Offer a Close Comparative Reading Essay

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was innate(p) in 1772, in Ottery St Mary in Devonshire. During the Romantic era at a epoch of revolution from 1770-1830. At this time Britains economy was experiencing the industrial revolution, consequently creating radical class divisions and an extremely large scale of dissatisf effect between the lower classes and the wealthy classes. In addition The En get byenment era direct the dramatic change in the way in which the Western domain of a function viewed acquaintance, Politics, and Philosophy. Particularly English scientists John Locke and Issac Newton shone light upon mans former ignorance regarding physics, biology, temper and human beings.Lockes An Essay C at a timerning Human Understanding (1690) was hugely influential, referable to his philosophical mentation and his mechanical theories on personality. The profound ways of thinking in the 18th Century sculpted the world in which we lie with in today. The amative literature of this age was a product of the scotch and social period in which they lived in. It is said that the deconstructive reading of Romanticism emphasize its ironies, its self-consciousness and the complexities of the ways in which it brought together philosophy, literature and history.The majority of romanticistic poets, especially William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were discontented in this age of comprehension and reason cod to the mechanical way of thinking,and the emphasis on orderliness, reason and improvement that it displayed. Coleridge and Wordsworth image this limited the capacity of the mind. They believed that there was a deeper reality inside the the satisfying world and that our spiritual nature digest be realized done the use of our visual sensations. Anna Barbauld (1743-1825) was another extremely influential English poet of the 18th Century, born in Kibworth, Leicestershire.And along with likes of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert S issuehey th ey defined Romantic poetry. Barbauld was a famous pistillate writer, and during this era of patriarchy this was quite uncommon, as women in this period were raise in a gender social occasion in society fitted into the role of the domestic world and not in the public world. She led a charmed life, and studied at Warrington Academy, and conditioned Greek and latin, Barbauld was raised as and remained an advocate of the liberal implications of Enlightenment thought. Rationality, compassion, and democratic human rights were the mainstays of her political positions.She was know for her contribution to romantic era, and during her lifetime was admired for her talent by the four-year-old Samuel T. Coleridge. Barbauld had a brief connection with Coleridge. Anna Barbauld had a more complex alliance with the young romantic poets, not least because she lived well into the nineteenth one C and she was increasingly treated as a remnant from another age. Her verse, To Mr Coleridge in 1797 is in regard to her meeting with him when he was 25 years of age, he had laissez passered to Bristol to meet with her and to wished to show her a range of his poetry at the time.The meter reflects Barbaulds initial impression of Coleridge, and her initial judgment of his character, counseling him to lucre more attention to his duty and activity, and to watch out for indolence. It is clear that the numbers, To Mr Coleridge has a retrospective, and negative tone of voice as she shows her disregard for Coleridges humane view on the world and his frivolous writing style, as she begins the 43-lined poem in light of his work, and an obvious natural setting, Midway the hill of science.I think Barbauld purposely chose midway to represent a manoeuvre in his career. The poem uses an allegorical take on Coleridges consider as Barbauld describes the grove in line 3, A Grove extends, in tangled mazes wrought, a grove is a reference to a short forest or garden, here Barbauld is using the grove figuratively as a symbol for Coleridges imagination. As Romantic poets believe that the imagination is fundamental.she is trying to suggest that inside this grove makes the perception of the impertinent world warped, as she indicates that it is, filld with strange magic spell-dubious shapes. She manufactures an graze of natural imaginings along Coleridges journey, Barbaulds, To Mr Coleridge has a dream-like quality. The imagery used in the first fourteen lines such as, filld with strange enchantment, gloom and mystic visions and filmy-net represent how Coleridge replaced the systematic way of thinkingthat the nirvana brought about by John Locke and Issac Newton, by believing in several(prenominal)thing else which we cannot fall upon or control. Coleridge believed that, A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science In lines 10-13 Barbauld is critiquing how Coleridge views an object, obvious to sight and touch, Coleridge was always c at oncern ed with the problem of how the poetic mind acts to modify or transform the materials of sense without violating the truth to nature.An unconditional tone can be detected by Barbauld in the lines, Filt thro sable glades, and lure the eager foot Of youthful ardour to eternal spare-time activity. She highlights his age with the word youthful(line 6), suggesting that he inexperienced is still yet to learn more things about the world and be realistic in his views. patronage 19 uses the word Indolence which was a key word in the time of the enlightenment, meaning, lazy and idle.Like most young people of the time with a grain of idealism he was stirred by the radical enthusiasms of the early 1790s12 She allows draws on Coleridges vacant mind (line 22) Coleridge believed that the mind was the reference book and the test of art13. The reoccurring theme of youth alike gives the poem a puckish element. Barbauld was a literary judge from the older contemporaries, and, through their p olitics coincided for a period, her rectitude was probably not very comforting to Coleridge14 making the generation gap between the two apparent in the poem.The extended parable of the hill of science can be seen as a nonliteral journey, Here each mind Of finer mould, acute and delicate In its high progress to eternal truth, the speaker in the