets, especially Wordsworth. His poetry caused a surge of
tourism, most notably to his favourite ruin, the Tintern Abbey. The poem Lines written a few
miles above Tintern Abbey, the closing piece of Lyrical Ballads, played a big part in that.

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Preromanticism
To get back in touch with their feelings and fantasies, poets developed unusual interests. This
started a little time before the Romantic period. Poetry became a reflection of their curiosity for
the uncommon. They started writing poetry about graveyards, gloomy forests, and nature as it
was portrayed on landscape paintings: the wild and untameable kind of nature. The nature poetry
movement actually had its roots in and co-existed with the Enlightenment, when a group of
Preromantics emerged.21 Although the literature of untrammelled imagination had been forced
underground during the Enlightenment, it was not defeated.22 During this period, there was a
renewed interest in sensibility, rather than rationality. 23 The result was sensuous poetry,
describing an experience through the senses. Sensibility and the poetry of the senses were such
great traits of Romanticism, that without it, much of the poetry that is so famous today could not
have existed. Sensibility is essential to Romanticism.
The Graveyard school was an important forerunner of the Romantic poets. Columbia
Electronic Encyclopaedia gives the following definition: 18th-century school of English poets who
wrote primarily about human mortality. Often set in a graveyard, their poems mused on the
vicissitudes of life, the solitude of death and the grave, and the anguish of bereavement. Their air
of pensive gloom presaged the melancholy of the Romantic movement. These Graveyard poets
embraced sensibility and allowed themselves to feel and be touched by what they saw, whether it
be a tomb or a sublime mountaintop.24 They ignored the reason of the Enlightenment. These
Graveyard poets paved the way for later works about the Romantic Hero.
Another important movement presaging the Romantics was pastoral poetry. These poets
wrote about nature, the countryside and imagination. The great names of this period in terms of
nature poetry are Cowper, Akenside and Thomson.25 James Thomson wrote the first epic poem
on nature, The Seasons. Akenside wrote a poem about The Pleasures of Imagination.26 He obviously
was part of the anti-Enlightenment movement and wanted to feel the delight of imagination,
instead of using only rationality. These pastoral poets were a great inspiration for William
Wordsworth, who filled entire volumes of poetry with pastorals in his most productive periods.
Oftentimes, nature was described in tenderness, fused with a hint of melancholy.27 The poet saw
the natural scene and delighted in it, but also knew that it would pass, or already had passed. The

21 Brown, Marshall, Romanticism and Enlightenment, in: Curran, Stuart (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British
Romanticism (Cambridge, 2010) [1993] p. 38
22 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 13
23 Tolley, Michael J., Preromanticism, in: Wu, Duncan (ed.) A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford, 1998) p. 14
24 Ibidem, p. 14
25 Ibidem, p. 16
26 Ibidem, p. 16
27 Ibidem, p. 18

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passing of the seasons played a part in the mortality of natural scenes, but the industrialization
also played a part in its destruction.
The melancholy hint is found in most Preromantic works. There was a fear of the future
and nostalgia for the past. Progress only led to downfall and many feared and wrote about their
deaths.28 This hint of despair and gloom is also very present in the Romantic works. As this thesis
will show, Keats could in that respect just as well have been a part of the Graveyard School. The
nature poetry of the Romantics however, differed from that of the Preromantics. Whereas those
had been objective texts about nature and landscapes, the Romantics discussed nature in a
creative and imaginative way, which had been unthinkable before, because of the Enlightenment
and the value it placed in facts and reason. 29 In Romanticism, there was room for imagination,
and the ways in which the poet would have liked the world to be, or how he felt contemplating it.
There was room for the poet himself in poetry now, and the self was immersed in it. There is no
objective, Romantic nature poetry; the scenes are always filtered through the senses, the
imagination, and the poet himself.
Imagination was important to Romantic poetry, because it allowed the poet to see things
that were not real; to envision a better world. In the Romantic period, this was of great value
because it was such a bad time. The Romantic poets however believed that their power of
imaginative vision could change the world.30 This vision led to some of their best works.
Fantasizing about this perfect world, imagining oneself in it and taking it along wherever you go
occurred a lot for the poets, especially the Wordsworths. They found much solace in reliving
their memories. In the end the real world is the place where happiness must be found, but nature
never lost its appeal. 31

28 Michael J. Tolley, Preromanticism, p. 19

29 Anonymous, Tintern Abbey, Tourism and Romantic Landscape
30 Dawson, P.M.S, Poetry in an Age of Revolution, in: Stuart Curran (ed.) Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism

(Cambridge, 2010) [1993] p. 78

31 Ibidem, p. 79

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Cultural interactions
Most historical periods are named after they are already years past. The English Romantic period
is no different. At the beginning of the Romantic period, which officially lasted from 1785 to
1830, poets were divided into schools rather than termed Romantic.32 For instance, there was
the Lake school to which Wordsworth and Coleridge belonged, named so because the poets
were from the Lake District. And there was the Cockney school, which had a negative
connotation, to which Keats belonged. As trivial a thing as a name may seem, this stamp was not
easily shed. The Romantic period was a time when class, gender and education were very
important and highly influential if one wanted to become successful.
Despite the limitations and oppressions of this period, however, poets became very aware
of the powers they could exert through their poetry. Their will to be understood was strong and
they were susceptible to public opinion. They wanted to shape society, but society also shaped
them. Self-definition was an important means to connect to the public. Many poets and writers in
the Romantic Age busied themselves with self-definition, or, trying to explain what their writings
meant and were supposed to do. Wordsworths Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and Shelleys
Defence of Poetry are well-known examples of this. It seems as if the writers were on a mission,
and they needed to make sure that the public would receive their message as they intended it.
This way, they could influence society in the way that they saw fit. At the same time, public
opinion could exert a big influence on them, as this period also saw the beginning of the writing
of reviews that could either make or break a poet.33 Through these reviews and the poetry an
often strained and hostile interaction originated between public, critics and poets with an
influence that worked both ways.

32D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 6

33Butler, Marilyn, Cultures Medium: the Role of the Review, in: Stuart Curran (ed.) Cambridge Companion to British
Romanticism (Cambridge, 2010) [1993] p. 128

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A history of Romanticism
The first person to have described English poets of the early nineteenth century especially the
Lake poets as belonging to a Romantic School is considered to be Hippolyte Taine in 1863.34
He derived the term from a group of German Romantics who were self-named. The English
and German could at the time not identify with each other, but since they were contemporary
and overall shared much of the same themes in their works, they were ranked under the same
denominator.35 The importance of the interior poet, or the archetype of a poet living in the
dreamily introverted remoteness of his own consciousness, had already been established
throughout the nineteenth century.36 The biggest transformations in defining Romanticism were
caused by shifts in the canon. The increasing or diminishing importance of certain poets in the
canon changed the definition of Romanticism and the criteria for naming a poet Romantic or
other. Blake, for instance, did not become prominent in the canon until the 1960s, but today he is
seen as the exemplary Romantic.37 The increasing importance of Wordsworth at the beginning of
the twentieth century caused an emphasis on the naturalism of Romantic poetry. The natural
world became the prime Romantic subject, and it still is today.38
The study of Romanticism transformed in the 1980s. The cultural turn in history gave
new importance to public history, putting more emphasis on people, society and sources such as
ego-documents. That is why diaries and correspondences in letters are considered such valuable
sources for defining Romanticism today. This thesis uses ego-documents to the extent that the
personal view of the authors is very important. It helps to interpret their poetry, gives insight into
their lives and influences. It is impossible to give a good analysis of a poet and his motivations
without reading ego-documents. This thesis is written from the perspective of the poet and will
argue that a poets background, diary or correspondence can shed much light on poetic
development and choices made. Cultural development is also an important factor, as well as the
interaction between the poet, his poetry, and the public. The Romantic age saw many changes.
William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth and John Keats either suffered from these changes,
or used them to their own advantage.

34 Perry, Seamus, Romanticism: The Brief History of a Concept, in: Wu, Duncan (ed.) A Companion to Romanticism
(Oxford, 1998) p. 5
35 Ibidem, p. 6
36 Ibidem, p. 7
37 Ibidem, p. 8
38 Ibidem, p. 7

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The case-studies
This thesis will, as stated above, focus on nature poetry and the interaction it produced between
authors and society. The fact that they were Romantics influenced how they experienced nature,
used their imagination and how they dealt with society. Struggle, self-definition and education are
important aspects, as well as nature, the imagination and defence. A great name in Romantic
nature poetry is William Wordsworth. His Lyrical Ballads were radical, revolutionary, a sign of the
times. That is why he and his work have to be present in this thesis. The subject that will be
focused on is the preface to the Lyrical Ballads and the message, even mission, that is conveyed
through it. That William had a sister, Dorothy, is well-known, as well as the fact that she was a
great inspiration and aide to his poetry. Her own works, however, have remained in obscurity for
a long time and were not available to the public until 1874. Why did she not publish during her
own lifetime? And then there was Keats, the Cockney-born, young and very talented poet, who
had to endure much during the short time that his career was given. Keats poetry was one of the
senses, with an omnipresent nature, suffused with melancholy.
William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth and John Keats: these are but three of the
many authors who have left their traces in Romantic literature. The Romantic period, though not
extensive in time, was very extensive in works produced. Examples are inexhaustible, but to
illustrate the social interactions during this period and really define the Romantic period as a
cultural phenomenon, I have decided to focus on these three case studies, chosen to give a clear
view of three important matters that were very present in society at that time. Even though it
may not seem so at first, these three writers actually had a lot in common. All had to struggle to
be recognized by the public or their domestic circle, all had to deal with critique, but managed to
follow their own desires anyway. Their main sources of inspiration and happiness were nature
and the imagination. All three authors tried to establish their own role and place in life, struggling
for appreciation and happiness.
The first case I will focus on is the Lyrical Ballads and the preface that was written for it.
The practice of writing prefaces tells us much about the importance of self-definition, in a time
when the literary review was just established. The chapter will look at Wordsworths reasons,
motivations and self-fashioning expressed in the prefaces and the Lyrical Ballads itself. Close-
reading of the poetry and the prefaces can supply much information on the subjects and looking
at the cultural situation of the time helps to shape the context. The main source of information
here is the Lyrical Ballads itself and the different versions of the prefaces. Additional
bibliographical research from secondary sources will give an idea of the society that Lyrical Ballads
was published into and it illustrates how the book and additional essays were received. William

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Wordsworth managed to establish a place in society for himself and the book, making Lyrical
Ballads one of the most important books of the time. The importance and justification of the
book was fashioned by Wordsworth himself. How did he do that, how was it received and how
did it become such an essential Romantic work? Keywords here are self-definition, revolutionary
and justification.
The next case-study researches Dorothy Wordsworth and the relation to her brother
William. Until the 1980s Dorothy herself was not of any interest to scholars. Her journals were
researched for information about her brother William, and signs of the influence he held over
her.39 William was always the poet, but not the only writer in the family. Dorothy wrote
prolifically in her journals, but never independently published any of her work. Why did Dorothy
never publish any of her works, even though she wrote so much? Main sources here are the
journals that Dorothy kept during her life with William at Grasmere and Alfoxden, as well as
some of her own and Williams poetry. These sources will help define the relationship between
the siblings and the reason that Dorothy wrote so much. It is also important to take into account
the place that women had in society and the literary world: what was the milieu that Dorothy
would have published in, had she published? Information on this is found by historical research,
thus shaping the background against which she decided to either publish or not. Study of ego-
documents, poetry and gender roles of the period will be the main methods here, as well as
studying secondary information on Dorothy Wordsworth and her life. Keywords here are gender
roles, tradition vs. freedom and inferiority.
The final case study will deal with John Keats and the fashioning of his personality
through his poetry, letters and critique from the public. There was the talented poet that he
fashioned himself, the Johnny Keats that he was belittled into by the critics and the tragic poet,
supposedly killed by his critics, that he became just after his death. That only the first image,
created by himself, was an accurate one this thesis will show. Much of Keats personality shows
through in his poetry, as well as in the correspondences with his many friends. Comparative
literary research shows how Keats related to other characters of the Romantic period. Fragments
from critique he received in his own time will illustrate the pressure that Keats published under.

39Wolfson, Susan J., Romanticism and Gender in: Duncan Wu (ed.), A Companion to Romanticism, (Oxford, 1998) p.
387

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 Lyrical Ballads:
An experiment in feeling and education

A good illustration of the interaction between the public and the poet is Lyrical Ballads, a
collection of poems written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, first published
in 1798. It is not the book that is most important here however, but the prefaces that
Wordsworth wrote for it in the following editions of 1800 and 1802. The poems were an
experiment for him, but also a poetical statement. Unfortunately, the public did not understand
how to interpret the Lyrical Ballads and thus could not fully appreciate them.
The Romantic period saw an increase in literacy and the emergence of a new reading
public.40 This was mainly caused by the increasing availability of print materials, thus giving
people more chances to read and educate themselves. After the 1790s, book production became
more massive and cheap, thus making books more widely and easily available.41 Another
important novelty was the appearance of the periodical. These were relatively cheap and thin
booklets, filled with essays and letters to the editors. These created a conversational environment
and shaped the reading public.42 At least until the 1780s this public was still homogeneous: well-
educated, socially cultivated, with a sense of belonging to a cultural community and most
importantly, well-to-do, as books were still very expensive then.43 This public came to think that
they actually had the power to make a difference and make events.44
To avoid more critique of this increasingly literate and judicial reading public, Coleridge
was hesitant to offer the book to the public without some sort of explanatory preface.45 They
could, however, not agree on the message and justification that it was meant to contain.46
Coleridge aimed at an explanation and justification of the poetical language and subjects of the
Lyrical Ballads, where Wordsworth wanted to make the public understand and enjoy it, more than
the old traditional poetry. Wordsworths goal was to reach all the British readers with his poems
and his message. He wanted to create a poetry that would appeal to and be readable for everyone.
He decided to start an experiment with the use of common and vulgar language in his poetry.
He knew this would not be readily accepted and that he had to explain and justify his decision.

