I am Divya jadav a student of English Department at MKBU. This blog is part of Assignment writing for paper 103: Literature of Romantics
Imagination as Dynamism shaping
Romantic Poetic Expressions
Table of contents:-
Personal Information
Assignment Details
Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Imagination
Romantic poets
Romantic poetry
Conclusion
References
Personal Information:-
Name:- Divya Bharatbhai Jadav
Batch :- M.A.sem 1 ( 2023- 2025)
Email Address:- divyajadav5563@gmail. com
Roll number:- 8
Assignment Details:-
Topic:- Imagination as Dynamism Shaping Romantic poetic Expressions
Paper:- Literature of Romantics
Subject code:- 22394
Submitted to:- smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar
Date of Submission:- 1 December 2023
About Assignment:- In this assignment i will try to define the point of imagination as Dynamism Shaping Romantic poetic Expressions
Abstract:-
Imagination is one of the significant characteristics of Romantic poetry. Romantic poetry is subjective and clairvoyant. The subjectivity and extrasensory instinct are revived due to sharp imagination. The principal purpose of this article is to explicate imagination as dynamism in shaping Romantic poetic expressions. For this purpose, poetic works of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron have been analyzed by considering imagination as the core of poems. This article employed a qualitative approach, drawing upon an extensive compilation of primary and secondary sources pertaining to Romantic poetry and the role of imagination in shaping literary expressions during the Romantic era. The primary sources consisted of poems by Romantic poets, while secondary sources encompassed scholarly articles, books, and critical essays, all of which contributed valuable insights into the topic and enhanced the comprehension of Romantic poetry and imagination. Materials for the study included terms, phrases, and assertions related to Romantic Imagination, and the method employed for analysis consisted of critical analysis. The primary focus of the analysis was to examine how Romantic poets explored and portrayed imagination across a wide range of their poetic works. This analytical process was executed subsequent to an extensive literature review on the subject matter. The study of this article will not only offer a comprehensive analysis of how imagination serves as a dynamic force in shaping Romantic poetic expressions, but will also explore the broader implications of imagination in literature, culture, and art.
Keywords:-
Imagination, Poetry, Romantic poets, Romantic poetry
Introduction :-
Drawing on unrestrained imagination and a variegated cultural landscape, a Romantic-era poem could be trivial or fantastic, succinctly songlike or digressively meandering, a searching fragment or a precisely bounded sonnet or ode, as comic as Lord Byron’s mock epic Don Juan or as cosmologically subversive as Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If any single innovation has emerged as Romanticism’s foremost legacy, it is the dominance among poetic genres of the lyric poem, spoken in first-person often identified with the poet, caught between passion and reason, finding correspondences in natural surroundings for the introspective workings of heart and mind.
Imagination in Romantic Poetry:-
Imagination is the ability to produce and simulate novel objects, peoples and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. It is also described as the forming of experiences in the mind, which can be recreations of past experiences such as vivid memories with imagined changes or that they are completely invented . Imagination according to Byrne is “a cognitive process used in mental functioning and sometimes used in conjunction with psychological imagery. It is considered as such because it involves thinking about possibilities” . Campbell, Walzer and Arthur asserted, “there is no art whatsoever that hath so close a connection with all the faculties and powers of the mind, as eloquence, or the art of speaking, in the extensive sense in which I employ the term. For in the first place, that it ought to be ranked among the polite or fine arts, is manifest from this, that in all its exertions, with little or no exception, it requires the aid of the imagination. In other words, Riasanovsky stated, “Imagination represents the afterlife either on high or in the depths or in metempsychosis. We dream of journeys through the universe, but is the universe not within us? We do not realize the profundities of our spirits. Inward is the direction of the mystic path. Within us or nowhere is eternity with its worlds of past and future" . English Romanticism, which is more suitable to the expression of emotional experiences, individual feeling and imagination, is best represented by poetry. The great English Romantic poets are usually grouped into two generations: the first, represented by William Blake, William Wordsworth and S. Taylor Coleridge; while the poets of the second generation were John Keats, P. B. Shelley and G. Gordon Byron.Coleridge in Biographia Literaria divides imagination into two kinds: primary imagination as the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. In addition, the secondary imagination is the power by which man reconstructs objects out of the ideas of reason in his own consciousness.
