Romanticism was a reaction against neoclassicism and emphasized imagination, emotion, nature, and the individual experience. Key principles of Romanticism included expressing subjective reflections and feelings through lyric poetry, elevating nature over society, viewing society as corrupting, and seeing the romantic artist as a prophet. Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" demonstrates romantic principles by depicting the speaker's personal experience of joy and inspiration in nature.

1. Romanticism

2. The World Is Too Much
With Us
• Read it through aloud
• Partner up for a Think Aloud
• Observations/what do you notice
• Questions and possible answers
• Reactions/what do you think or feel

3. Freewrite
• Write freely about what you think this poem is
about.
• What does Wordsworth want us to think/do?
• What questions do you have and what are
some possible answers?
• Does the poem apply to us today?

4. Words & Allusions
• Sordid boon: shameful gain/tarnished blessing
• Suckled in a creed outworn: brought up with an
outdated religion
• Proteus: sea god from Greek mythology who is
able to change shape at will
• Triton: another sea god who serves Poseidon in
Greek mythology. His special role is blowing a
conch that controls the waves, the “wreathed
horn.”

5. Sonnets
• 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter
• Italian sonnets (Petrachan) have two parts:
• 8-line octave that presents the problem
• 6-line sestet that resolves it
• Rhyme scheme:
• Abbaabba
• cdcdcd

6. What Romantic
principles are present?
• Lyric poetry: gives expression to the individual
subjective experience, esp reflections and feelings
• Elevation of natural over the social; nature as the
foundation of truth
• Society as corrupting; capitalism antithetical to values
of individual growth and expression
• Romantic artist as special seer or prophet with
message to correct society
• Use of symbolism to connect individual truths to
nature

7. Romanticism
• Direct response to the neoclassical
conventions and ideas of the Enlightenment
• Romanticism the result of revolution:
• American revolution
• French revolution
• Industrial revolution

8. Neoclassical Poetry
• Rigid structure (heroic couplets)
• Highly decorated language/ poetic diction
(ie. “finny tribe” instead of “fish”)
• Elevated subject

9. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
• Poetic Diction:
• “The principle object…was to choose
incidents and situations from common life, and
to relate or describe them…in a selection of
language really used by mean; and, at the
same time, to throw over them a certain
colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary
things should be presented to the mind in an
unusual way”

10. Poetic Subject
• “Low and rustic life was generally chosen
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; because in that condition
of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a
state of greater simplicity”

11. What is poetry
• “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings: but though this be true,
poems to which any value can be attached,
were never produced on any variety of
subjects but by a man, who being possessed of
more than usual organic sensibility, had also
thought long and deeply.”

12. What is a poet?
• “He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true,
endued with more lively sensibility, more
enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater
knowledge of human nature, and a more
comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be
common among mankind….To these qualities
he has added a disposition to be affected more
than other men by absent things as if they
were present.”

13. Romantic Neo-classical
Emphasis on Imagination Emphasis on Intellect
Free Play of Emotions and Passions Restraint and Obsession with Reason
Proximity to the everyday life of
common man
Remoteness or aloofness from
everyday life
Inspiration sought from country life
and nature
Incidents from urban life prevailed
Primarily Subjective Primarily Objective
Turned to Medieval Age for
inspiration
Turned to Classical writers for
inspiration

14. I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud
• “When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park
we saw a few daffodils close to the water side, we
fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore &
that the little colony had so sprung up— But as we went
along there were more & yet more & 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 . . . [S]ome rested their heads on [mossy]
stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed &
reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with
the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they
looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind
blew directly over the lake to them. There was here &
there a little knot & a few stragglers a few yards higher
up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity
& unity & life of that one busy highway... —Rain came
on, we were wet. ”

15. Process of composition
• Stage One: Observation—poet observes and
experiences powerful emotion
• Stage Two: Recollection—poet recalls the
emotion in tranquility
• Stage Three: Filtering—poet filters that which
is not essential
• Stage Four: Composition—poet becomes
“man speaking to men”

16. • “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings; it takes its origins from
emotion recollected in tranquility”