40 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 17

41 Behrendt, Stephen C., The Romantic Reader, in: Wu, Duncan (ed.) A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford, 1998)
p.92
42 Ibidem, p. 93
43 Stephen C. Behrendt, The Romantic Reader, p. 91
44 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 17
45 Schultz, Max F., Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Studies in English Literature, 1500-

1900 vol. 5, no. 4 (1965) p. 637

46 Ibidem, pp. 619-620

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 During the Romantic period poetry had to disturb the logic that dominated the social
order.47 It started questioning this logic and the ideologies it controls: return to nature and
natural rules would be the cure. Wordsworth was a nature poet and called for a more natural life.
This is revealed in his style of poetry, which uses only natural speech. His poetry became all
about the expression of feelings and using language in the best possible way for that purpose.
Wordsworths greatest mission was to express sentiments through his poems and let his readers
feel the same.48 To achieve this he needed to educate the public, so they would know how to
interpret the poems. Coleridge did not believe in this goal to educate and influence his public by
telling them how to read and interpret the Lyrical Ballads. The preface ended up Wordsworths
alone.
By writing the Preface in the way that Wordsworth did, the importance of the Lyrical
Ballads was fashioned and justified by William Wordsworth himself. How did he do this, and how
did it become a cultural artefact? This chapter will look at the poems in Lyrical Ballads and three
versions of preface the Advertisement, Preface 1800 and Preface 1802 discussing their
arguments and influence.

47 Hanley, Keith, Wordsworths Revolution in Poetic Language, Romanticism on the Net no. 9 (1998)
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/1998/v/n9/005790ar.html
48 Ibidem

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A new language for Wordsworth
After the Renaissance and the French Revolution, the world was in the Enlightenments grasp
and it needed to get away from those ideas. Poets saw their poems as a medium to express their
critique on the system and started using language in a new way for that purpose, especially
Wordsworth. He made his own version of this Romantic ideology: to make the world feel again,
and make them see what exactly was happening at the time, what all the developments were
doing to society and to the human mind. 49 His main tool to do so was language. The Lyrical
Ballads, to him, became an experiment. As was illustrated in the introduction, the Romantic
period was one of hardships. Urbanization tore people away from their old rural lives, having to
work in dirty factories instead of on the land. To be able to cope, people grew cold and distant.
With his poetry, Wordsworth wanted to undo these harmful effects of urbanization.50
But although Wordsworth claimed in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads that he was
attempting something new in poetry, he was actually greatly influenced by the three great nature
poets of the eighteenth century: James Thomson (1700-1748), William Cowper (1731-1800) and
Mark Akenside (1721-1770). In her book Tradition and Experiment in Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads,
Mary Jacobus discussed these three great poets from the eighteenth century that were an
inspiration to him.51 The three main themes to be found in Wordsworths poetry can be traced
back to these three eighteenth century poets.
Thomsons Seasons from 1730 inspired the exploration of inner life and the feeling for
nature. Cowpers Task from 1785 was an example for poetry from the vision of a natural universe
animated by God. Akensides Pleasures of Imagination from 1744 showed Wordsworth the
relationship between nature and the perceiving mind. Not only the subjects but also the way he
composed his poetry, in blank verse and in simple language, were derived from them.52
Wordsworth did however take it a step further than his predecessors and contemporaries; nature
poetry for him became a way of writing about the human mind, and landscape poetry became a
way of meditation.53

49 Keith Hanley, Wordsworths Revolution in Poetic Language

50 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 11
51 Jacobus, Mary, Tradition and Experiment in Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads (1798) (Oxford, 1979) [1976], p. 38
52 Ibidem, p. 38
53 Ibidem, p. 39

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The Lyrical Ballads: a short history
The main goal for the creation of Lyrical Ballads was to make money. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and William Wordsworth met in 1795, after which they soon became close friends. Both were
poets, but poets in a very different way. Wordsworth was the wanderer, focussed on the senses
and everything nature had to offer. Coleridge was more of a philosopher, but became more and
more so as their friendship progressed. At some point they decided to make an extended trip to
Germany, where William and his sister Dorothy were to become fluent in German and Coleridge
would study at the University.54 This trip required sufficient funding, so they decided to compose
a poem together, a project that changed into a collection of poems when they discovered that
they could not reconcile their difference in style. The idea initially was to jointly compose The
Rime of the Ancyent Marinere but this was soon left to Coleridge alone as he wanted to use
poetic diction in it, something that Wordsworth was intended to let go of.55 Resulting in the
Lyrical Ballads, the project was a joint effort to serve a common purpose: the raising of funds for
their trip. Wordsworth however had more plans with the collection of poems. Not only did he
want to make money, he also wanted to make a change. In the first place, he saw the ballads as an
experiment in language. The Lyrical Ballads asked the reader to think: Wordsworth believed that
he could break down the barriers between literature and life, revitalize poetry itself.56
The Lyrical Ballads were initially published anonymously in 1798. This was decided by
Coleridge, who wrote to their publisher that Wordsworths name is nothing to a large number
of persons mine stinks.57 He figured it would be best if their names remained unknown, trying to
avoid any critique aimed at their origins or background. The justification of their work however
required them to reveal their identities. Overall, the Lyrical Ballads got four editions in seven years,
establishing Wordsworths name as an important Romantic poet. The first edition appeared in
October 1798, in an edition of five hundred copies. These were all sold by June 1800; so despite
critiques on the book, people were reading and buying the Lyrical Ballads. The next edition was
published in January 1801, with an additional volume containing new poems. Due to
miscommunications between publisher and author, however, many different copies of the work
circulated, making numbers unclear. Immediately after that, corrections and revisions were made,
making a final, good version of the book. This third edition, published in June 1802, was again
printed in five hundred copies. This time, however, they took almost three years to sell out,
indicating that people had lost their interest in the Lyrical Ballads. In October 1805, the fourth and

54 Mary Jacobus, Tradition and experiment in Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads, p. 3-4

55 Ibidem, p. 2
56 Ibidem, p. 9
57 Butler, James A., Poetry 1798-1807: Lyrical Ballads and Poems, in Two Volumes in: Stephen Gill (ed.), The Cambridge

Companion to Wordsworth (Cambridge, 2003), p. 38

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final edition finally appeared. This edition was least interesting considering revisions and
additions, which were almost none, but most modern as it was printed by a new printer, using
new standards of spelling, punctuation and a modern type. This was also the last edition that was
published in collaboration with the authors.58

58Graver, Bruce and Ron Tetreault (ed.), Lyrical Ballads: An Electronic Scholarly Edition (Editors Preface)
http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/

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The Advertisement and Prefaces for justification and defence
In the first edition of 1798, Wordsworth justified his poetry in the Lyrical Ballads through a short
advertisement. 59 The argument was expanded in the second edition of 1800, which received an
extensive Preface. Wordsworth wrote a supplementing essay in addition to his Preface, an
appendix on poetic diction.60 But still, Wordsworth was not satisfied. The final version appeared
in the third edition of 1802, which was an extended version of the 1800 Preface. His main
argument, from the Advertisement on, was his opposition to the poetic diction, a poetic tradition
that called for an artificial use of language, making poetry elitist and unavailable.61 Wordsworths
main problem with this was the artificiality of the language. As a nature poet, he wanted to be
close to nature. The artificialities had to be done away with; Wordsworth called for a more
natural language, the same one that people used to communicate in everyday. The subject of
poetry needed to be more natural as well. Eventually more critique was aimed at the preface than
the poems themselves. Wordsworth claimed that whatever flaw was to be found in the poetry,
this was done deliberately. Critics therefore found it hard to take the poems seriously.62 This is
especially because quotes such as the following were published in the Preface of 1800: To enjoy
entirely the Poetry which I am recommending, it would be necessary to give up much of what is
ordinarily enjoyed.
The MacMillan Dictionary gives lyrical the following definition: expressing beauty and
strong emotions. These Lyrical Ballads then were by definition poems that were expressing
intense feelings, as Wordsworth wanted them to. His poetry was a way for him to make the
people feel. Lyrical Ballads, however, is an oxymoron, or contradiction in terms. Lyrical comes
from the Latin word lyre which points out that something has the characteristics of song. It
often referred to the epic poems, dealing with great subjects and many lines long. In relation to
poetry, it means that it expresses the poets own thoughts and sentiments. A ballad however, has
connotations with popular folklore, meaning low culture, folk stories. Wordsworth was
combining these two things into stories derived from rustic, common life, expressed in his own
feelings and emotions. Thus, he combined low and high culture, which was actually quite
impossible.63 An epic poem cannot be a popular folk story. Wordsworth however believed that
he could do it, as the common was just as suitable for poetry as was elitist diction. The fact that
Wordsworth named his book Lyrical Ballads has everything to do with his practice of self-

59 Mary Jacobus, Tradition and experiment in Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads, p. 8

60 Ibidem, p. 11
61 Ibidem, p. 8
62 Bialostosky, Don H., Colderidges Interpretation of Wordsworths Preface to Lyrical Ballads, PMLA vol. 93, no.

5 (1978) p. 912
63 Anonymous, Lecture 2: The Lyrical Ballads http://englishnew.ukzn.ac.za/two/rom2.html

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definition; if he gave the collection of poems such an unusual title, referring to two things that
could actually not be united, people would know what to expect and see the collection in a
different way than they usually would.
Robert Southey was critical of the Lyrical Ballads, when he wrote in The Critical Review
XXIV that he thought that the experiment had failed, because Wordsworth had tried it on
uninteresting subjects. He did think that Wordsworth had adapted the language of conversation
for poetic pleasure in a right way. Another contemporary, Reverend Francis Wrangham, believed
that Wordsworths experiment had succeeded, emphasizing the uniqueness of his effort in a
review of February 1801 in The British Critic. This Reverend praised Wordsworth for his
originality and the fact that he distinguished himself from other poets. He also stated that
Wordsworth made a just claim in wanting to transfer feelings to others.

Whatever may be thought of these poems, it is evident that they are not to be confounded with
the flood of poetry which is poured forth in such profusion by the modern Bards of Science, or
their Brethren, the Bards of Insipidity. The author has thought for himself; he has deeply studied
human nature, in the book of human action; and he has adopted his language from the same
source as his feelings. () It would be no mean, it would indeed be a very lofty praise, to assert of
a writer, that he is able to pour into other bosoms powerful feelings of a particular class, or
belonging to a particular order of men. To this praise, Mr. Wordsworth lays a well-supported
claim.

A reviewer of Blackwood Magazine, John Wilson, wrote a letter to Wordsworth in May 1802,
speaking of the Lyrical Ballads very fondly and positively.

To you, sir, mankind are indebted for a species of poetry, which will continue to afford pleasure
while respect is paid to virtuous feelings, and while sensibility continues to pour forth tears of
rapture. () The real feelings of human nature, expressed in simple and forcible language, will, on
the contrary, please those only who are capable of entertaining them. () They represent the
enjoyment resulting from the cultivation of the social affections of our nature; they inculcate a
conscientious regard to the rights of our fellow-men; they show that every creature on the face of
the earth is entitled to our kindness. They prove that in every mind, however depraved, there exist
some qualities deserving our esteem. They point out the proper way to happiness. They show that
such a thing as perfect misery does not exist. () Considered, therefore, in this view, the Lyrical
Ballads is, to use your own words, the book which I value next to my Bible; and though I may,
perhaps, never have the happiness of seeing you, yet I always consider you as a friend, who has,
by his instructions, done me a service which it can never be in my power to repay. Your
instructions have afforded me inexpressible pleasure; it will be my own fault if I do not reap from
them much advantage.

Receiving this letter must have proven to Wordsworth that he had indeed succeeded in all that
was his goal. To have someone appreciate his work as much as the Bible, to have it open his eyes
for the goodness that is to be found in every man, was exactly what Wordsworth was aiming for.
The effect of the Lyrical Ballads, then, for some was just as Wordsworth had envisioned.

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Advertisement (1798)
The opening lines of this piece immediately begin the justification: It is the honourable
characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject that can interest the
human mind. The evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics, but in those
of Poets themselves. Here, Wordsworth says that it does not matter what the poet wants to
write about, or how he does it. The critics have nothing to say about it, poetry is created by the
poets. He continues to note how the poems are an experiment, to see how far the language of
the lower social classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. The aim was to
prove that this common language was just as suitable as the poetic diction for writing pretty
poetry. He notes that the Rime of the Ancyent Marinere was written in imitation of the style as
well as of the spirits of the elder poets. Perhaps this was Wordsworths way of saying that he did
not really agree with the style that Coleridge used in this poem. Originally, they wanted to write
this poem together, but allegedly Wordsworth did not agree with Coleridges ideal of following
the example of the elder poets. He ends with saying how, with some exceptions, [T]he language
adopted in it has been equally intelligible for these three last centuries. The exceptions, very
likely, are the poems written by Coleridge. This advertisement is more like an excuse, with the
message that yes, this is poetry written on unusual subjects and in unusual language, but it is
poetry nonetheless, and suitable to enjoy.

Preface (1800)
Instead of an addition to the Advertisement, Wordsworth wrote an entirely new essay discussing
his new poetic language and imagery. The preface is a sort of manual to reading the Lyrical
Ballads: Wordsworth is making sure that everybody will read and interpret it as he intended it. He
starts of by telling how he was at first unwilling to write a defence for his poems, because he
thought that it would make his readers hate him for trying to force them into approval of the
poems. He also feels that it would have been necessary first to determine the public taste, and
whether it is healthy or depraved. Wordsworth had no estimate of the number of people that
would be pleased with the poems, but the number of people that were was larger than he had
expected. He also explains that the Lyrical Ballads was not his sole effort, but that For the sake of
variety and from consciousness of my own weakness I was induced to request the assistance of a
Friend.64 Even though his name appeared on the title page, he did not want to take all the credit
for himself, nor all the critique. He mentions how he knew for certain that their styles were
similar enough to start this shared endeavour, and their opinions on the subject of poetry almost

64Wordsworth, William, Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems 1800 vol. I online source,
http://ebookbrowse.com/gdoc.php?id=229360915&url=cefdae4aa661a478a9ece2e37d37ac94 p. 2

- 23 -
entirely coincided. This seems unlikely compared to what he said in the advertisement, where he
claimed that the author of the Rime of the Ancyent Marinere used both the style and language
of the old poets, which was the exact opposite of what the Lyrical Ballads was supposed to
experiment with. This goal with the ballads he explains:

The principal object which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to make the incidents of
common life interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of
our nature: chiefly as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of
excitement. Low and rustic life was generally chosen because in that situation the essential
passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under
restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that situation our
elementary feelings exist in a state of greater simplicity and consequently may be more accurately
contemplated and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from
those elementary feelings; () because in that situation the passions of men are incorporated with
the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.65

This is a very important fragment of the preface, because here, Wordsworth really explains his
plans with the rural poetry. He states here that the language and subjects of this sort of life are
more in touch with passions, feelings, emotions. In short, these people lived a more natural life,
less artificial than life in the city. To be able to apprehend the beauty of nature and feel how it
can make one feel, the poetry should be read that way. He still has no sympathy for the elder
poets because they separate themselves from the common man and use capricious habits of
expression in order to furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle appetites of their own creation.
This means that Wordsworth believed that his poetry was timeless, as it could appeal to any
reader from any social milieu at any time. Further on, he notes how his meditations form his
feelings and that the description of the objects excites those feelings, so thats why he brings
them into his poetry with a purpose. All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings and comes from emotion gathered in tranquillity. It does not show itself until the
tranquillity disappears and the emotion alone becomes visible. This is the good mood for
composition. But the mind as a whole will be in a state of enjoyment. Feelings are always
modified by thoughts, which are representatives of our past feelings, as Wordsworth writes. In
time, the thoughts will be reconnected to the feelings. The result is a being, which is in some
degree enlightened, his taste exalted and his affections ameliorated.66 In short, it will create a
sensitive society, with people in touch with their feelings.
This new kind of poetry is very necessary, as a multitude of causes unknown to former
times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and
unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most
65 Wordsworth, William Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems 1800 vol. I, p. 3-4
66 Ibidem, p. 4-5

- 24 -
effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the
increasing accumulation of men in cities. The beautiful works of poets such as Milton and
Shakespeare have been driven into oblivion by such things as frantic novels and sickly and
stupid German Tragedies. He hopes that it will be found that there is little falsehood of
description in his own poems, once again claiming that he is authentic, accurate and not using
any poetic diction. He writes it as he sees it, no pretentiousness. The reason that he did not just
write a book but composed poetry is that The verse will be read a hundred times where the
prose is read once. At the end Wordsworth stresses that it is not just his own cause that he is
pleasing here, but that the understanding and acceptance of his vision is necessary for everyone, a
subject of general interest. It is clear that he foresees the criticism that will be given to the poems
as well as the preface, so he ends his preface with the following plea.

I have one request to make of my Reader, which is, that in judging these Poems he would decide
by his own feelings genuinely, and not by reflection upon what will probably be the judgment of
others. How common is it to hear a person say, I myself do not object to this style of
composition or this or that expression, but to such and such classes of people it will appear mean
or ludicrous. This mode of criticism so destructive of all sound unadulterated judgment is almost
universal: I have therefore to request that the Reader would abide independently by his own
feelings, and that if he finds himself affected he would not suffer such conjectures to interfere
with his pleasure.

Wordsworth does, however, leave it up to the reader to decide whether he has succeeded in his
attempt, as he has just explained it.

Preface (1802)
This second Preface is centred on the subject of poetic diction and the role of the poet.
Wordsworth explains again how he knows that the readers who were accustomed to the older
writings will read his ballads and look for poetry, but not find it. For, not only is his poetry
written in verse, it is not composed in poetic diction. He knows that what he wrote is of quality
and importance. All the poems have a purpose: to illustrate how our feelings and ideas are
associated in a state of excitement. There is no personification of abstract ideas in these volumes,
because it is not necessary to elevate the language used above that of prose. Wordsworth wanted
to use the language of men, and man does not speak in metaphors and personifications.
The focus of this preface is on the Poet: what is a poet, to whom does he address
himself? Who decides what language he is to use?

He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more
enthusiasm, and tenderness, who has greater knowledge of human nature, and a more

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 comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his
own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in
him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of
the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

Wordsworth here not only praises himself, for he is a poet and he thus ascribes these qualities to
himself. He also makes claims for his independence and artistic freedom. He is a man superior to
other men in sensibility and is more in touch with nature than normal people. He should not
have to answer to petty rules about poetry, already centuries old and no longer suited to the
times. Wordsworth writes as he wants to write and even though people may not understand, they
should not immediately turn it down because it looks different from what they are used to.
Wordsworths argument grew fiercer with the years. Whereas the Advertisement read
more like an excuse, explaining that Lyrical Ballads is different from other poetry, but still suited to
enjoy, the Preface from 1800 was more of a justification. It convinced readers to see that the
common really is a suitable subject for poetry and that his poetry could have healing qualities for
the public. His poetry will change people back into sensitive beings because his poetry will
reconnect thoughts with feelings. He will make people be moved by what they see or hear; he will
cure society from the industrialization. The final Preface from 1802 is Wordsworths last stand;
if he cant convince them with this, then nothing will. In the last preface Wordsworth almost
forces his readers to consider him as a superior being. He has his artistic freedom, he can write
about whatever he wants and in the way he wants it. He has more knowledge and more
sensibility than most people and so is capable of greater deeds. He portrays the poet almost as a
superior, divine being who stands above common judgement. This last preface is no longer
needed to make explanations or excuses, the readers finally need to understand what Wordsworth
is all about and why his poetry is so good. Throughout these prefaces, Wordsworth has slowly
fashioned himself into a superior poet-figure and his book indispensable to anyone. But the
prefaces were not the only texts that were influential.

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The poems
Only four of the poems in the first edition were by Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancyent
Marinere, The Foster-Mothers Tale, The Nightingale and The Dungeon. All the rest was
written by Wordsworth, as well as most of the additions that were made to the following editions.
The poems deal, as Wordsworth claimed and wanted to do, with the common. They discuss the
hardships, troubles and lives of the rural and the poor. Even though they did not live up to the
poetical standards of the time, the poems are very moving, entertaining and always expressive. To
the modern reader they are probably more intelligible than poetry in poetic diction. In that way,
The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere really stands out among the other poems, both in use of
language and subject. A common denominator for all the other poems is hard to find either way,
however. It is an unusual and strange collection of poems that do not have much in common and
are quite different in style. Nearly all of them, at least from the first edition, do meet
Wordsworths goals.
Many of the poems evoke a sense of pity, or sympathy, or sadness, some even being quite
exciting. In the poem We are Seven a young girl can not be convinced of the fact that, even
though she used to have six siblings, now that two of them have died, they are with only five
children. She keeps saying, Nay, we are seven because she visits their graves, and sits in the
garden with them while she knits her stockings and plays. To her, it feels like she still has six
siblings. Loss of children or siblings was very common in those days, meaning that many readers
were very likely able to relate to it, feeling sadness but also sympathy for the little girl. Some of
the poems, such as The Thorn have tension and are truly like little stories. This poem narrates
the history of a woman left by her fianc. She often sits on a mountain ridge, exclaiming Oh
misery! Oh misery! Oh woe is me! Oh misery! Nearby are a pond and a little heap of moss.
More details are added to the story, until the plot of the story is revealed: the woman was
pregnant, drowned her baby in the pond and buried it under the heap of moss. These poems
have some of the melancholy in it that was often associated with Romanticism, dealing with
death and loss, but in natural surroundings. They have tension, express feelings and are written
from the poets perspective. Romantic poetry then was very suited for what Wordsworth was
trying to achieve: it was suitable for the evocation of feelings, the discussion of sad subjects, the
incorporation of the natural world and the expression of the poets thoughts.
The fact that Lyrical Ballads went through four editions in seven years means that, despite
all the critique, people were actually buying and reading the book. Wordsworth and Coleridge
became great names in British literature and their poems famous. The fact that they are still read
today illustrates the quality of their work and that Wordsworth did succeed in his mission. Even

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the prefaces are an important source of information. The effect on their contemporary public,
was that the poems were read and appreciated and also had some unexpected results. The poem
about Tintern Abbey caused a surge of tourism to the region. Wordsworth had described the
ruins so beautifully, that people wanted to see it for themselves. The Tintern Abbey had become
the centrepiece of the most frequently made British tour of the 1790s, which passed the Wye
river valley and the historical border between England and Wales.67 But not only the Tintern
Abbey became a hotspot, the entire Lake District was overrun. All the poems about nature and
the pastoral created a desire among the public to see these sites for themselves. At first,
Wordsworth was pleased with this; people were listening and understanding that peace and
tranquillity could be found in nature. He even wrote a Guide to the Lakes as a tour guide through
the Lake District where he grew up. But it also was a manual, providing the reader with a guide to
enjoy the scenery to its best. In this guide he described the beauty of this place and how it had
best be discovered, but he also wrote about the changes time and tourism had brought about
there. In his poems, he had wanted to share his passion for nature with his readers, but did not
realize that the effects would cause his peaceful place to not be so peaceful anymore.
This increasing interest in the Tintern Abbey shows how much of an influence poetry
could have on society, whereas the poetry came forth from developments taking place in society.
Because of the poem, tourism increased; a sign of modernization. But because of the
modernization of society, Romantic poetry originated. Wordsworth responded to a need he
experienced in modern society: a poetry that was in touch with peoples primal selves, closely
connected to nature, the senses and feelings.

67Anonymous, Tintern Abbey, Tourism and Romantic Landscape, The Norton Anthology of English literature. Norton
topics online http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_1/welcome.htm

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Conclusion
What stands out most in the both the Advertisement and the Prefaces is the fact that
Wordsworth wanted to reach people. It was so important to him that the public would read his
work and understand it. Ideally, it would touch them so much that they even changed their lives
because of it, transforming into sensitive beings. By his choice of language and subjects he made
sure that everyone who read the book would be able to understand the poetry and relate to it.
Ideally, they would enjoy it even more than poetic diction. To give the readers a push in the right
direction, the Lyrical Ballads was preceded by an Advertisement at first and later an extended
Preface. Wordsworth did not fear that this lengthy essay at the beginning of the book would set
people off. To him, all that mattered was that people would know what he did in his poems, and
understand why he did it, and why it was a good thing. In this way, Wordsworth was defining his
work as revolutionary; as the offset of a new type of poetry, marking the decline of the old one.
Most of what he wrote in the prefaces is true; Wordsworth did use the common, vulgar
language, the subjects taken from the normal life, the lyrical poetry. He did express feelings in the
poems, which succeeded in provoking feelings themselves. For Wordsworth, poetry was no
longer an elitist matter; anyone who could read would understand his work. The poet did still
stand out from the crowd in his opinion, Wordsworth fashioned the definition of a poet after
his own example. Thereby he also fashioned himself. That this poet was still an elitist creature
seems unimportant. What matters most, was that yes, this poet is still superior to most human
beings, but he is in touch with nature, sensibility and the common life. He is open and
approachable for everyone, and so is the poetry. The poet was extraordinary, but the language he
used no longer needed to be.
The book was read and discussed, Tintern Abbey became a frequently visited place; it was
as if Lyrical Ballads belonged to that period. Without it, society would have been different. It came
forth out of a need originating in the culture of the time, shaping that same culture
simultaneously. Lyrical Ballads is an ultimate illustration of cultural interaction because it was
begun out of a contemporary desire: travel and tourism, Coleridge and Wordsworth wanted to
visit Germany. The experiment originated as a protest against developments such as the gothic
novel, the melodrama, and the increasingly strict rules of poetic diction. The increasingly literate
and critical public created a need for justification that grew stronger with every edition, resulting
in the multiple prefaces. The addition of new poems, most of them pastoral, was caused by the
increasing interest of Wordsworth with nature and the rural, following the increasing
urbanization and fencing in of the countryside. The poems in their turn drove people to that

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same countryside, increasing tourism. Every development, reason, effect and influence
concerning the Lyrical Ballads had its origin in, or worked into, the culture of the time.
By explaining what harm industrialization, urbanization and the developments in
literature had caused to the public, Wordsworth created a need and an importance for his own
work. Wordsworth wanted to educate the people in every way. The Advertisement began as a short
explanatory piece, justifying the unusual language and subjects of the poems. The first Preface
became more serious, justifying the poems even more and teaching the public how they should
be read. The final Preface was Wordsworths final effort to teach the public anything. This essay
became more of a manual, focussing on the education of the public and the role of the poet. The
prefaces were a manual to reading the poems and the poems contained moralistic lessons; they
served as a manual to reconnect with the emotions. Wordsworth, through self-definition, created
a role for himself and his works in society. His poems would function as manuals for good
behaviour, his prefaces as manuals for how to read and interpret the poems, and his travel guide
as a manual to the enjoyment of nature.