poem is narrating the events of a journey through the english countryside, but yet some of the things mentioned arent present, here we can see that Barbauld alluding to the work of Coleridge, yet empathetically suggesting that he has a long way to go before arrive at his full potential. Barbauld believes that Coleridge is losing sight of social and political context.Lines 32-34, Youth belovd Of Science of the Muse belovd not here, Not in the maze of figurative lore. Barbauld implies that Coleridge does not get a hold on reality. The spleen-fed fog(line 40) that is being referred to is a metaphor for Coleridges lost sight along his path, and she appeals to his Unitarian nature by ending the poem with Now Heaven conduct thee with a Parents love (Line 43). This Lime-Tree enclose My Prison15 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was also indite in 1797 and is a representation of a journey, similarly to Barbaulds, To Mr Coleridge.Coleridge wrote the poem afterwards he was unable to join his chums on a walk throughout the countryside, due to an injury, his wife had accidentally scalded his foot with boiling milk, resulting in Coleridge leftfield under the Lime-Tree contemplating all the sights that his friends would encounter. In Coleridges poem he uses the speakers neaten of thought as the narrative for the poem as he breaks his testify physical restriction and mentally takes the journey.The poem uses a conversational tone, arising the poem with, Well. In addition, due to it being blank verse this allows Coleridge to not have to keep a consistent rhyme scheme or a meter for the poem, and the conversational element a dds intimacy for the reader as he describes initially what his friends will encounter on their walk, the poet both observes and meditates out loud as he addresses a silent listener. 16. Many of Coleridges conversational poems were simple and had no poetic form.In the first stanza of the poem there is resentment and isolation represented in Coleridges plaguy sense of humour as the speaker says, I have lost Beauties and feelings (line 2-3), addressing himself as the I in the poem we have a sense of a self-centered Coleridge, he is sat beneath a lime-tree as he pitys himself over his injury that keeps him from going for a walk with friends. The use of monosyllabic words in the first stanza backs up Coleridges attitude to his prison at the start. His attitude soon begins to change once he begins to write down his sequence of thoughts, That all at once (a most fantastic sight) and he then switches from self-pitying to imagining, he connects to his milieu and enjoys being able to expe rience nature through his friends journey.It is almost as if Coleridge has an epiphany as he has a moment of realization through his imagination. At the beginning of stanza two there is a world-shaking transition in Coleridges perception, starting with Now (line 21) we can see that the speaker has thoughts have changed direction and has become a point of reversal, as he starts to liven the journey through Charles honey, who he addresses in the poem, a close friend of Coleridge, and describes him asgentle. It is clear that Coleridge is happy that Charles is able to embrace in his walk in the countryside, thou hast pined And hungerd after Nature, many a year, in the great City pent (lines 29-31).Interest in natural surroundings increased at the time17 this was mainly due to the industrial revolution at the time as the City was linked to the mechanical, semisynthetic and urban downsides in contrast to the countryside made naturally by God. In comparison to Anna Barbaulds, To Mr Co leridge throughout both poems both poets continue to capitalize accredited words to highlight their significance.And continue to use enjambment as a device to display urgency through lines that run on. In This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison he is breaking his physical barrier in the journey, whereas in Barbaulds poem it is a case of . Coleridge believed that poetic language depended for its takings on the poets heightening or intensifying it (through patterning, compression, repetition and so on) and thus making it more specialized and taking it further away from the patterns of everyday speech.A common characteristic that sets the majority of female romantic poets apart from the males is the way many male poets refer to themselves as I throughout the text, which Coleridge displays in This Lime-Tree My Bower Prison. Coleridge also addresses his close friend Charles Lamb in the poem, he repeats the sentiment, My gentle-hearted Charles in the second and third stanza a fewer times, th e speaker is putting emphasis on his particular name strategically.Coleridge also makes religious connotations about nature and the master. He points out that they are, Beneath the full wide heaven (Line 22) and the Almighty spirit, when he makes Spirits perceive his presence. (Line 43) In the last few lines of the second stanza leads to the sudden change in mood in stanza three. Coleridge believes that by accessing the imagination is sharing in the creative authoritys of God. 19 The divine power is manifested by God. Coleridge was Unitarian, a religion that believed in freedom of belief.In the book of genesis in the Bible, God said, let there be light, and there was light. This relates to the metaphor of the imagination as a lamp, an active power that shines onto the external world, changes the way in which we see the world as the light transforms. 20 This is can be reflected through Coleridges poem as he is able to project his vision to the readers but it is not what he can seeon the surface. Which is in contrast to John Lockes which establishes idea of the mind as a mirror, reflecting what it sees. 21One of the main differences of these two poems is that Coleridge uses his imagination to create the journey whereas the journey in Barbaulds poem is that journey was an action that took place. And through nature Coleridge discovers that he has the power to connect to nature quite an than separate from it. In Coleridges Doctrine of Imagination, Biographia Literaria was on of his most significant work from the romantic era, written much later in his career, that he described the imagination in a way that dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate.