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黃埔學報 埔學報 埔學報 埔學報 第四十 第四十 第四十 第四十九期 民國九十四年 民國九十四年 民國九十四年 民國九十四年 259 WHAMPOA - An Interdisciplinary Journal 49(2005) 259-266 Romantic Poetry: A Critical Investigation Lishu Chang Chien Department of Foreign Languages, Chinese Military Academy, Taiwan Abstract This paper aims to show the emergence of Romantic Poetry as the herald of Ecocriticism. As a critical stance, the Romantic Movement strove to defend for the rights of humans and nature, and it fought against the material culture caused by the Industrial Revolution. As a theoretical discourse, Romantic criticism proclaims the approach of Ecocriticism on the assertion of biocentrism and interests in sense of place. By critical investigations of Romantic Poetry on the subject matter, the chosen language, the role of the poet, and the function of poetry, I will emphasize in the conclusion that Romantic poetry connotes the tenets of Ecocriticism with the assertion of symbiosis and integrity between humans and nature. Keywords: Romanticism, Ecocriticism, sense of place, symbiosis, integrity 1. Introduction In this paper I will illustrate how Romantic poetry shows a new interest in nature and the common individual as suitable subject for poetry and I will explicate the spirit and artistic achievements of major English Romantic poets. Meanwhile, I will delineate the emergence of Romantic poetry as the herald of Ecocriticism. But before that I will trace the historical background of the age that influenced this important literary movement. To do this I will relate the writers’ lives and experiences to their work by comparing and contrasting individual poets and the value stressed in their work. 2. The beginning and the end of the Romantic Age: The beginning of the Romantic Age in English literature is usually taken as 1798, the year in which William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a book of their poems called Lyrical Ballads. The Romantic Age traditionally ended in 1832, with the death of Sir Walter Scott. 3. The Historical Background – The American Revolution & French Revolution: These two Revolutions (happened outside England) disturbed the basic values and structures of English society. Philosophically, the French Revolution seemed to signal the victory of ever more radical democratic principles than those enunciated in the American Declaration of Independence. Indeed, it was the most significant event of the romantic period. In English the Crown and the ruling classes feared the effects of the French Revolution from the beginning. But English liberals and radicals, who themselves had been calling for the democratization of English society, saw in the early stages of the French Revolution--in the Declaration of the rights of Man and in the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, to release imprisoned political prisoners--a triumph of popular democracy. Among the enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution in its early stages were writers who would play a central role in English Romanticism. Wordsworth visited France during the summer of 1790 and was filled with hope and excitement as the country celebrated the first anniversary of the fall of

A Brief Introdction to English Romantic Poets-張簡麗淑教授-ok

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Page 1: A Brief Introdction to English Romantic Poets-張簡麗淑教授-ok

黃黃黃黃埔學報埔學報埔學報埔學報 第四十第四十第四十第四十九九九九期期期期 民國九十四年民國九十四年民國九十四年民國九十四年 259

WHAMPOA - An Interdisciplinary Journal 49(2005) 259-266

Romantic Poetry: A Critical Investigation

Lishu Chang Chien

Department of Foreign Languages, Chinese Military Academy, Taiwan

Abstract

This paper aims to show the emergence of Romantic Poetry as the herald of Ecocriticism. As a

critical stance, the Romantic Movement strove to defend for the rights of humans and nature, and it

fought against the material culture caused by the Industrial Revolution. As a theoretical discourse,

Romantic criticism proclaims the approach of Ecocriticism on the assertion of biocentrism and

interests in sense of place. By critical investigations of Romantic Poetry on the subject matter, the

chosen language, the role of the poet, and the function of poetry, I will emphasize in the conclusion

that Romantic poetry connotes the tenets of Ecocriticism with the assertion of symbiosis and integrity

between humans and nature.

Keywords: Romanticism, Ecocriticism, sense of place, symbiosis, integrity

1. Introduction

In this paper I will illustrate how

Romantic poetry shows a new interest in

nature and the common individual as

suitable subject for poetry and I will

explicate the spirit and artistic achievements

of major English Romantic poets.