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 Self-development or the household?
Dilemmas and tradition in the life of a poets sister

William was not the only Wordsworth discovering the scenery of his beloved Lake District,
capturing the beauty of it in his poetry. He had his sister, Dorothy, living there with him, taking
her along on hour-long walks through the countryside, discussing poetry and philosophy and
sharing his experiences with her. Dorothy never became the poet he was, but she did write some
prose and poetry of her own. These works are an invaluable source of information regarding
their life together. Dorothy kept two sets of journals on their everyday lives, The Alfoxden Journal
and The Grasmere Journals, named after the location of their house. Alfoxden in Somerset is the
region where they first lived together from 1796 to 1799. The siblings were finally reunited after
years of separation and lived only three miles away from good friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In
1799 they moved to the Dove Cottage in Grasmere where they stayed until 1808. In 1802
William married Mary Hutchinson, which meant that Dorothy now lived with her brother and his
wife, and their beginning family. The years at Dove Cottage were the high point of Williams
career and Dorothy played a big part in his success. But even though she had a keen observing
eye and wrote in a beautifully detailed way, she never chose the career of an author herself. How
was Dorothy held back or stimulated by society and family choosing her path of life and career,
being the sister of but never a great writer herself?

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Romanticism and women
During the Romantic period women were allowed to receive only limited schooling, had to
conform to rigid rules regarding their sexual behaviour and had no legal rights.68 Besides
accepting their position in the household as a mother and loving wife whose sole tasks were child
rearing and housekeeping, they did not have many choices. Due to this, a great contradiction
arose in the literary world. On the one hand, there was a great barrier for women to publish their
work because it did not match with their traditional role of mother and housewife. On the other
hand, women who chose their career and did not care about what society thought were writing
prolifically. Some very famous poetesses were Anna Letititia Barbauld (1743-1825), Mary
Robinson (1758-1800) and Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). These women were educated, liberal
and did not care about how society judged them. Women, however, were often ridiculed by male
writers, who were being surpassed by women in quality and quantity. Especially in prose, women
began to compete with male authors in sales and reputation. The writings of thousands of
women were published throughout the Romantic period.69 These women had to keep in mind
that they were not to set an example, as they might affect the British matrons negatively and turn
them into studious women.70 The traditional role for women in the household caused a setback in
emancipation and while some women did not let that affect them at all, others were affected,
feeling the need to publish anonymously, or as By a Lady.71
During the period prior to Romanticism, especially in the 1750s and 1760s, women of the
English elite gathered for the purpose of literary conversation. They became known as the
Bluestockings and they distinguished themselves from the lower classes through their literacy and
their ability to lead their lives in this fashion.72 In the years after that, the Bluestockings slowly
disintegrated and the literary circle lost its elitist features. Women from every class came to know
poetry, as well as increasing numbers of novels by women writers. Women readers and women
writers equally grew in numbers as they were dependent on each other.73 The 1790s saw the
greatest burst of activity of women writers until then, as well as the beginning of feminism.74 One
of the reasons for this increase in women writing activity was that in real life, women were
silenced more and more. The only way to reach people was through their writings, but they

68 D.S. Lynch, & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 5

69 Curran, Stuart, Women Readers, Women Writers, in: Curran, Stuart (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British
Romanticism (Cambridge, 2010) [1993] p. 170
70 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 6
71 Susan J.Wolfson, Romanticism and Gender, p. 392
72 Stuart Curran, Women Readers, Women Writers, p. 171-172
73 Ibidem, p. 172
74 Ibidem, p. 175-176

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lacked authority nonetheless.75 Despite the stress that was increasingly laid on the traditional
female role, many women kept writing, thus retaining their independency.76
At the same time, a new patriarchy arose. The father took on a new position in the
household, exerting more influence over the upbringing of his children and their education. This
new care was often suffocating and limiting for girls, dominating their development.77 The
education and attention they received was of far lesser quality than that of their male siblings.
Feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft felt that this new parental rule was the exact reason that
women were seen as the weaker sex.78 Girls had no access to the same knowledge and freedom
that boys got, thus keeping them restricted and ignorant. To better the position of females,
Wollstonecraft recommended education in medicine and business, politics and history. With this
knowledge, women would be able to create autonomy for themselves and make their own
money. This offered them an alternative to the often confining marriage.79 In marriage, man was
the master and commander; women simply had to obey.80 A married woman was allowed no
will of her own. As John Locke stated it, she was merely the housewife: someone who is related
to her husband as a kind of contracted but unpaid worker in the home.81

75 Stuart Curran, Women Readers, Women Writers, p. 179-180

76 Ibidem, p. 180
77 Caine, Barbara, Women, in: Ian McMalman (ed.), The Romantic Age. British Culture 1776-1832 (Oxford, 1999) p. 44
78 Ibidem, p. 44
79 Ibidem, p. 46
80 Ibidem, p. 48
81 Tuite, Clara, Domesticity, in: Ian McMalman (ed.), The Romantic Age. British Culture 1776-1832 (Oxford, 1999) p.

130

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William and the other Wordsworth
Even though William Wordsworth was not a great fan of women writers, he did encourage
Dorothy to write some poetry of her own and recite it to the family. Surely, he was a follower of
the masculine tradition, looking down on women poetry. At times, however, William would
publish some of Dorothys poems in his own works, anonymously or with the caption by my
sister. Even though William encouraged her writing, he also believed that the strain of
authorship would be too much for her to handle.82 This may not have applied to her quality of
writing, but maybe he took the reviewers in consideration, whom he had himself frequently been
in contact with in a negative way. Because Dorothy already was quite insecure, public opinion
could break her down.
Sadly enough, Dorothys insecurity was well-founded. While some of her poems showed
great potential and quality, others were not half as good. This is why she is generally regarded as a
prose-writer instead of a poetess.83 In addition to that, men in her circle, most notably William,
had no esteem whatsoever for female poets. William often regarded them with an amused
tolerance, but he never truly appreciated them.84 Therefore Dorothy did not dare to openly
compose poetry of her own, because she knew it would be looked down upon by William and
the other men close to her. She stayed with prose, because this was useful to them. All her
journals she kept for Williams pleasure, subordinating her own talents to looking after her
brother.85 She often speaks extremely lovingly of her brother, for instance on 4 March 1802.

Now for my walk. I will be busy, I will look well & be well when he comes back to me. O the
Darling! Here is one of his bitten apples! I can hardly find in my heart to throw it into the fire.
() I walked round the two Lakes crossed the stepping stones at Rydale Foot. Sate down where
we always sit. I was full of thoughts about my darling. Blessings on him.
Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals, 4 March 1802

This fragment seems to be coming from a woman in love. She can hardly throw away something
he has touched, she thinks about him, sits at their favourite spot and refers to him as darling.
That she loves William is obvious. This would explain why she gave up so much of her own life
to please and serve him, setting aside her own talents. As can be read in The Grasmere Journals,
however, she was no uneducated housewife. She listened to Wordsworth and Coleridges
conversations, discussed poetry with them, read German books and wrote a lot. During their
walks together she recited Williams poetry, which she also did to put him asleep: After dinner
we made a pillow of my shoulder I read to him and my Beloved slept.
82 Levin, Susan M., Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism (Jefferson, 2009) p. 61
83 Ibidem, p. 98
84 Ibidem, p. 139
85 D.S. Lynch, & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 389

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 That Dorothy loved her brother, her life with him and the feeling that he needed her, is
obvious. In the account of one of her walks, however, she recalls how she saw a beautiful patch
of land that would be perfect to build a house on. She dreamed about it, thinking that if only she
had three hundred pounds, she would settle there on her own.86 This suggests that even though
she had chosen the life with her brother, she often dreamed about having a place of her own.
Despite the almost incestuous relationship that was going on between them, Dorothy could take
her distance from William. She fantasized about leaving him and it was her who set up the
marriage between her brother and her best friend, Mary. She wanted to be the most important
person in Williams life, but at the same time, she did not. She knew what was expected of a
woman in their society and though sometimes she rebelled against it, most of the time she
conformed to it.

The journals
Dorothy wrote very personally in her journals. She described the everyday life at the cottage in
great detail, but she also entrusted her deepest emotions to the paper. The journals really were
like a diary to her, a place where she could vent. Seen from this perspective, it is not strange that
Dorothy never intended to publish these journals to the public, especially since much of it was
concerned with the marriage of William and Mary, a subject that she was not always entirely
happy about. Most of her prose, and a lot of her poetry, dealt with her loss of William as her sole
companion.87 The wedding took place on October 4th 1802, and this is what she wrote about it.

I kept myself as quiet as I could, but when I saw the two men running up the walk, coming to tell
us it was over, I could stand it no longer, and threw myself on the bed, where I lay in stillness,
neither hearing nor seeing anything till Sara came upstairs and said, They are coming. This forced
me from the bed where I lay, and I moved, I knew not how, straight forward, faster than my
strength could carry me, till I met my beloved William, and fell upon his bosom.

If she had been happy about the marriage, she would not have isolated herself in silence. She
obviously was experiencing feelings that she could not deal with, and as soon as she had the
chance, she fell back in Williams arms. Even though Mary was her closest friend, it seems she
did not entirely realize what the marriage would mean for her.
Dorothy was, following the tourism trend, also a traveller. She went through Scotland
twice and both times she kept a journal. These travel accounts she did mean to publish.88 She
loved roaming the countryside, no matter in what country, and kept close accounts of her

86 Alexander, Meena, Dorothy Wordsworth: the grounds of writing, Womens Studies, vol.14 no.3 (1988) p. 204
87 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 138
88 Ibidem, p. 71

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journeys. This freedom to roam about and enjoy the scenery was always more important to her
than husband, household and children.89 Settling down with a family of her own would have
given her many more responsibilities, more than she had in the household of William. That may
be why she chose to remain unmarried; that way she could be as free as she wanted to be and let
her desire take her wherever she pleased.
A lot of the events described in the journals have to do with the household. She discussed
her work in the garden and the harvest of their own fruits and vegetables, the food she made,
even including recipes. She stayed up and talked with Coleridge, William and their brother John
until deep in the night, always discussing poetry and talking about mountains. Even without
William she stayed up and talked with Coleridge. William was always prominent in her daily
updates; she noted where he was and what he did. She was much concerned with Williams well-
being; always commenting on how he felt, slept and looked. But however much she valued
William and his opinion, she did not fail to stand up for herself. Maybe not in person, but she
would in her journal. For instance on November 10th, 1801 Dorothy reported how she was very
anxious for Coleridge. I was melancholy, and could not talk, but at last I eased my heart by
weeping nervous blubbering, says William. It is not so. William did not allow her to be weak
or sentimental, but she did not agree with him. She felt that she was in her right, crying.

Inspiration to Williams poetry

In her writing, Dorothy used much of the same language as William and Coleridge did.
Oftentimes a link can be made between a passage from her journals and a poem by either of
them.90 It is clear that they drew heavily from her writings in their own compositions. The fact
that she could describe nature in detail caused William to draw gratefully from her work.91 She
undertook many walks and travels with William alone or accompanied by Coleridge. The way
Dorothy experienced these walks and the effect the surroundings had on her, was always an
inspiration to Wordsworth. William wrote poems about Dorothy and drew from her journals for
inspiration. Her journals are very detailed and give vivid images of the walks they took through
nature very frequently. It is not unthinkable that he used these detailed and vivid images as an
inspiration for his nature poetry. Or at least, a means to conjure up the image that he had seen
with his own eyes a while before. Their beloved Lake District was the background for many of
William poems.

89 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 73

90 Ibidem, p. 15
91 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 390

- 36 -
 An important note is found on April 25th, 1802 in The Grasmere Journals. Here Dorothy
wrote: Wm. was in the orchard. I went to him; he worked away at his poem though he was ill
and tired. I happened to say that when I was a child I would not have pulled a strawberry
blossom. () At dinner time he came in with the poem of Children gathering Flowers. Here she
makes a direct link between something she said and Williams creation of a new poem, which has
the lines Fill your lap and fill your bosom; Only spare the Strawberry-blossom! She liked to
think that she caused the epiphany that gave William his poem. The fact that she wrote this
down, indicates that she felt proud to be of service to her brother, and that she was happy to
please him in every possible way. Traces of Dorothys writing can be found in at least thirty-five
of Williams poems.92
One of the most well-known poems that William based on his sisters prose is I
wandered lonely as a cloud. On April 15th, 1802, Dorothy wrote in the Grasmere Journal:

[W]e saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds
ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet
more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along
the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They
grew among the mossy stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and
danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake;
they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.

