Discuss Wordsworth's and Coleridge's attitudes to nature in Their poetry with particular reference to Resolution and Independence (The Leech Gatherer) and This Lime Tree Bower my prison.

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Discuss Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s attitudes to nature in

Their poetry with particular reference to Resolution and Independence

(The Leech Gatherer) and This Lime Tree Bower my prison

Coleridge and Wordsworth are both now referred to as Romantic poets, during the romanticism period there was a major movement of emphasis in the arts towards looking at the world and recognising the beauty of human’s emotions and imaginations and the world in which we live.

        From the 18th century some saw imagination as a disease of which most poets suffered, for others imagination was the ability to remember or draw something that wasn’t directly present.

        Coleridge speaks of the imagination as

‘The distinguishing characteristic of man as a human being’ (In his ‘Essay of Education’) Wordsworth defines imagination as the ‘clearest insight, amplitude of mind, / an reason in her most exalted mood’ in book fourteen of the prelude.

        One of the characteristics of Romanticism is exploring the relationship between nature and human life. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge focus’s on this strongly in there poems. They examine nature and how it effects mans imagination and mind. For this they were highly criticised. They looked inside mans imagination rather than intellect. This was a concept others could not understand. Their work contrasted with the earlier 18th century poets of whom had a structures intellectual reasoned approach to their work. They had classical characteristics such as proportion and dignity.

        Romanticism concentrated on Passions and Sublimity used frequently in the poets work (a grand spectacular landscape that can stimulate spiritual awareness,) the infinite and indefinite, obscure hopes and fears, grander moral feelings, wandering through infinity and the future rather than the present. Wordsworth and Coleridge were not the only poets to concentrate on this style. Others such as William Blake 1757 – 1827, George Gordon Lord Byron 1788 – 1827,   Percy Bysshe Shelly 1792 – 1822, and John Keats 1795-1821, are also classed as romantic poets whilst each having their own individual style.

        Wordsworth himself could often be described as a nature poet; however he doesn’t concentrate largely on close up details of natural description. Instead he is more concerned on the interaction between person and nature and particularly between himself and nature. His poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature; he is concerned with the influences sensations and emotions that occur when interactions occur between them.

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        Resolution and Independence (The Leech Gatherer) by Wordsworth relates directly to nature. The poem has been given to titles, what it seem a more superior one (Resolution and Independence) and a lesser one (The Leech Gatherer). I believe this is because the poem has two depths. One side of the poem is about independence and determination found both in the Leech gatherer and Wordsworth himself in not to be sad.

        It was first published in 1807 in a collection titled ‘Poems in two volumes’ The poem is written in stanzas consisting of seven lines in each. It has the ...

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