Meanwhile, I will delineate the emergence

of Romantic poetry as the herald of

Ecocriticism. But before that I will trace

the historical background of the age that

influenced this important literary movement.

To do this I will relate the writers’ lives and

experiences to their work by comparing and

contrasting individual poets and the value

stressed in their work.

2. The beginning and the end of the

Romantic Age:

The beginning of the Romantic Age in

English literature is usually taken as 1798,

the year in which William Wordsworth and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a book

of their poems called Lyrical Ballads. The

Romantic Age traditionally ended in 1832,

with the death of Sir Walter Scott.

3. The Historical Background – The

American Revolution & French

Revolution:

These two Revolutions (happened

outside England) disturbed the basic values

and structures of English society.

Philosophically, the French Revolution

seemed to signal the victory of ever more

radical democratic principles than those

enunciated in the American Declaration of

Independence. Indeed, it was the most

significant event of the romantic period. In

English the Crown and the ruling classes

feared the effects of the French Revolution

from the beginning. But English liberals

and radicals, who themselves had been

calling for the democratization of English

society, saw in the early stages of the French

Revolution--in the Declaration of the rights

of Man and in the storming of the Bastille on

July 14, 1789, to release imprisoned political

prisoners--a triumph of popular democracy.

Among the enthusiastic supporters of the

Revolution in its early stages were writers

who would play a central role in English

Romanticism. Wordsworth visited France

during the summer of 1790 and was filled

with hope and excitement as the country

celebrated the first anniversary of the fall of

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the Bastille. William Godwin (1756-1836),

a philosopher and novelist who exerted

considerable influence on Wordsworth,

Shelley, and other Romantic poets, predicted

in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

(1793) a peaceful version in England of

what appeared to be happening in France.

In The Spirit of the Age, Hazlitt said that the

French Revolution seemed at first to

announce that “a new impulse had been

given to man’s minds” (XVII). The sense

of being present at some apocalyptic event

of history was common at this time: hopes

were high that mankind was about to see the

end of the old world and the beginning of a

new and better one. Wordsworth, looking

back at this time over ten years later, gave

expression to what must have been a

widespread feeling at the outset of the

French Revolution:

O pleasant exercise of hope and joy,

For great were the auxiliars which then stood

Upon our side, we who were strong in love,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

(The Prelude 1805. X 105-09)

But the promise and expectation

aroused by the early of the Revolution in

France soon gave way to bitter

disappointment as events took an

increasingly violent and repressive course.

When revolutionary extremists gained

control of the government in 1792, they

executed hundreds of the imprisoned

nobility in what came to be known as the

“September Massacres.” The reaction in

England to these events in France was

predicable. Even the most ardent supports of

the Revolution were left in disillusionment

and despair. As Wordsworth expressed it

in The Prelude:

Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense

For one of conquest, losing sight of all

Which they had struggled for: and mounted up,

Openly in the view of earth and heaven,

The scale of Liberty. (The Prelude 1805. X 206-11)

During the years of violent political

revolution and reaction for the spirit of

liberty, another revolution was taking place

throughout European society for the

economic growth.

4. The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution in England

marked the beginning of the modern era, and it

caused profound economic and social changes

with which the existing principles and structures

of government were totally undermined.

Important cities in central and northern England

that had previously been stable and orderly

centers of skilled labor developed into sprawling,

dirty industrial cities. Working and living

conditions in these cities were terrible: women

and children as well as men labored for long

hours under intolerable conditions, for wages that

were barely enough to keep them alive. Reports

were not uncommon of young children being

harnessed to coal-sledges and made to crawl on

their hands and knees in the mines.

Wordsworth’s early poems, for example,

contained a number of figures whose undeserved

suffering is caused by an unfair and uncaring

society. Blake pointed out the miseries of the

Londoners in his daily observation. In “The

Chimney Sweeper,” he describes that the

Chimney-boy has been sold by his father to be a

sweep when he is still so small that he can not

even utter the “/s/” at the beginning of words.

