William Blake - William Wordsworth - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

letteratura inglese

William Blake

Vision and imagination: he was called the visionary poet, he stressed the importance of imagination as an instrument of knowledge.

Philosophy: he found necessary to create a philosophy of his own, with the exaltation of the spirit over the body.

Innocence and experience: they are two faces of the human soul.

Freedom: he rebelled against any form of oppression and slavery, either social, political or religious.

Childhood: It is not only an age, but also a state of the soul, a childlike view of life, which may persist in maturity too.

Language: simple and lyrical in the songs and more difficult in the prophetic books.

Works: "Songs of Innocence and of Experience", "Milton", "French Revolution, a Prophecy".

William Wordsworth

Subject of poetry: Incidents and situation from common life.

Language:  a selection of language really used by men.

Poetry: it is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity = Memory.

Imagination: the capacity of colouring, to modify the object observed.

Childhood: the most important stage of man's life , in which we have visionary faculty. The child became the father of the man.

Nature: he was the poet of the relationship between Man and Nature; they were different but inseparable parts of the whole universe. He had a Pantheistic vision of nature. Nature was a friends and a comforter to man, the mission of the poet is to open men's souls to the inner reality of nature.

Works: "Lyrical Ballads", "Poems in Two Volumes", "The Prelude".

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Different types of works: translations from German, essays on philosophy, religion and politics.

Imagination:

Primary Imagination: is the living power and prime agent of human perception, it is the faculty by which we perceive the world around us. It is common to all human beings.

Secondary Imagination: it is the poetic vision, the faculty that a poet has to idealize and unify.

Contrast with Fancy that is inferior to it, it is only a mode of Memory, without the power to create.

Nature: he did not believe in a Pantheistic vision of nature because of his Christian faith, he saw it in a sort of neo-platonic interpretation, as the reflection of the perfect world of ideas.

Language: different from that used by Wordsworth, more archaic in the ballad, full of sound patterns in "Kubla Khan".

Works:

"Daemonic Group" composed by: "Christabel", "Kubla Khan" and "The rhyme of the Ancient Mariner".

"Conversation Poems" composed by: "The Nightingale", "The Eolian Harp" and "Dejection: an Ode".

"Biographia Literaria" in Prose.