William turned this prose into the following poem.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud

That floats o high oer Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of dancing Daffodils;
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: -
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a Laughing company:
I gazd and gazd but little thought
What wealth that shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

92 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 155

- 37 -
It is not hard to see what William did here. He used the image of the daffodils beneath the trees,
the water of the lake moving alongside the strip of daffodils, but most of all seeing them dance.
To Dorothy, the daffodils looked gay, but for Wordsworth, the daffodils would inspire joy in the
memory of the poet for years to come. Dorothy used her imagination to make nature come to
life right before her eyes; she saw things differently than William did. For him nature only came
to life in his head, his own memories. Perhaps without the vivid descriptions of his sister, he
might not have been able to write so many of his poems. The following comparison shows how
they both described the same scene, but in a different fashion. On April 16th, 1802, they took a
walk through the countryside, resting on a bridge, beholding the sights around them. William
wrote the poem The Cock is Crowing, the following is a fragment.

The cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and the youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
They are forty feeding like one!

Dorothy saw the same things, but described them as such. There was the gentle flowing of the
stream, the glittering, lively lake, green fields without a living creature to be seen on them, behind
us, a flat pasture with 42 cattle feeding; () The people were at work ploughing, harrowing and
sowing; () cocks crowing, birds twittering. It is clear from this fragment, as well as that of the
daffodils, that even though she did not write much poetry, she did try to make rhymes and use
poetic wording. Her prose was poetic, descriptive, sensitive and detailed. She does mention that
William finished his poem along the way, indicating that he was uninfluenced by the later journal
entry by Dorothy. However, their language is too similar to be coincidental. William drew from
the journals, which Dorothy kept for the sole purpose of pleasing William. At the same time,
William discouraged her to do something with it herself. It almost seems like he used her, took
advantage of her and only brought her along all the time so that he could see how she responded
to natural scenes and how she would describe them.

- 38 -
Dorothys poetry
Dorothy was a true Romantic writer with the typical Romantic mind-set. The notion of man
against nature, or woman against nature in her case, is very present in both her prose and her
poetry, especially since she took such precise notes of her walks and travels through nature.
Moreover, as could be read in the passage about the daffodils, Dorothy seemed to personify the
daffodils, making them able to dance, laugh and be gay. This was common of the Romantic
poets, who revived the ancient myths in which all of nature was alive and radiant with vitality.
While her style may have been Romantic, most of her subjects certainly werent. Dorothy
wrote about the domestic circle, her own hardships and experiences. Romanticism itself usually
dealt with the larger dilemmas of life, and subjects such as nature and the sublime.93 This type of
poetry, about the larger things was often reserved to male poets, women were expected to write
about the household, the family and raising children.94 In that respect, Dorothy did comply with
what was culturally expected from her. Her way of life, however, did anything but that.
Family friends, the Beaumonts, very much liked to hear poems written by Dorothy read
aloud. Dorothy was never fully satisfied with her work however, and denigrated it in her
correspondences.95 Whenever someone considered Dorothy a poet she felt uncomfortable and
unworthy.96 But was this modesty or did she actually believe that she was incompetent as a
poetess, because she was a woman? She calls her own poetry mutterings and always reverts to the
statement that she does not have proper a command of language; she could never use it for the
expression of her feelings.97 These insecurities were a big reason for her not to publish a
collection of her own poetry. She may have been talked into her insecurity, but it also may have
been well-founded, based on her own self-knowledge. Another consideration she made was the
fact that her subjects were always drawn from real-life. She feared that she would negatively
affect the people that she wrote about by making her work public.98 Many of Dorothys poems
are about the house(hold), even Christmas, and addressed to or about children, especially her
favourite niece Dora, whose name was actually Dorothy, named after her. She also wrote about
nature but the rhyme is very simple and the quality does not come anywhere near the work of her
brother, for instance the poem Loving and Liking.

You may not love a roasted fowl

But you may love a screaming owl

93 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 100

94 Ibidem, p. 148
95 Ibidem, p. 60
96 Meena Alexander, Dorothy Wordsworth: the grounds of writing, p. 196
97 Ibidem, p. 197
98 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 62

- 39 -
 Or even a spotted slimy toad
That crawls from his secure abode
His mossy nook in your garden wall,
When evening dews begin to fall
You may not love a dainty frog,
Scared by the Frenchmen from his bog
When in a fricassee or stew
He floats, or delicate ragout.
But you may love him in his pool
Where tho he neer was put to school,
He swims by perfect law of Nature
A model for a human creature

This poem was obviously meant for children, suggesting that, even though she was an unmarried
woman without child, she still put herself in the role of entertaining and educating children. Her
modesty may have told her that this was all she was good for and that she could not write poems
about more worldly subjects of good quality. Part of her may have wanted to make up for the
fact that she was unladylike in some respects, or she just knew that she wasnt skilled enough for
the more worldly poetry.
She also wrote poems about her illness, whilst she was on her sickbed, and about the fact
that she no longer could roam the country. She was an imaginary poet in that, even though she
couldnt walk anymore to see the scenes for herself, she still had her memories. The following
fragment of Thoughts on my sickbed illustrates this.

When loving Friends an offering brought,

The first flowers of the year,
Culled from the precincts of our home,
From nooks to Memory dear.

With some sad thoughts the work was done,

Unprompted and unbidden,
But joy it brought to my hidden life,
To consciousness no longer hidden.

I felt a Power unfelt before,

Controlling weakness, languor, pain;
It bore me to the Terrace walk
I trod the Hills again; -

No prisoner in this lonely room,

I saw the green banks of the Wye,
Recalling the prophetic words,
Bard, brother, Friend from infancy!

No need of motion, or of strength,

Or even the breathing air:
- I thought of Natures loveliest scenes;
And with Memory I was there.

- 40 -
Even though this poem was written on her sickbed, it shows quality and clearness of mind. The
mere sight of fresh flowers, picked in the vicinity of her home, takes her back to a place in her
memory. She no longer needs to be there bodily; her memory can take her back there just as
easily, her being no longer a prisoner of her sickbed. She was a typical Romantic in that respect,
writing about nature and the imagination, and those things being able to cause happiness.

- 41 -
Decay in later life
When later in life Dorothy was struck with mental illness, she turned into the complete opposite
of what she had always been. Instead of the caring, hard-working woman she once used to be,
she became a fat, lazy and unkind person who let others do everything for her.99 She no longer
cared for William and could not even walk anymore. In her moments of clarity she wrote about
the sadness of her fate. Even before she became ill, she complained about constant head-aches in
her journals, leading to the nervous breakdown she experienced later in life.100 These head-aches
could have been a sign of the frustration she felt because of the life she had chosen for herself. It
seemed like the right thing at the beginning, but in the end she was just as oppressed as a married
woman. She had all the duties of the household and above that, she was also always working for
William, writing out his poetry, copying it and helping him compose. She loved to take care of
William, but she was continually overworked.101 She never complained about it and wanted to
please William more than anything, but she did place him above her own needs.
It must have been hard to be the sister of a great poet who always uses your material for
his work, but never being able to step out of his shadow and publishing own work, being free
from his judgements. Nearly all scholarly researches suggest that her deterioration at a later age
came as a result of years and years of putting others needs before her own. If this is true, then
Dorothy did not want the life she lived with William after all. Important in this respect is also
that passage in her journal where she dreamed about having a house of her own. Dorothy may
have wanted to choose an independent life as a talented poetess, but felt frustrated because in her
opinion, she was not good enough to be one. Had she felt more confident, she may have taken a
risk and aspired to be a writer or a poet with an independent career. But she did not believe in
herself, choosing the safety of her brothers household instead, where she would be financially
secure but still had some of her freedom.

99 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 63

100 Ibidem, p. 155
101 D.S. Lynch, & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 389

- 42 -
Dorothy and tradition
Dorothy herself was not a big fan of marriage. Even though she was the one who encouraged her
brother to marry Mary, she was sad about the fact that Coleridge chose married life.102 This could
explain why she did not want it for herself; maybe she liked the fact that she was still part of a
household, without having to subject herself to the oppressions of being a married woman.
Along her journeys, she often encountered women who had chosen the traditional female roles.
She reported these encounters, but the women never appeared to express feelings of
dissatisfaction about their lives. Here Dorothy could experience from a primary source that the
burden of married life was not such a burden after all. Dorothy, however, always wrote
condescendingly about these women, judging that they did not mind their lifestyles because they
simply did not know any better.103
In her letters she often wrote about her insecurities, it almost seems as if she had an
inferiority complex. She talked down her own writing, as well as her person. She felt that all she
was good for was taking care of the ones she loves and charity.104 Perhaps this was the product of
her broken childhood, missing a stable family and the company of her siblings. After the death of
her parents, she lived with her aunt for ten years, without her brothers and the countryside she
loved. This same aunt criticized her in correspondences, judging Dorothy for the fact that she
loved to ramble through the countryside and behaving un-womanly. The conventional female
roles did not suit Dorothy and she did not comply with them.105 It is clear that this aunt limited
her while she was growing up, having partially caused her insecurities.
Dorothy always enjoyed going on walks with her brothers and friends, surrounded by
men doing un-womanly things. She felt that if she did not choose a traditional life for herself, she
would not have to succumb to its rules either. One of the reasons she enjoyed these walks so
much, was because she could undertake them, unburdened by husband or child.106 She did not
have to worry about what she left behind as she set out to roam through nature, giving her a
great sense of freedom and carelessness, exactly what nature was meant to provoke.

102 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 23-24

103 Ibidem, p. 75
104 Ibidem, p. 55
105 Ibidem, p. 55-56
106 Ibidem, p. 76

- 43 -
Conclusion
In Romanticism, nature poetry was reserved to men, as prose was often connected with all the
vulgarities that the women dared to write about.107 Women did write a lot of nature poetry and
especially before the Romantic period they ruled over men. With all the societal changes during
Romanticism however, women were discouraged to write it anymore and considered to be
incapable of writing good poetry. Therefore, it may have been that Dorothy did not feel herself
to be worthy, or fit, to write nature poetry. Even though Dorothy chose her own path outside the
expectations of society, the cultural tidings did influence her choices and the subjects she wrote
on.108 More importantly than seeking a husband of her own, creating a household and being a
married woman, Dorothy chose to stay with her brother and be a part of his household. Instead
of being the housewife, she was a mother to her cousins. While her choice to remain unmarried
may seem like an independent one, she was in some ways worse off. Yes, she was independent in
that she had no husband or children to consider or look after, but she did live the life of a
housewife. She lived under Williams roof, worked for him, cooked for him, sewed for him. She
got all the duties of a household, without the pleasure of it being her own. No children of her
own to love, or a husband to love and share with.
William was the most important person in her life and she cared for his approval and
opinion very much. Since William was not a big fan of women writers, Dorothy very likely did
not like to think of herself as one. She arranged her life so that she was of use to William and she
could make him happy. In the role of the sister, soul-mate, fellow-wanderer, conversation
partner, writer, housewife and all the other things she was for him, she could be of use to him
and those things pleased him. If she were to become a female writer, William would see her as
one of those other women who tried so hard to be like men, but are doomed to fail. She was so
afraid to lose Williams esteem that she avoided every move that could cause that. William may
have taken up the patriarchal role for Dorothy, encouraging but limiting her at the same time.
Dorothy was privileged as far as education was concerned: she was studying German, reading
poetry and discussed philosophy with her brothers and friends.
Growing up without her siblings, she felt afraid to ever let go of them again. She would
cling to them, so she would never have to miss them. In some ways, living with William offered
her a freedom that she would not have experienced as a woman alone or a married woman, such
as the rambles, walks and talks she had with her friends. She could perform a traditional female
role in the household of her brother, without having the sole responsibility over it. If those were
the things she wanted and loved most, she had made the right decision. But Dorothy was often

107 Stuart Curran, Romantic Poetry, Why and Wherefore?, p. 213

108 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 156

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in conflict between her own desires and what was good for her family. Should she choose her
own self-development or the responsibility of caring for others?109 Her own needs often did not
agree with those of William. Her decision to spend her life in the family of her brother eventually
became a strain on her well-being which resulted in almost continuous head-aches, as can be read
in her journals.
Apart from all the family-related problems, there are a few things which are even more
important reasons for why Dorothy could never be a famous writer herself. She did not write
fiction, she wrote journals and diaries. She did this solely for herself, and for the pleasure of
William. Her journals were not supposed to be published; only her travel accounts were. People
at that time were not interested in reading diaries and Dorothy most likely did not want people to
read hers. The way Dorothy wrote them made them unsuitable for publication as she used many
abbreviations, bad grammar and personal notes. Apart from her travel accounts, Dorothy really
did not write much prose that she could have published. Moreover, Dorothy did not write a great
many poems and the ones she did write were not very good. Had she published a collection of
her own poetry, she might have been a public failure. After all, she was the sister of William
Wordsworth, a great standard to live up to. Dorothy thought she knew her own limitations and
never aspired to anything more, because she was convinced she could not do it. This realisation
she drew from the literary milieu of the time, comments of those around her but mostly from her
own insecurity.
The fact that she remained modest about her work despite others compliments shows
that she was either realistic or felt very inferior. William dissuading her to really become a
professional writer might have had to do with the same thing. He was belittling her, but also
protecting her from the harsh critique of the public and reviewers. Dorothy Wordsworth had a
keen eye and wrote beautiful, detailed poetic prose. Had she decided to write novels, she would
have had the possibility to show her talent in a more common literary form. If only she had lived
in another place at another time and been more secure about herself, she could during her own
lifetime have been the much appreciated author she is today.