Romantic poets:-
The most prominent romantic poets are still some of the most popular poets today. The first generation of poets includes – Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Willliam Wordsworth. The most recognizable name of the second generation was – George Gordon better known as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and John Keat.
1. William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism. P. B. Shelly Another great poet of Romanticism called him Poets of Nature and he himself called him. A Worshiper Of Nature. He defined his and Coleridge’s innovative poetry in his preface of lyrical Ballads –
"Poetry is the Spontaneous
overflow of Powerful feelings;
it takes its origin in emotion
recollected in tranquility."
Imagination, Subjectivity, Nature Pantheism, and Mysticism, Humanism are the basic themes of Wordsworth’s poetry. His most famous poems are I WanderLonely As A Cloud, She Was A Phantom Of Delight, The Solitary Reaper, The Lucy Poems and We Are Seven, and Tintern Abbey.
2. S.T. Coleridge
S. T. Coleridge along with Wordsworth is the pioneer of romantic poetry. He is the friend of William Wordsworth. S. T. Coleridge has been greatly influenced by Wordsworth; in fact, it is said that Wordsworth has helped him in writing poetry. He has good observation and a sense of feeling. He not only observes nature but also feels it. He loves landscapes, sceneries, countryside images, rivers, forests, and plants. He finds beauty in them and mentions it in his poetry. Among his world-famous Romantic poems include – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Dejection, and An Ode.
3. Percy Bysshe Shelly
Percy Bysshe Shelly was the most imaginative poet. He regarded poetry as “The expression of the imagination”. Shelly lived in the world of Fancy and Imagination. The major Romantic elements found in Shelley's poetry are– Love Of Nature, Imagination, Melancholy, Supernaturalism, Hellenism, Beauty, Idealism, and Subjectivity.
4.John Keats
John Keats is the last but the best romantic poet in English literature. He is referred to as a pure Romantic poet. Like other Romantics poets, imagination played a vital role in his poetry. His Ode To A Nightingale is a fine example of eternal beauty. The Eve Of St. Agnes and The Eve of St. Mark are poems based on two different Medieval superstitions. He personified Nature in many of his great odes, such as Ode to Autumn, Ode on Indolence, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, and Ode to Psyche. Keats defined beauty in his Poetry as
“A thing of beauty
is a joy forever.”
5. Lord Byron
Lord Byron was a well-known Romantic Poet of the second Generation. His poems are deep and reflect his personal feelings. In his literary career, he wrote many poems such as – Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, The Vision of Judgement, Don Juan, and She walks in Beauty.
Romantic poetry :-
Imagination is one of the pertinent
characteristics of Romantic poetry. Romantic poetry is subjective and extrasensory. The subjectivity and extrasensory instinct are rejuvenated due to heightened imagination. The prime purpose of this brief article is to elucidate how imagination plays a significant role in Romantic poetry. For this purpose, poetic works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats are analyzed. The writer has extracted some verse lines from some of the poems of these poets and has mentioned concisely how these verse lines signify the supremacy of imagination in their poems.
Conclusion:-
As imagination is the forming of experiences or ideas in the mind, it is of great value Romanticism. Imagination is a key Romantic term that explores the relations between mind and nature. Imagination in Romantic Novels help the audience to follow the fictional characters on the stage from one place to another. Romantic poetry that emphasizes on individual feeling and imagination is a motivation to a humanistic literary criticism, which accuses the dehumanizing influence of an industrial and commercial society. For Coleridge, the poetry of nature emerges from two main sources. The first is fidelity to the truth of nature, and second is modifying colours of imagination.
References:-
Sharma, L. R. (2023). Imagination as
Dynamism: Shaping Romantic Poetic Expressions. International Research JournaloMMC,4(3),7685.https://doi.org/10.3126/irjmmc.v4i3.58964
www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/152982/an-introduction-to-british-romanticism. Accessed 23 Nov. 2023.
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