The document summarizes elements of romanticism found in several poems from Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It discusses how the poems focus on nature as a source of knowledge and truth, reject organized religion and education, feature suffering souls, and explore the limitations of reason through themes of imagination, emotion, and memory.

1. A Book Review by Bri Zabriskie Romantic Themes in Lyrical Ballads

2. What is Romanticism? Movement/period/genre - Artist as deity - Revolution - Doubleness - Exploration/ new forms - Imagination - Mysticism - Change - God - Seer - Truth - Epistemology - Memory - Humanity - Emotion - Reaction to revolution and neoclassical period - Limits of reason - Nature - Role of the poet - Self interrogation - Limitations of reason and imagination

3. Summary: A sailor captivates a wedding guest with a gory tale of his recent voyage Elements of romanticism: Blends emotion with artistic description Suffering self - the mariner is suffering penance for his sin Mariner escapes into a mythical/ imaginative world The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere

4. Summary: The story of a "poor mad youth" found in nature and raised by a woodman. Despite religious upbringing, the boy remains wild and eventually escapes the constraints of organized religion and society in favor of nature Elements of romanticism: Focus on nature as source of epistemology Rejection and criticism of organized religion and modes of education Fantastical elements The Foster Mother's Tale

5. Summary: The poems narrator tells the story of a woman who is supposed to have been rejected by her fiance for another woman just in time to find out she was pregnant and to have subsequently drowned the child. Elements of romanticism: Focus on nature (the thorn, the mountain, the pond), seems to turn to nature for answer to life's questions Suffering soul (asks the question why is suffering universal?) The Thorn

6. Summary: debate about the better source of knowledge: nature or books? Quote: "Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife, Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music; on my life There's more of wisdom in it.“ Elements of romanticism: Answers the question of epistemology with nature Reaction against enlightenment reasoning Explore limitations of reason "Expostulation and Reply" and "The Tables Turned"

7. Summary: The speaker sits above Tintern abbey and reflects upon the power of nature over him in his youth and worries about loosing these memories Elements of romanticism: Power of nature to lead us to joy Sublime Questions the validity of the speaker himself/ self interrogation in order to discover truth Focus on memory as source of truth Tintern Abbey

8. The End