109 Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism, p. 96

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 John Keats:
The creation of a Romantic Hero

Not only women were having a hard time being acknowledged by the public and the critics, those
of low birth were judged equally harshly. The young, but very talented poet John Keats was
ranked among them. His alleged Cockney roots and style caused him to never fully be
appreciated for his work. Not until the twentieth century was Keats truly ranked among the great
poets of Romanticism. Nowadays his early death is seen as a great loss and he is in talent and
language often compared to Shakespeare, who was one of his examples. Keats wrote fervently
and today it is not only his poems that are admired, but also his letters. His prose-style shows his
genius as much as his poems and his letters are some of the most beautiful in English history.110
While his period of development from a blundering apprentice into a very finished craftsman
took only three years, at his age Keats was already much more talented than Milton and
Shakespeare were at the same age.111 In fact, his lack of education in poetry and literature allowed
him to not be bothered with difficult terminology and diction.112 Where Wordsworth needed an
experiment and made an effort to use the language of the common man, Keats actually was a
common man and composed like that naturally. This made his style lucid and intelligible. This
chapter deals with the development of John Keats career and shows how origin and social milieu
could place a stamp on a person, despite of his hard work and efforts to shake it off. It also
shows how this same origin and background can shape a person, his interactions and poetry. In
what ways was Keats a Romantic and how did he relate to nature and people because of it?

110 Colvin, Sidney (ed.), Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends (Cambridge, 2011) [1891] Cambridge books online:
http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook.jsf?bid=CBO9781139060844 p. XI
111 Ridley, M.R., Keats Craftsmanship: a Study in Poetic Development (Lincoln, 1933) p. 1
112 Ibidem, p. 2

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The formation years
Cockney is a term to describe a person who has been born within the radius of sound of the Bow
Bells in the City of London. Its subculture lacked taste and education and was seen as vulgar,
which presented itself most notably in language.113 A Cockney poet was thus easily recognized. In
truth, Keats poems contained only some elements of this language. He was born in the Cockney
region, but was not of low birth. His interest in literature was encouraged by his tutor at school,
Charles Cowden Clarke. Even though he was seven years Keats senior, they became close
friends and Keats temper and studiousness changed for the better under his influence.114 It was
also Clarke who introduced Keats to Chapmans translation of Homer and Shakespeare, big
inspirations for many of his poems. Through Clarke, Keats had access to a large collection of
books and knowledge, a privilege that he avidly used to his advantage.115 Perhaps most
importantly, Clarke introduced Keats to Leigh Hunt, the editor of the radical journal The
Examiner. The reason Keats was ever considered to be Cockney was because of this Leigh Hunt,
who was generally seen as the leader of the Cockney School.116
Keats initial career path was that of medicine, a desire coming forth most likely from the
death of his mother, whom he cared for in her illness until she died of tuberculosis when he was
fourteen.117 Even though doctors back then were respectable, their profession was of low status.
Surgery was even traditionally performed by barbers.118 An apothecary then was quite different
from what it is now; it would come closest to what is now known as a general practitioner.119
Keats spent a big part of his inheritance on his education and enrolled for an apprenticeship,
which indicates that he was very serious about becoming an apothecary. However, in the final
stages of his education the pull of poetry became too strong, and Keats gave over to another
vocation.120 By that time, Keats had become an apothecary, physician and surgeon, much praised
by his teachers.
The very reason that Keats did not actually become a doctor was not solely his desire to
be a poet. His schoolbook, written by an Aesculapius stated that a person could not experience
too much sensibility if he were to operate and inflict pain on his patients. Keats was talented, but
also very much in touch with his feelings, thus putting both himself and his patients in danger.121

113 Wu, Duncan, Keats and the Cockney School, in: Wolfson, Susan J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Keats
(Cambridge, 2001) p. 37
114 White, R.S. John Keats: A Literary Life, p. 11
115 Ibidem, p. 11
116 Duncan Wu, Keats and the Cockney School, p. 47
117 R.S. White, John Keats: A Literary Life, p. 15
118 Ibidem, p. 16
119 Ibidem, p. 18
120 Ibidem, p. 18
121 Ibidem, p. 38

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Instead of alleviating human suffering physically, as a doctor, Keats now wanted to alleviate
mental suffering through his poetry. He believed that poetry could heal, and offer consolation
where medicines fail.122 He did finish his medical study, but despite the protests of those around
him, he did what he loved best. He was eighteen when he wrote his first lines of verse, his first
choices of topic were politics, poetry and women.123

Self-education
As was stated in a previous chapter, the Romantic period saw an increase in literacy among the
people. This affected not only the public, but also the authors. Books became more widely
available and more and more were able to read them. Even though Keats lost his parents at a
young age and was taken out of school before he got a decent education, he never stopped
learning. Of all the Romantic poets Keats was the least educated, but he never resigned himself
to that, remaining curious and studious for the rest of his life. He was for a large part self-
educated and much of his knowledge came from books and encyclopaedia, which he bought
himself and had access to through his friends. The fact that he could write poems about ancient
mythology was thanks to his own curiosity and his great interest in that period. However, he
gained his knowledge about the ancients and mythology from secondary sources such as
Chapmans translation of Homer; something that was ridiculed by critics.
A great transformation in his poetry happened between Endymion and the Odes.
Following his practice of self-education, he went from the status of a gifted and charming minor
talent to that of a major writer.124 Endymion was the ultimate test for Keats; he wanted to know
whether he could write the epic Miltonic poems which were so much a part of Romanticism.
Whilst he was writing it, however, Keats soon grew weary and impatient with it. He felt that he
had already proven to himself that he could do it, eager to make the next step in his poetic
career.125 The Odes were that next step, finally showing Keats talent in all its glory. Endymion
certainly fashioned and defined Keats as a poet.126 For some, it can be seen as his rite of passage,
his transformation from a boy with a dream into an established poet who writes quality poetry. It
was the ultimate test for his powers of imagination and invention.127 After Endymion, Keats
could finally shed his Cockney-stamp.

122 R.S. White, John Keats: A Literary Life, p. 40

123 Ibidem, p. 45
124 Walsh, William, Introduction to Keats (London, 1981) p. 63
125 M.R. Ridley, Keats Craftsmanship: a Study in Poetic Development, p. 13
126 Swann, Karen, Endymions beautiful dreamers in: Wolfson, Susan J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Keats

(Cambridge, 2001) p. 20
127 Ibidem, p. 21

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Social interactions: friends and critics
Most reviewers thought Keats was a hopeless social climber, nothing more than a vulgar
Cockney. Keats received the most brutal critiques from the Blackwood magazine. They thought
that Leigh Hunt was a very bad influence on Keats, exerting Cockney influences over him and
influencing his sensibility and poetical topics.128 His worst enemy was the infamous Z. from
Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine.129 This critic, later revealed to be John Gibson Lockhart, wrote in
the August of 1818 the following critique on Keats, saying that there was a frenzy for poetry at
that time, everybody was caught with it and everyone wanted to write poetry, whether they were
able to or not. Keats was destined for a medical career, even certified for it, but he too wasted his
genius in the poetic madness.

From his prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the Greeks were a
most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so finely adapted for the purposes of poetry
as theirs. It is amusing to see what a hand the two Cockneys made of this mythology; the one
confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows Homer only from
Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan, Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be
expected from persons of their education.

In other words, Keats had no right to be composing poetry with classical subjects, because he
was not properly educated in them and had no idea what he was talking about. He wrote about
mythology as might be expected from him: badly. Furthermore, these two Cockneys thought
that mythology was suitable for poetry, when actually those stories were vulgar at the utmost,
dealing with such things as murder, rape and all sorts of indecencies. This Z. decided that Keats
had better give up his poetic aspirations, as it is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved
apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John.130
Unfortunately, Z. was not the only critic who wanted to give John Keats a hard time. He
was often belittled by them into Johnny Keats, the boy from low birth who knew nothing. Some
say the critique came forth out of jealousy, with a fateful result: the death of this young and
talented poet.131 Some say all the critique is what caused the tuberculosis that killed him. Poets
such as Percy Shelley and Lord Byron have claimed that it was the critics that killed Keats, that
the stress over his continuously being downplayed ruptured the vessels in his lungs. 132 This is
unlikely considering his medical background; both his mother and his brother before him died of

128 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 879

129 ONeill, Judith (ed.) Critics on Keats (London, 1967) p. 10
130 Ibidem, p. 10
131 Aske, Martin, Keats, the Critics, and the Politics of Envy in: Roe, Nicholas (ed.) Keats and History (Cambridge,

1995) p. 46
132 Stillinger, Jack, The Story of Keats in: Wolfson, Susan J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Keats

(Cambridge, 2001) p. 247

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consumption. However, the image that Shelly set of Keats in his elegy Adonais has been the
prevalent one for a long time. But even though Keats had to deal with a lot of critique from
reviewers and the public, he never let it deter or influence him.
Keats followed his own heart and he wrote poetry the way that he wanted it to. Most
important for him, was the feedback from his family and friends, which he cared for a lot more
than the public opinion. In the Romantic tradition of self-definition, Keats decided to write a
preface to his Endymion, explaining himself and his reasons. He consulted with his friends
about it, asking for their feedback. When they werent too positive about it, Keats wrote the
following in a letter because to him, the reviews of the critics did not matter half as much as
those of his family and friends.

Since you all agree that the thing is bad, it must be sothough I am not aware there is anything
like Hunt in it (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt).
Look it over again, and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which any one sentence
sprungI have not the slightest feel of humility towards the publicor to anything in
existence,but the eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of great Men. When I
am writing for myself for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course
with me but a Preface is written to the Public; a thing I cannot help looking upon as an Enemy,
and which I cannot address without feelings of Hostility. If I write a Preface in a supple or
subdued style, it will not be in character with me as a public speakerI would be subdued before
my friends, and thank them for subduing mebut among Multitudes of MenI have no feel of
stooping, I hate the idea of humility to them.
I never wrote one single Line of Poetry with the least Shadow of public thought. Forgive me for
vexing you and making a Trojan horse of such a Trifle, both with respect to the matter in
Question, and myselfbut it eases me to tell youI could not live without the love of my
friendsI would jump down Etna for any great Public goodbut I hate a Mawkish Popularity. I
cannot be subdued before themMy glory would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers
about Pictures and BooksI see swarms of Porcupines with their Quills erect " like lime-twigs
set to catch my Winged Book," and I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my
Preface is not much of a Torch. It would have been too insulting "to begin from Jove," and I
could not set a golden head upon a thing of clay.
If there is any fault in the Preface it is not affectation, but an undersong of disrespect to the
Publicif I write another Preface it must be done without a thought of those peopleI will
think about it.
John Keats, Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, April 9th 1818

What is seen here is a poet who does not care about what the public thinks; to him, they are
enemies. He can already see the reviewers with their pens held high, ready to bash his work. But
he does not care. His relationship with the public was a hostile one and he wanted to do good
with his poetry, not so much educate his public. The preface was written as a defence against
them, a torch to chase them away. He fought the critics and the public but also ignored their
opinion. He wrote for himself, not for them.

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The omnipresent Nature, senses and sensibility
Nature poetry is the area where Romantic poetry is most famous; it has almost become
synonymous with it.133 Keats too, derived intense pleasure from nature.134 Most striking about
Keats poetry is the incessant reference to nature. No matter what Keats describes in the poems,
it is always compared to something from the natural world, whether it is an animal, a plant, or a
stream or mountain. What is interesting about this though is that Keats was born in London. He
was a city boy and not like Wordsworth, who hated the city and settled for a hermits life in the
Lake District. For Keats, the garden was far enough to find inspiration in nature: he never left the
city for good. He did however feel a desperate need to travel, and did so in the summer of 1818
when he went to Scotland with his friend Charles Brown. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible
and because of their lack of money they had to do much of their trip through Scotland on foot,
sleeping in humble lodgings and eating poorly. They were supposed to stay away for four
months, but had to return after three months because John had become too ill to carry on. He
suffered from a severe cold and was very fatigued. It is commonly thought that this cold,
contracted during the Scottish tour, is what triggered the tuberculosis that became his death.135
Had Keats not felt the unstoppable urge to travel and see Europes natural beauty, he may not
have suffered his untimely death.