He attempts to cry “Sweep! Sweep!” but his

childlike voice turns out to be “Weep! Weep!”

The double meanings of “sweep” and “weep”

immediately give us a pathetic impression of the

state of his slavery. More than ever England

was sharply divided into two classes: a wealthy

class of property owners who held economic and

political power, and a poor class of wage earners

deprived of rights and possessions. In response

to the rapidly changed society, Wordsworth

shows his angers towards the sheer waste and

sadness of life in his “The World is too much

with us”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

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Lishu Chang Chien: Romantic Poetry: A Critical Investigation 261

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! (1-4)

To the writers, the Romantic Age was a

time of vast and unguided political and

economic changes. Most of the writers of

this period were deeply affected by the

promise and subsequent disappointment of

the French Revolution, and by the distorting

effects of the Industrial Revolution. In

many ways, both direct and indirect, we can

see the historical issues reflected in the main

literary concerns of Romantic poets. Much

as the French Revolution signaled an

attempt to break with the old order and to

establish a new and revitalized social system,

Romanticism sought to free itself from the

rules and standards of eighteen-century

literature and to open up new areas of vision

and expression. The democratic idealism,

which characterized the early stages of the

French Revolution, have their parallel in the

Romantic writers’ interest in the language

and experience of the common people, and

in the belief that writers or artists must be

free to explore their own imaginative worlds.

The main consequences of the Industrial

Revolution--the urbanization of English life

and landscape, and the exploitation of the

working class-- underlie the Romantic

writers’ love of the unspoiled natural world

or remote settings devoid of urban

complexity, and their passionate concern for

the downtrodden and the oppressed.

5. The foundations of the theory and

practice

English Romantic poetry has certain

qualities that show the changes of literary

tendency from the poetry written before.

The chief characteristics of Romantic poetry

are usually defined in contrast with that of

the eighteenth century--the age of Swift,

Pope, and Johnson. Eighteenth-century

writers stressed reason and judgment while

Romantic writers emphasized imagination

and emotion. Eighteenth-century writers

were characteristically concerned with the

general or universal in experience.

Romantic writers were concerned with the

specific. Eighteenth-century writers

asserted the values of society as a whole;

Romantic writers championed the values of

the individual. Eighteenth-century writers

sought to follow and to substantiate

authority and the rules derived from

authority while Romantic writers strove for

freedom. Eighteenth-century writers took

their primary inspiration from classical

Greek and Roman authors but Romantic

writers took a revitalized interest in

medieval subjects and settings.

These contrasts provide a useful way of

approaching English poetry of the Romantic

Age. They help put us in touch with what

William Hazlitt and other Romantic writers

called “the Spirit of the Age”--a shared sense

of liberated energy and fresh departure similar

in some respects to what we find in the

Renaissance. Hazlitt spoke of “a time of

promise, a renewal of the world--and of

letters.” Percy Bysshe Shelley claimed in his

Defence of Poetry that the literature of the age

“has arisen as it were from a new birth” (413).

Yet we should not exaggerate the generalized

contrasts between the Romantic Age and the

eighteenth century, or to take too literally the

more exuberant and sweeping claims of Hazlitt

and Shelley at their most confident. The

Romantic Age was diverse and complex. To

appreciate the achievements of this period, we

need to examine the main political and social

realities of these years. The specific ideas and

practices of writers who were far too

individualistic ever to subordinate themselves

to anything like a Romantic “movement” need

to be looked at more closely.

Literary achievement during the

Romantic Age is found chiefly in poetry. In

the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and

Coleridge reflect new ideas about what

poetry should be. A second edition was

published in 1800, to which was added an

extensive preface, written by Wordsworth

but planned with close consultation with

Coleridge. In the various editions of this

collection, Wordsworth and Coleridge

announce and demonstrate fundamental

changes in both the form and subject matter

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of English poetry. It is important not to

oversimplify the basic literary aims of

Lyrical Ballads, or of English Romantic

poetry in general. These aims are best

understood, in fact, not as a single,

unvarying literary rule or standard, but as

ideals that often embrace opposing or

contrasting values. As Coleridge himself

would later argue in his volume of literary

musings, Biographia Literaria (1817), the

power of the poetic imagination “reveals

itself in the balance or reconciliation of

opposite or discordant qualities” (16). As

for the verbal style of the poetry,

Wordsworth makes it clear in the Preface to

Lyrical Ballads that he and Coleridge were

trying to leave behind the specialized,

formal language of eighteenth-century

poetry--what Wordsworth calls “poetic

diction.” Instead, Wordsworth says in

Lyrical Ballads, his poems are experimental

attempts to fit “to metrical arrangement a

selection of the real language of men in a

state of vivid sensation” (302). The most

memorable phrase here is “the real language

of men.” Wordsworth and other Romantic

writers wanted to draw upon the expressive

power of ordinary speech, instead of relying

automatically upon an artificial, uniquely

“poetic” way of using language. But

Wordsworth did not naively believe that the

language of poetry could ever be a direct

imitation of the language of the man in the

street or the worker in the field. He says,

“The real language must be selected by the

poet, that it must be fitted “to metrical

arrangement” (302). Thus we have the

contrasting elements in Wordsworth’s

stylistic ideal: “real language’ on the one

hand, and its selection and transformation by

the poet’s mind and craft on the other.

Wordsworth and Coleridge also announce

and demonstrate significant changes in the

subject matter of poetry in Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth’s main aim, as stated in the

Preface, is “too choose incidents and situations

from common life.” “Humble and rustic life

was generally chosen,” he goes on to explain,

“because in that condition 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” (304). This preference

for the experience and situations of those

common people, particularly of those living

close to nature in the country, away from the

complexity and contamination of sophisticated

urban existence, is one of the chief

characteristics of Romanticism. But the first

poem in Lyrical Ballads is Coleridge’s “the

Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a work hardly

corresponding to the sort of poetry

Wordsworth describes in the Preface. Once

again we may turn to Coleridge’s Biographia

Literaria for an account of how his role in

Lyrical Ballads was mainly to explore another

and quite different type of Romantic subject

matter. “My endeavors,” Coleridge says,

were “directed to persons and characters

supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to

transfer from our inward nature a human

interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to

procure for these shadows of imagination that

willing suspension of disbelief. . . which

constitutes poetic faith”(323). In other words,

the reader willingly cooperates with the poet

by giving up the need for literal truth.

We have in the plan of Lyrical Ballads

two favorite kinds of Romantic subjects: the

natural or commonplace, and the

supernatural or “romantic”. These kinds of

subjects at first appeared to be the very

opposites of each other. But what

Wordsworth and Coleridge were striving for

was similar: to reveal what Wordsworth

calls “the essential passions of heart,” and

what Coleridge calls “our inward nature.”

Nature and commonplace, supernatural and

romantic--both kinds of subjects are treated

so as to make us aware of the basic

operations of the human mind and human

emotions. Another important characteristic

of the subject matter of Romantic literature

proclaimed in Lyrical Ballads is the intense

love of nature. Wordsworth is one of the

greatest “nature poets,” and it is true that in

both theory and practice the natural world

takes on a new significance in his writing.

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Lishu Chang Chien: Romantic Poetry: A Critical Investigation 263

He defines in the Preface “Poetry is the

image of man and nature” (311). But what

really interests Wordsworth and other

Romantic poets is not nature for its own

sake, but nature as it affects the human mind

and personality. He directs his attention

toward rustic life because in that condition

the passions of men are incorporated with

the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.

He considers “man and nature are essentially

adapted to each other, and the mind of man

as naturally the mirror of the fairest and

most interesting properties of nature” (312).

