Romanticism and Subjectivity
1.Romanticism in Wordsworth poetry
Defining romanticism would certainly be very complex, even to limit it to a certain definition. Even contemporary studies, more in Europe, are still looking at what the term means from various perspectives. Thus, this romanticism has many beginnings in various forms. One that can be considered is in one of Lovejoy"s essays entitled "On the Discrimination of Romanticism" (1924). In this essay, Lovejoy recommends using the word romanticism rather than romantic, which, according to him. has implied various meanings. In addition, in 1949, Rene Wellek also developed what Lovejoy wrote about Romanticism in an essay also entitled "The Concept of Romanticism in Literary History". He carefully found Romanticism as a name for value system. He argues that romanticism is a sign of poetry in opposition to poetry in the era of neoclassicism, which also describes the inspiration and model of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Muallim, 2022,p65).
William Wordsworth, a prominent figure in the Romantic movement,
imbued his poetry with the ideals and themes characteristic of
Romanticism. His poetry often celebrates the beauty of nature, the
importance of individual experience and emotion, and the connection
between humanity and the natural world. One of Wordsworth's most
famous poems, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,"
exemplifies Romanticism in its portrayal of the natural world as a source
of spiritual renewal and inspiration. In this poem, Wordsworth reflects on
the transformative power of nature, describing how it has shaped his
consciousness and provided solace during times of absence.
Another notable work is "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," commonly
known as "Daffodils," where Wordsworth captures a moment of sublime
beauty in nature and the transcendent experience it evokes. The poem
emphasizes the importance of solitary reflection and the capacity of
nature to uplift the human spirit. Furthermore, Wordsworth's emphasis on
the individual's subjective experience and emotions is evident in his
poetry. He often explores themes of memory, childhood innocence, and
the passage of time, as seen in poems like "Ode: Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood".
Additionally, Wordsworth's use of simple, everyday language and his
focus on the ordinary aspects of life contributed to the Romantic
movement's emphasis on accessibility and authenticity in art. William
Wordsworth's poetry embodies the spirit of Romanticism through its
celebration of nature, exploration of human emotion, and emphasis on
individual experience (Abrams, 2012,p4)
.
"Wordsworth conveys his experiences with nature to readers through his
poem using vibrant imagery, a narrative-like structure and abstract
metaphors" (Fetterman, 2015).
This is the irony that Wordsworth is trying
to convey in this short poem. The irony of the world or nature has been
polluted by consumerists and materialistic humans. Humans have
forgotten nature and their original self. The irony of the mental health of
people who have forgotten their spirituality and God. This is clearly
contrary to the principles and beliefs of Wordsworth known as Romantic
Poet. Therefore, he prefers to become a Pagan to see how great and
beautiful the nature of the Lord"s creation is. Thus, this is also why
history records that Romanticism was born as nothing but a form of
mental resistance to enlightenment, which became the dominant discourse and constructed the civilization of western European society at
the time(Muallim,2022,P71).
Wordsworth was the poet who took common people as the subject
matter of his poetry and his strong devotion towards his intention made
him successful in doing so. According to Hough (1953), through the
strong handling of Wordsworth the theme of common people got a basis
that was mainly established in his "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads". In this
piece Wordsworth included his theory of poetry and under in it he
presented a detailed discussion on the role of common people in
literature. He held that the common life of the poor simple people could
serve as fit material for poetry, and that the diction (words and phrases) to
be employed in poetry should be drawn from the everyday speech, the
formula with which he led the revolt against the artificial diction of the
eighteenth century Neo-Classical poetry (Loegous 1934).
Poems such as
"The Solitary Reaper", "To a Highland Girl", "We are Seven", "Poor
Susan" and several other poems illustrate this theory.
The poet who expressed the deepest aspiration of English Romanticism
was William Wordsworth. He (1770-1850), was born the second child of
John and Ann Wordsworth at Cockermouth. Cumberland, on April 7th,
1770 (Long 2004). Wordsworth was living a happy childhood at
Cockermouth until 1778, when his mother died and the family was split
up. Wordsworth's sister Dorothy was sent to live at Halifax with her
mother's cousin, and the boys of the family were sent to school at
Hawkshead where they were educated well and cared for (Williams
1993).
It is very likely that Wordsworth became a solitary person who
had no friends but only nature (ibid)
However, owing to this solitary nature, he had gained an opportunity
to think deeply and quietly and more importantly, to appreciate the beauty
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of Nature that is, more often than not, easily ignored by people. Just this
beauty gave inspiration to William Wordsworth's numerous famous
poems. Presentation of common people is the most important
characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry(Choudhury, 2011,P30).
Wordsworth was the poet who took common people as the subject matter of his poetry and his strong devotion towards his intention made him successful in doing so. According to Hough (1953), through the strong handling of Wordsworth the theme of common people got a basis that was mainly established in his "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads". In this piece Wordsworth included his theory of poetry and under in it he presented a detailed discussion on the role of common people in literature. He held that the common life of the poor simple people could serve as fit material for poetry, and that the diction (words and phrases) to be employed in poetry should be drawn from the everyday speech, the formula with which he led the revolt against the artificial diction of the eighteenth century Neo-Classical poetry (Loegous 1934). Poems such as "The Solitary Reaper", "To a Highland Girl", "We are Seven", "Poor Susan" and several other poems illustrate this theory (Mitchell, 2015,p30,31).
2.The Relationship Between Subjectivity and Words
In Wordsworth's poetry, subjectivity plays a crucial role in shaping his poetic voice and themes. Wordsworth is known for his emphasis on the individual's subjective experience of nature and emotions. One notable example is his poem "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," where he reflects on his personal connection to nature and the memories associated with the landscape. Wordsworth often uses words to evoke subjective experiences, such as emotions, memories, and perceptions. His choice of language is deeply introspective, aiming to capture the nuances of human consciousness and the subtleties of emotional states.
For instance, in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," he employs vivid imagery and emotive language to convey the speaker's sense of awe and wonder at the sight of daffodils. Furthermore, Wordsworth's focus on the ordinary and the everyday reflects his belief in the power of subjective experiences to reveal profound truths about human existence. Through his poetry, Wordsworth seeks to bridge the gap between the individual and the natural world, emphasizing the transformative potential of personal reflection and subjective interpretation. Besides looking at Wordsworthian lyrics, I propose to compare the subjective voices in Wordsworthian ballads to that of dramatic monologues (I will briefly talk about Victorian dramatic monologues so as to lead into my discussion of Eliotic dramatic monologues).
Wordsworthian ballads are not usually compared to dramatic monologues since the subjective voice in Wordsworthian ballads is usually a narrator telling a story instead of speaking in a "critical moment". Yet, Wordsworth in fact deliberately manipulated the voice in his ballads into a distinctively "lyrical" one. As I pointed out in my previous chapter, it would be useful to consider "lyrical ballad as a form that Wordsworth created. In this way, we should also compare the lyric voice in his ballads to that of his dramatic monologues. Wordsworth occasionally distinguished the lyric voice in his ballads from the writing poet (as in "Goody Blake and Harry Gill" and "The Thorn"), and he also implied the presence of an audience.
The lyric voice obviously is not just a tool for telling a story. Rather, what Wordsworth would like to show is the acts of a specific subjectivity embodied by the lyric voice; that is, he presents us with a picture of how a subjectivity which sympathizes and is most sensitive to truth of human feelings perceives things and attempts to interact with people. In this way, the lyric voice in Wordsworthian lyrics and that in Wordsworthian ballads are similar as they both signify a subjectivity of individualism, which is a subjectivity that sees the extraordinary in the ordinary, and one in which, furthermore, the mind is self-motivated to propose and uphold its thoughts and beliefs. On the contrary, the Victorian dramatic monologues enact a very different kind of subjectivity. In Dramatic Monologue, Glennis Byron analyses Robert Browning's "Prophyria's Lover," a poem in which "the speaker tells of the visit of the woman with whom he is clearly having an illicit relationship" (38).
Byгоп then points out that in this poem,
The external world exists for this speaker only as a projection of himself, and the reliability of what he sees is immediately questioned. [...] In a world constructed in the speaker's own self-image, there is no room for reciprocity, for dialogue. [...] The attempt to establish authoritative subjectivity here necessitates the silencing of the other.39
Prophyria's Lover" was among the earliest dramatic monologues of Browning. We can see how the subjective voice is characterized: it is authoritative and self-enclosed. Although in this poem there is no explicit audience, in Browning's most discussed dramatic monologue, "My Last Duchess", which is frequently quoted as a typical. Victorian dramatic monologue, there is an audience who is the direct addressee of the speaker. The whole poem is a speech given by the Duke to an envoy from his fiancée (NG, 2009, p90, 100).
On this account we can conceive of the language and subjectivity of Romanticism, in relation to Jacques Derrida's writing on "Force and Signification," as the "architecture of an uninhabited or deserted city" populated only by ghosts: "A city no longer inhabited, not simply left behind, but haunted by meaning and culture. The state of being haunted, which keeps the city from returning to nature, is perhaps the general mode of the presence or absence of the thing itself in pure language" (5).
Post Romantic writing about subjectivity is unsettled by a dual sense of Romanticism as a haunted site and the source of numerous subse quent hauntings. The presence of these Romantic hauntings is felt through the post Romantic poetry of Wallace Stevens. Spectral presences echo in those "keener sounds" of Stevens's "ghostly demarcations" where the "ori gins" of "ourselves" are traced back to Romantic "fragrant portals, dimly starred". The closing movement of Stevens's "The Idea of Order at key West" is haunted in two distinct but interrelated ways (one verbal or textual, the other conceptual) that illuminate, more generally, my chapter's following account of spectral presences and subjectivity in Wordsworth's poetry(Sandy, 2015,p61).
References
- Sandy, Mark. "“Ghostly Language”: Spectral Presences and Subjectivity in Wordsworth's Salisbury Plain Poems." Romanticism and Philosophy. Routledge, 2015. 60-73.
- Mitchell, Robert. "Romanticism and the Experience of Experiment." The Wordsworth Circle 46.3 (2015): 132-142.
- Choudhury, Tahmina Akter. Common People in the Poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth in the Romantic Period. Diss. East West University, 2011.