Poetry from Imagination

Keats often used an imaginary version of nature, his own sort of dream world. The Imagination
played a big part in the composition of poetry for most of the Romantics and Keats as well relied
on his imagination. He lived more in it than in the real world.136 His imagination is where he got
his poetic inspiration, not so much by going out and seeing things as they were. That Keats
composed more from nature and his imagination than from rationality is illustrated by his
insistence that poetic inspiration was not to be found in abstract reason, but in the world of
things.137
A sort of duality can be found in his poetry between reality and something that he
imagined. On the one hand, Keats wrote about what he saw, or heard, such as with the
nightingale discussed later on. On the other hand, Keats would read or see something, and it
would come to life in his head. The poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, for example, is based on the

133 Furst, Lilian R. Romanticism in Perspective (London, 1979) [1969] p. 83

134 Ibidem, p. 85
135 Bate, Walter Jackson, John Keats (Cambridge, 1978) [1963] p. 362
136 M.R. Ridley, Keats Craftsmanship: a Study in Poetic Development, p. 4
137 Ibidem, p. 6

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imaginative story that came to life in Keats head after he had seen a Greek urn in a museum.138
He constructed an imaginative story around something he had seen in reality. That is how most
of Keats poetry originated. He would experience with his senses, but compose with his
imagination. His sensory experiences were elaborated into beautiful, fantastical and imaginative
stories, based on what he had seen, heard and learned elsewhere.
That is another striking element in Keats poetry: many of the poems have allusions to
things he loved, such as Shakespeares Midsummer Nights Dream, old folklore and ancient
mythology, making them read almost like a fairy-tale. During the Romantic period nature grew
out of its image of a passive object; it was now seen as an animate being because animals, trees
and plants were seen as inhabitants of the earth, just like human beings.139 Ancient Greek
mythology as well began and ended in nature. It was suffused with nymphs, satyrs, gods and
plants that had once been human. That sort of magical, fairy world feeling can be found in Keats
poetry as well; he brought nature to life in the shape of fairies, animated trees, plants, streams and
creatures of the forest. Keats knew his mythology, all the knowledge coming forth from self-
education. When Keats looked at nature, that mythological world is what he saw. He recreated
the atmosphere of his daydreams in his poems.

The poet of senses and sensibility

The core of Keats poetry lies with the senses. He described nature and life as he experienced it
through his senses, very much in the Romantic tradition. Romanticism was the period of feelings,
opposed to the rationality of the Enlightenment. Keats let go of rationality and followed his
heart. Objectivity in nature poetry is rare, and often does the poet consider nature in relation to
man, more specifically to himself.140 In Keats case, he described nature from his own
perspective, filtered through his senses and his imagination. His poems were often written from
the perspective of himself, or a main character. The following is a fragment from Ode to a
Nightingale.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of the hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

138 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 905

139 Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism in Perspective, p. 84
140 Ibidem, p. 88

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 Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
***
Away! Away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clusterd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

Keats here begins with a description of his senses; the song of the nightingale is so beautiful to
him that it almost has the effect of numbing drug on him. Immediately there are allusions to
mythology, nature, fairy tales and his own imagination. Lethe, the Dryad; his interest in
mythology causes him to imagine the world in those terms. In the next stanza again there is
mythology, but also fairy tales, all as he imagines it, experiences it through his senses. This Ode,
which is actually much longer, has everything in it that Keats is known for: allusions to
mythology and fairy tales, a description of the senses, nature filtered through his imagination, and
a hint of melancholy and indolence.
The cult of sensibility originated just before the Romantic period. The increasing
inequalities in wealth and differences in class caused the middle class to distinguish itself from the
lower class, by being able to have sensibility. The lower class knew too much suffering, poverty
and hard physical work. Since the middle class had lighter worries, they could allow themselves to
feel.141 Being able to use the senses, feelings, and emotions, became a luxury. Women were more
capable of this sensibility, because their nerves were considered to differ from those of men: they
were more in touch with their emotions.142 Sensibility meant that a man had to be feminine. In
poetry it had to do with feelings, the usage of the senses. But also sentimentality, a belief in true
love and the dangers of simply following ones heart.143 This cult claimed that reformation of a
fallen population could be achieved through conversion.144 In other words, they knew that they
could recreate a sensitive society now that the biggest hardships of the industrialization were
over. This sounds very familiar to what Wordsworth wanted to achieve, but Keats also wanted to
heal the public with his poetry. Even though Keats did not really have a mission for the public

141 Barker-Benfield, G.J., Sensibility, in: McCalman, Iain (ed.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic age: British culture
1776-1832 (Oxford, 1999) p. 102
142 Ibidem, p. 102
143 Ibidem, p. 110
144 Ibidem, p. 111

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and did not much bother with self-definition, being able to write immortal poetry that could
make a change was very important to him.
Keats then was connected to the cult of sensibility. This is clear from the effect that
natural images had on him, the way he shut himself out from the public and his critics and the
fact that he gave up his medical career because he did not think he could handle it. He was
sensitive in many ways and expressed this in all of his writings. He allowed himself to feel and be
led by his desires, was aware of the dangers but did not let them deter him. He was trained to be
an apothecary and surgeon, a job which secured him of a good and steady income. Instead, he
decided to be a poet, even if that meant he would have to struggle and live in poverty.
Furthermore, there was his engagement to Fanny Brawne. Here, again, he decided to follow his
heart against better judgement. He knew he would not be able to support her financially, he knew
he was in bad health, yet he loved her too much to be able to let her go.145 The fact that Keats
could entertain sensibility and allow it to influence his life and choices indicates that Keats was
not a low class boy who suffered, but someone who felt because he had the luxury to do so.

145 William Walsh, Introduction to Keats, p. 105

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The melancholy poet: Keats the Romantic Hero
Keats was, as a poet, obsessed with the tragedies of life, suffusing his work with melancholy and
morbidity.146 Throughout his life Keats encountered illness, death and loss. It was quite
impossible for him to let go of that. Poetry could be a way to deal with those feelings, vent the
melancholy in verse. A fascination with death was also very Romantic, set off by the Graveyard
School during the Preromantic years. Keats was very much influenced by these Preromantics, as
they introduced sensibility and emotive passion in poetry.147 The words gloom, melancholy and
feeling are omnipresent in his letters, showing that Keats occupied himself with these things to a
great extent, and liked to share with his friends, or vent to them.
While for Wordsworth a poet was a man speaking to men, Keats saw himself as a youth
singled out by the gods.148 The fact that he saw himself in that way implies that he felt like he had
a true calling, something he felt deep inside. His sensibility allowed him to feel this and follow his
heart, leaving everything behind to follow his true destiny, bestowed on him by the gods. What
Keats wanted the most, was a poetry that would still exist after he had died. The immortality of
his poetry and his posthumous reputation were very important to him.149 One of the poems he
wrote at the end of life is This Living Hand, Now Warm and Capable. It might be an address to
his posthumous readers, but also a fragment of a play. Either way, it does not fail to convey a
message.

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmd. See, here it is
I hold it towards you.

The melancholy and gloom of all his works is much present here as well. It is almost as if Keats
promises a haunting, that would make the readers wish that they could give up their lives, just so
that Keats could live again.
The clearest proof of his gloomy nature is obviously his Ode to Melancholy. It was a
trait of the Romantic Hero to be melancholy, it was a sort of romanticized state in which the
mind could feel and allow the feelings to overflow. The Romantic Hero refused to see things as

146 William Walsh, Introduction to Keats, p. 6

147 Michael J. Tolley, Preromanticism, p. 14
148 Karen Swann, Endymions beautiful dreamers, p. 21
149 Milne, Drew, Flaming robes: Keats, Shelley and the metrical Clothes of Class Struggle, Textual Practice, vol. 15 no.

1 (2001) p. 101

- 55 -
they are, above all to see himself as he really is.150 This often meant that he saw the world more
negatively, revelling in sorrow. Moreover, the Romantic Hero loved to flee from reality, into the
realm of his own imagination.151 When this feeling becomes too strong, however, suicide lurks, as
the first stanzas of the Ode show.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

Wolfs bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, not the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrows mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

Striking here are the references to the natural world. It is clear that Keats knows his allusions
well, to be found in mythology as well as nature. Lethe was the river of the underworld that
causes forgetfulness, wolfs bane a poisonous herb. The beetle comes from Egyptian culture and
the death-moth bears a skull on its back. All these things have to do with death and mourning, on
the one hand showing that melancholy is expressed in many ways, and Keats knows his symbols
of death well. This poem however is a call to not lose oneself in it. Did he write this for his own
sake or that of the public? It is not unlikely that Keats sometimes needed to wake himself up as
well.
He often revelled in this world, this feeling, just like the Graveyard School did before
him. That he was of gloomy spirits is also obvious from the Ode on Indolence, not published
until after his death. In this poem, he sees Love, Ambition and Poesy as three figures on a vase,
fading and reappearing before his eyes. However, they cannot raise my head cool-bedded in the
flowery grass. He bids them adieu, to never more return, insinuating that he did not appreciate
the presence of these three muses in his life, nor is pained to be without them. Maybe he would
even find pleasure in that feeling of loss, indolence, as is a part of melancholy.
Another recurring aspect of the Romantic Hero was the relationship to autumn. Both
Goethes Werther and Chateaubriands Ren spoke of autumn in their stories. What appealed to
them was the desolation in nature, trees stripped of their leaves and prevalent melancholy.152
Keats as well wrote a poem To Autumn, thus affirming his preoccupation with melancholy in
nature. Keats however, manages to see the beauty of this season, underneath the bleakness.

150 Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism in Perspective, p. 102

151 Ibidem, p. 107
152 Ibidem, p. 109

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 Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has oer-brimmed their clammy cells.

So there is mist and temperatures drop, but still, things grow, thanks to the sun that has warmed
the cells of life during the entire summer, thus giving trees enough warmth to bear fruit in the
fall. Fall is also drowsed by the fume of poppies. This was possibly because autumn was
reaping time for poppies. They were used to create opium, a very popular drug during the
Romantic period and certainly a remedy for the Romantic Heros taedium vitae, or tiredness of
life.153 The referral to this drug in combination to autumn does add to the claim that Keats was a
Romantic Hero, even though he was not an opium addict himself. Keats here focuses on growth
and life that is still present in the autumn. However, the poem also refers to the transience of
nature and the seasons, for we all know that the warmth of summer will come to pass, and within
a few months everything will have died.
Probably the most familiar Romantic Hero is Goethes Werther, who suffered from an
unanswered love which eventually led to his suicide. Werther is an artistic, young and highly
sensitive man, who falls deeply in love with the young girl Lotte. Unfortunately, she is already
betrothed to another man. She cannot answer his love but Werther cannot just give up. He falls
deeper and deeper in his own sorrow, until he decides that only death can ease his sufferings. The
connection to Keats is striking. He as well was young, artistic, sensitive, passionate and very
much in love with his Fanny Brawne. Their love was not impossible and Fanny and Keats could
be together, but at the end of his life Keats suffered from increasing jealousy and obsession. He
felt more and more as if his love was unanswered, because Fanny seemed careless or
unresponsive to his love letters.154 When he was away from her, doubts about the sincerity of her
love played through his head, making him question himself and her, writing about it in his letters.
His last letters to her show less of the talented young poet and lover, they have made way
for possessiveness and jealousy. Some of these letters were so severe, that editors often chose not

153 Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism in Perspective, p. 100

154 Sidney Colvin (ed.), Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends, p. xvii

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to publish them.155 Keats made his love seem unanswered and hopeless, thus driving himself into
despair. His insecurities would lead to his own unhappiness, pushing Fanny away from him in the
process, Keats being further and further secluded in his own melancholy. Sadly, that was the fate
of the Romantic Hero: seeing ghosts that are not really there, only to have everything contribute
to his own sad fate. It was almost as if Keats actually was afraid of really being happy, always
challenging himself and his fate, evoking melancholy.
A solitary, self-centred life was another trait of the traditional Romantic Hero. He would
not care much for others, but lose himself in his own solitude and gloom.156 Keats had many
friends and did not like to be alone, but his poems did often come forth from a solitary
experience. For example Ode to a Nightingale, which originated during an hour-long retreat to
the garden, where Keats sat alone and listened to the song of the nightingale.157 The poem O
Solitude! If I must with thee dwell, sheds some light here.

O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell,

Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep
Natures observatory whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its rivers crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deers swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
But though Id gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my souls pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

This poem may seem contradictory, as Keats concludes that it is the greatest bliss to find another
human of kindred spirit whom one can relate to. However, he states that it is his souls pleasure
to flee with this kindred person to the haunts of solitude. Thus, by being alone together,
escaping from the jumbled heap of murky buildings and retreating to nature he would be
happiest. So in one way, he claims that he would not mind to be in solitude as long as he could
be so in nature. On the other hand, he says how he would love to have someone with him to
converse with. He would not mind solitude if it but were in nature, but he would forever miss a
person to converse with, as he requires that for his happiness. Being solitary in nature is a
recurrent theme in Romantic poetry, another element that adds to Keats Romantic spirit.

155 Sidney Colvin (ed.), Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends, p. xvii-xviii
156 Lilian R Furst, Romanticism in Perspective, p. 110
157 D.S. Lynch & J. Stillinger, The Romantic Period, p. 903

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Conclusion

Sensibility
Keats was a Romantic in the sense that he allowed himself to feel. It was his sensibility that made
his medical career both impossible and unwanted. He longed for poetry, that medium to give a
voice to his imagination. He had a world inside his head that he wanted to share with others,
both through his poetry as well as the correspondences with his many friends. The sensibility
played a big role throughout his life. Not only had the career-choice come forth from it, also his
love-life. For a long time Keats had not liked to be around women, until he met his much
younger neighbour Fanny Brawne. The love was unwanted and unpractical, but Keats could not
fight his feelings of love any more than he could his calling to poetry.
Keats sensibility also made him a caregiver and a loving friend. The fact that he nursed
his mother and brother on their sickbed and wanted to become a doctor implies that he cared
about the feelings of others, wanting to relieve their suffering. Just like the Greek tragedies
offered a catharsis of the feelings, Keats wanted to alleviate mental suffering with his poetry.
Reading about someone elses indolence, melancholy or impossible love might have helped
people to put their own suffering into perspective. But more than that, his poetry may have
helped him to put his own life into perspective. The Ode to Melancholy discourages the reader
to drink from the river of forgetfulness, to poison oneself, basically, to commit suicide. Why
would a happy poet write something like that? Keats must have had these feelings of anguish
himself, his poetry being a means to deal with them.