The ideas of the reciprocity herald the

philosophy of symbiosis, environmental

ethics, and the ecological conscience that

ecocritics are now doing. Romantic poetry

is as Jonathan Bate points out, “the

Prototypical Ecocriticism.” The major

concern of Romantic poetry “negotiates

between human and nonhuman” (Glotfelty

xix). Again and again in Wordsworth’s

poetry, and in that of his fellow poets, it is

this relationship between the mind and the

natural world that is the central focus. It is

the mind of the poet, or of the figure through

whom the poet expresses himself, that

constitutes the ultimate subject for the

Romantic writer, whether that mind is

understood in relation to the natural world or

in relation to a mysterious, supernatural

fiction.

Another aspect of Romantic subject

matter is the concern with the poet’s own

life, emotions, and subjective experience.

Wordsworth’s very definition of poetry in

the Preface to Lyrical Ballads confirms this

emphasis on subjective emotion and

personal experience. He says, “All good

poetry is the spontaneous overflow of

powerful feeling” (305). For the Romantic

poet, poetry must be based ultimately on the

poet’s own feelings and responses. It

cannot be based on values or a subject

derived primarily from books, or from

society, or from abstract scientific reasoning.

Wordsworth goes on to elaborate his

definition in a famous passage: “I have said

that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of

powerful feelings: it takes its origin from

emotion recollected in tranquillity; the

emotion is contemplated till by a species of

reaction, the tranquillity gradually

disappears, and an emotion kindred to that

which was before the subject of

contemplation, is gradually produced and

does itself actually exist in the mind” (316).

It is clear from what Wordsworth says here

that “powerful feelings” or sheer immediate

emotion is not enough for the poet.

Emotion, once experienced, must be

“recollected in tranquillity” or

“contemplated,” as Wordsworth goes on to

say. Romantic poetry has its origin in

strong and spontaneous personal feeling; but

only when this feeling is given shape and

organization by the reflective mind and

adapted to the structures of language can it

enter into poetry.

One final point that Wordsworth

considers in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads is

of major importance for Romanticism as a

whole. This concerns the status of the poet

in relation to the rest of human community.

Wordsworth has said that the poet uses “the

real language of men,” not a stylized poetic

diction, and that he draws his subjects from

“common life.” This ideal may be

appealingly democratic, but if it is true, what

distinguishes a poet from anyone else? In

trying to answer this question, Wordsworth

preserves the democratic belief so important

to Romanticism, while at the same time

acknowledging an equally important

Romantic belief in the uncommon sensitivity

of the individual poet. A poet does not

differ “in kind from other men,” he says,

“but only in degree.” The poet “is chiefly

distinguished from other men by a greater

promptness to think and feel without

immediate external excitement, and a great

power in expressing such thoughts and

feelings as are produced in him in that

manner” (313). Once again it is seen that

the Romantic attitude involved a “balance or

reconciliation” of apparent opposites--in this

case, democratic idealism on the one hand

(the poet is just one person speaking to

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others in their own language), and heroic

individualism on the other (each poet is

gifted with unique powers of feeling and

expression).

The poetic ideals announced by

Wordsworth and Coleridge, and even more

their poetic practice, provide a major

inspiration for the brilliant young writers

who made up the second generation of

English Romantic poets. Shelley called

poetry “the expression of Imagination.”

Keats saw the “imagination” as a power

which creates and reveals, or rather reveals

through creating. Through the imagination

Keats sought an absolute reality to which he

could enter by the appreciation of beauty

through the senses. To Keats, poetry was

the ideal vehicle for wide-ranging

imagination and for a fully sensuous

response to beauty and to art. For all young

romantic poets there was a joy to be found in

the natural world which was not present in

man-made institutions or practices.

Against the classic view of nature as a

system of rational laws, the young Romantic

poets emphasized the beauty, strangeness,

and mystery of nature. They saw nature not

as logical but an organic process, in a

constant state of development and change.

In the organic process or dynamic process,

all of the natural entities belong to each

other. Byron, viewing the wonderful

scenery of the Rhine, and the Alps, states, “I

live not in my myself, but I become / Portion

of that around me” ( Childe Harolde III,

LXXII). In this light, Byron heralds

Robinson Jeffers’s philosophy of

“Inhumanism” that is an extraordinarily

harsh critique of the dominant social

practices and attitudes of our species.

Inhumanism as Jeffers in the preface to The

Double Axe and Other Poems defines is “a

certain philosophical attitude . . . a shifting

of emphasis and significance from man to

not man; the rejection of human solipsism

and recognition of the transhuman

magnificence” (vii). Hwong Chang Liou

notes, inhumanism is “a persistent assault

against anthropocentric thought and activity,

especially when manifested through

industrial civilization and its ecological

destruction” (327).

But the artistic admiration toward

Wordsworth and Coleridge on the part of the

second generation was mixed with moral and

political disillusionment. They felt the

founders of English Romanticism had given in

to the values of an unjust and reactionary

society. This disillusionment has left the

young Romantics free to develop their own

artistic interests in a way that a more complete

allegiance to Wordsworth and Coleridge

would not have. “A poet,” says Shelley in A

Defence of Poetry, “is a nightingale, who sits

in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude

with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men

entranced by the melody of an unseen

musician, who feel that they are moved and

softened, yet know not whence or why”(361).

Shelley believed that the poet’s imagination

and insight permitted him to see more in the

everyday world in an extraordinary way.

While Wordsworth’s imagination isolated and

focused, Shelley’s dissolved and transcended.

Shelley further states, “poets. . . were called in

the earlier epoch of the world legislators or

prophets: a poet essentially comprises and

unites both these characters” (358). This

conception of the poet-prophet, quite different

from the viewpoints revealed in Wordsworth’s

Lyrical Ballads marks an appropriate

starting-part for the poetry of the young

generation. More than any other Romantic

poet, Keats sought to subordinate his own

personality in his poetry and to focus attention

on the complex individuality of his subject.

He treats the world as “the vale of

soul-making”, and “how necessary a World of

Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence

and make it soul” (“Letter to George and

Georgiana Keats” April 21, 1819).

Of all the Romantic poets, Byron was

regarded as a “heretic.” Despite his status

as the archetypal Romantic, Byron had

stronger ties to the eighteenth century than

any of his contemporaries. He was a great

admirer of Dryden and Pope, and he was

sharply critical of all his fellow Romantics,

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Lishu Chang Chien: Romantic Poetry: A Critical Investigation 265

except Shelley, for having devoted

themselves to “a wrong revolutionary

poetical system.” In his first letter on

Bowels’ Strictures on Pope he writes, “It is

the fashion of the day to lay great stress

upon what they call ‘imagination’ and

‘invention,’ the two commonest of quality:

an Irish peasant with a little whisky in his

head will imagine and invent more than

would furnish forth a modern poem” (554).

His affinity with the eighteenth century is

apparent not only in Don Juan, but also in

many of his shorter lyrics and songs.

Byron never regarded “imagination,” which

enabled many Romantic poets to transform

their world and to escape from it, as an

important element in his work. Instead,

Byron presents in his poems a direct, a

personal contact with nature and elicits a

kindred spirit. Byron reflects such a

sensibility in the wildness,

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more;

( Childe Harolde IV. CLXXVIII)

The impulses of the woods, the shore,

the deep sea, and the wind construct a

natural community in which Byron finds no

human intruder. The tone foreshadows

Thoreau’s retreat at Walden and adventure

in the Main Woods. The romantic

sentiments attract later nature writers in the

quest of an ecocentric community rather

than an anthropocentric society as Byron

announces, “I love not Man the less, but

nature more.”

6. Critical Reception

The poetic theory of the Romantic age

reflects the art of poetry as a mirror of

human mind and interaction with the natural

world. It is an art for achieving effects on

an audience, concurred in referring to the

motives, emotion, and imagination of the

individual poet. If poetry “is the product of

a poet singing to ‘cheer [his] own solitude

with sweet sounds’ or “the overflow of the

poet’s feeling, or expression for its own

sake,” the problem arises: what use is such

an activity to the reader? Although the size

of the reading public had increased rapidly

during the eighteenth century, most

Romantic poets felt that they were not

understood or appreciated by the reader, that

their values were not those accepted by

English society as a whole. Indeed, poetry

demands much from the reader if he is to

follow what Shelley says:

Man is an instrument over which a

series of external and internal impressions

are driven, like alternations of an

ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre,

which move it by their motion to

ever-changing melody. But there is a

principle whthin the human beings, and

perhaps within a sentient beings, which act

otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not

melody alone, but harmony, by an internal

adjustment of the sounds or motions thus

excited to the impressions which excite them.

(A Defence of Poetry 35-56)

Just as a great musical composition

demands attention and interpretation and is

best appreciated by repeated listening, great

poetry becomes significant only when both

its obvious and implied meanings are

comprehended and its mood and music felt.

To appreciate the mood and implied

meanings of English Romantic poetry

thoroughly, we need to examine the main

political and social realities of these years,

and to look more closely at the specific ideas

and practices of writers.

7. Reference

[1] Bate, Jonathon. Romantic Ecology:

Wordsworth and the Environmental

Tradition. London; Routledge, 1991.

[2] Blake, William. Blake’s Poetry and

Designs. Eds. Mary Lynn Johson and

John E. Grant. New York: Norton, 1979.

[3] Byron, George Gordon. “Letter[John

Murray] on the Rev. W. L. Bowel’s

Strictures on Pope.” Byron’s Letters

Page 8: A Brief Introdction to English Romantic Poets-張簡麗淑教授-ok

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and Journals. 12 vols., ed. Leslie A.

Marchand. Londo, 1973-82.

[4] Byron’s Poetry. Ed. Frank D. et all.

New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

[5] Coleridge, Samuel T. Biographia

Literaria. Eds. James Engell and W.

Jackson Bate. NJ. Princeton UP, 1983.

[6] Glotfelty, Cherry, & Horald Fromm.

Eds. The Ecocriticism Reader:

Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens:

U of Georgia P, 1996.

[7] Godwin, William. Enquiry

Concerning Political Justice. Oxford:

Oxford UP, 1971.

[8] Hazlitt, William. The Spirit of the Age. In

The Complete Works of William Hazlitt.

Ed. P.P. Howe, 21 vols. London: 1930-34.

[9] Jefferson, Robinson. The Double Axe

and Other Poems. New York:

Random House, 1948.

[10] Liou, Hwong Chang. “Edward Abbey’s

Wilderness in Desert Solitaire” in The

Proceedings of The Second Tamkang

International Conference on Ecological

Discourse. Tamshui: Tamkang UP,

2003.

[11] Shelley, Percy Byssche. “A Defence of

Poetry.” Criticism: The Major

Statements. Ed. Kaplan, Charles. New

York: St. Martin’s P, 1975.

[12] Wordsworth, William. “Preface to

Lyrical Ballads.” Criticism: The Major

Statements. Ed. Kaplan, Charles. New

York: St. Martin’s P, 1975.

Romantic Poetry: A Critical Investigation

張簡麗淑張簡麗淑張簡麗淑張簡麗淑

陸軍軍官學校外文系陸軍軍官學校外文系陸軍軍官學校外文系陸軍軍官學校外文系

摘要摘要摘要摘要

本文就浪漫詩的主題、語言、詩人角色及詩的功能研究浪漫詩藝與現代生態評論之關

係。理論上,浪漫運動捍衛人權與自然權,並挑戰工業革命所引發的社會病症。透過生

態中心論和地緣意識學我闡明浪漫詩的生態評論宗旨,並針對詩藝研究解說浪漫詩如何

立下生態評論之雛型,呼應其倡導人與大自然共生的核心價值。

關鍵詞關鍵詞關鍵詞關鍵詞: 浪漫詩藝,生態評論,人權與自然權,地緣意識,共生