The Romantic Hero

John Keats, after his death, became the Romantic Hero of poetry: the melancholy man who was
always in gloom and destroyed by the public. During his life, however, he was not so destroyed
by the public at all. True, the critics did influence the reception of his poetry, but they did not
harm Keats personally as much as was thought. Byrons famous quote that he was snuffed out
by an article has since proven to be untrue. Keats was a Romantic Hero. It influenced his
relationship with the public and the critics in that, maybe because he was so melancholy, he did
not even feel it anymore. The critique from the public did not hurt him anymore but added to his
Romantic feeling of melancholy, whereas the opinion of his friends and family really counted for
him. That could be the reason why he sent transcripts of his poems with so many of his letters.
In the end though, Keats did prove all the reviewers wrong; by the time that he published the
Odes everybody was finally convinced of his talents.

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 Some of these odes had gloomy subjects, showing his true nature and adding to the myth
that later surrounded him. Most important was the fact that even though Keats was a social
person with many friends, he still retreated at times, seeking solitude and allowing his senses to
fill him with beautiful images. At times like that, Keats lived in his own imagination, sometimes
getting lost in his own feelings and world of gloom. Keats saw and sought melancholy, but always
did so in respect to nature. Everything he wrote about was suffused with natural images. He
almost created a new world out of his imagination, in which he lived almost more than in the real
world. His poetry, suffused with allusions to myths, nature, his senses and fairy tales give us
insights into his imaginary world, the dream world where his latest, and most beautiful, poetry
came from. Everything he described was filtered through his imagination, giving hints of his
melancholy and emotional state, thus providing an illustration of the development of this poets
mind, his increasing worries and thoughts of gloom as if he felt that his premature death was
closing in on him.
Keats imagination must have been what made his life bearable. After all his hardships,
unhappy youth and all the people he had lost, his realm of imagination had become a refuge and
a sanctuary. It is where all his experiences came to life and were transformed into beautiful
poetry. Inspiration came from nature, and was filtered through his thoughts and knowledge.
Nature was where he could imagine all the images he created in his head, it was the background
for his daydreams.

Self-education and definition

Keats liked to share his knowledge through his poetry. The many allusions he made to
mythology, history and other poetical works shows how he wanted to use everything he learned
to write beautiful verse. His later poems were more sophisticated than his earlier work, because
he had simply learned more to allude to. Self-definition thus occurred mostly through the poetry
itself rather than through prefaces or supplementary essays. Just by reading his poetry, one would
get to know how Keats experienced the world, what he felt, how he thought about things. He is a
presence in most of his poems, writing from his own perspective or placing himself in that of
someone else, trying to feel as they would feel.
Poetry, however, is subject to interpretation. Objective, factual information is seldom
found in poems. That is why Keats correspondences are an invaluable source of information in
this respect. Thanks to those letters, it is now clear that Keats did not suffer as much from critics
as was commonly thought, that he sought for melancholy, not only in his own life and mind but
also in nature. The odes to melancholy, indolence and the nightingale all show this, as well as

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most of his life choices. He was a dark Romantic, seeking for things that brought despair rather
than happiness.

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 Conclusion

As stated in the introduction, these writers had more in common than at first might seem likely.
They all found happiness in solitary retreat, either in nature or their own minds. They all followed
the trend of the time and travelled. The desire to travel led to Lyrical Ballads. Had Wordsworth
and Coleridge not wanted to go to Germany, they would not have felt the necessity to write this
collection of poems. Dorothy wanted to travel through Scotland to keep a travel account that she
wanted to publish. She knew she could write beautifully, but needed an interesting subject.
Tourism was very popular so she had finally found something that she could show her talent in
and that was publishable in that period. For Keats, it brought about the cold that damaged his
health irreparably, the cold that is commonly thought to have killed him.
Tourism and a quest for beautiful natural images were a part of these poets lives, just as
much as nature and the imagination were. But this urge to travel was but one of their similarities,
their motives and consequences but few of their differences. Their Romanticism shows in many
ways, on which this thesis has hopefully shed some light.

Nature and the natural

This thesis has shown that throughout the Romantic period, a great rediscovery and appreciation
for the natural occurred. In language, poetry, gardening, and in a way even the household it
gained new significance. For, the natural role of the female was to give birth and nurse children.
The unmarried woman, the female author with independence and a career, was actually a very
contra-natural development. For Dorothy, being a Romantic meant that she chose the more
natural life, retreating to the country, away from the cities and modern life. She ran a household
with her brother William and lived a very natural life, taking daily walks and harvesting home-
grown fruits and vegetables. Nature inspired feelings in her that she tried to convey in the
journals, she made beautifully detailed descriptions of the natural world and did not let her
womanhood deter her from taking strolls through nature. She both fought and complied to
gender roles, following her own nature.
Wordsworth argued for a more natural life, natural poetry and a natural use of language.
In the Lyrical Ballads, none of the poems he wrote dealt with supernatural things or used
abnormal language. Wordsworth drew inspiration from real life, the real language of people.
Poetry should come naturally, as he stated, good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings. For him, natural meant taken from real life. Modernization and the social

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developments related to it were not natural. The rural life was and Wordsworth honoured it in his
Lyrical Ballads.
In the poetry of John Keats, nature is where the imagination meets the senses. He
described nature as he imagined and experienced it. He did not know poetic diction and thus had
a natural use of language of himself. Keats was not forced, he let his feelings guide him and his
development occurred gradually.
For these three authors, nature was mingled everywhere through their lives, suffusing
their writings, family bonds and everyday lives. They were in touch with their own natures,
experiences overwhelming emotions when confronted with natural beauty and life itself. Nature
defined who they were, their love for it defining how they gave meaning to their lives.

Imagination
Nature and the imagination were inextricably linked. The imagination would serve as an
inspiration, a refuge, a place for reliving moments of bliss. For Keats, it was the place where his
poetry was born; inside his own mind, his own dream world. Everything he read, learned, saw
and felt received a place there, living in his memory until it was expressed in his poetry. William
and Dorothy used it to relive fond memories, a place to store beautiful images. Dorothy wrote
them down in her journals, and William would later read her work and re-imagine parts of a walk
or a journey. There was a difference between the Wordsworths and Keats in that Keats seemed
to permanently live in his imagination, sensations entering it and becoming stories in his mind.
The Wordsworths only used imagination to relive events, first experiencing them first-hand and
later reviving the images in their heads.
The poet mediated between nature and the imagination. Even though they all wrote
about nature and found inspiration in it, nature poetry was seldom an objective description. Both
poetry and prose were filtered through the imagination of the author, influenced by things they
had heard, seen, read or fantasized before. For all three authors discussed, nature was not just
there; it would come to life inside their minds. Their perspective was a very important factor in
their poetry; where did they place themselves in it? Keats became part of his fantasy, able to fly
along with the fairies and go where no man could go. His imagination and natural images were
fantastical. For the Wordsworths, the imagination was limited to seeing things that were actually
possible, and real. Keats created his own nature, whereas the Wordsworths had to see it first
before they could imagine it. Without memories, they could not create an image.

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Self-definition and public/social life
Dorothy defined herself in the fact that she did not choose a household of her own, but stayed
with her brother instead. It says a lot about her personality that she actually always placed the
needs of other before her own. The journals as well show her personality, especially in relation to
William. Keats defined himself through his poems, through the subjects that he chose and the
perspective he wrote from. Through his attitude, his ways of seeing things and his view on the
natural world, he actually defined himself as a Romantic Hero. Yes, those who wrote about him
after his death played a part in that as well, but Keats did most of the defining himself, during his
lifetime, through his poetry and correspondences. This was contrary to William Wordsworth,
who did most of his self-defining through prefaces specifically designed for that purpose. Keats
stated his claim in the poems, whether intended or not, and allowed people to interpret it for
themselves. All he wanted was to write pretty poetry that would touch people and help them
heal. Wordsworth had a more scientific approach to poetry and the preface. He wrote with a
mission and it was mandatory that people would see him and his poetry as he wanted them to.
He could not just let the public think what they would about him and his work. That is why he
wrote the manuals to understanding both himself and the Lyrical Ballads, in the shape of prefaces.
Most information about these poets can be found in their own work. William
Wordsworth made sure through his essays that people would get to know him and his ideals.
Dorothy Wordsworth is most well-known through her journals, which were like a diary to her.
She reads like an open book, thanks to her writings. Wanted or not, the whole world can now
read about her personal thoughts and her everyday life. Keats personality shines through in his
poetry as well as his letters. These ego-documents that have become valuable in historical
research only thirty years ago have helped shed new light on these writers and their reasons.
What is interesting is that Wordsworth fashioned himself intentionally. He wrote specifically for
publication and even though much of the information we have about him today is derived from
journals and letters, Wordsworth actively fashioned himself during his own lifetime and did so
through publication. The self-definition of Dorothy and John was more of a natural
development; they do not seem to actively have been shaping themselves publicly. Keats was
mostly fashioned by the public, his critics and contemporary poets. As stated before, it was
Shelleys view of Keats that has been the prevalent one for a very long time. Keats himself did
write prefaces, but these he wrote for himself, for as he stated in the letter to John Hamilton
quoted in chapter three, [i]f there is any fault in the Preface it is not affectation, but an
undersong of disrespect to the Publicif I write another Preface it must be done without a
thought of those peopleI will think about it. He hated the public so much that he could not

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write a proper preface for them without being hostile and disrespectful, meaning that he did not
consider himself to be able to influence the public to any degree.
What these three poets had in common was that their position in society was a marginal
one, at least was at the start of their careers. Dorothy was a woman, and an unmarried one at
that. Wordsworth was completely unknown when Lyrical Ballads was first published. His name
was so insignificant that Coleridge and he even decided to publish their first edition
anonymously. Keats came from a broken home, was reportedly from low birth and Cockney, his
public image was far from the truth but it affected him nonetheless. Whereas Dorothy
Wordsworth let society and those around her deter her, Keats was the entire opposite: he
followed his passion, no matter how much critics turned him down or his family disliked his
decisions.

Romantics
Dorothy was Romantic in this because she took on the traditional role, at the same time choosing
the independence of a female writer without a family of her own to take care of. She combined
trends of the time, into something that she felt comfortable with, following her own feelings.
Keats used his sensibility to make decisions. This influenced his career, his love life and the way
he treated the public. He did not care for them because they disliked him. He chose his personal
life over his public life, thus making himself independent and autonomous. That he did not care
about public thought shows through in everything written by him. His correspondences show
that he only cared for the opinion of those close to him, but he would always follow his own
heart, even if it disagreed with them. Keats sensibility made him feminine and seemingly weak,
but he was actually very strong. Despite the critics attempts to destroy him he kept doing what
he loved. I cannot state enough how Keats was a man of feelings, a man who felt and always
followed his heart, even against better judgement.
Wordsworth was a Romantic in that he rebelled against the Enlightenment. He took on
the challenge of educating and instructing the public, thus attempting to recreate the world in his
own vision. If people were critical of his arguments or poetry, he tried to undo that with his
prefaces. In his own mind, his poetry was most necessary for a properly functioning society,
people needed to be influenced by him if they were to survive the period of industrialization.
Wordsworth created his own necessity, quality and fame. Through the prefaces, he fashioned
himself into the exalted poet, the one who has more sensibility than the common man, sees the
world differently and has the power to make changes.

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 Wordsworth wanted to revolutionize poetry with the new, more natural use of language,
but also change the canon of poetry. All the elder poets were about to be knocked of their
pedestals. As stated in the earlier chapters, there were a great many female writers during this
time. Wordsworth regarded them with amused tolerance, meaning that he actually did not
appreciate their work. For him, women belonged in the household or writing indecent prose.
This also showed in the relationship with his sister, Dorothy. She wrote prose, encouraged by
William, but she wrote only little poetry, because in that she was discouraged by him.
There were different sides to the Romantic period and a romantic attitude. The poets
discussed here all struggled to find their place in this period that brought about so many new
developments, but also reverted to the past. Some things changed for the better, others were
returned to their former oppressiveness. Romantic literature served as an escape from all of these
things. By doing what they loved and felt was right, they defined and established themselves. Had
Keats not found the freedom to follow his heart and write the poetry that was born in his
imagination, he would have remained an apothecary. Without the decline of the Enlightenment,
there would not have been a place for Wordsworths revolutionary poetry. This Romantic
period reached out a hand to those that felt more in touch with emotions than rationality, it
offered a platform and a place to share. Historical events are always a confluence of
circumstances and influences work in more ways than one. It was lucky that these great authors
were around when they were, so they could be influenced by the time, exert their influences and
shape society when they did.

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