The Romantic Period
By: Elena Cornejo & Matt Bath
The Mystery of Imagination
- Romantics were "mind poets".
- They sought a deeper understanding of the bond between human beings and the world of senses.
- In the poem "Tintern Abbey" Wordsworth describes the element present in both the mind and nature as "something far more deeply interfused." Also as a creative thing that makes things happen. (imagination)
- Each of the Romantics had their own special view of the imagination.
- They believed that the imagination could be stimulated by both nature and the mind.
- Romantic Poems usually present imaginative experiences as very powerful or moving.
- Human imagination was also a kind of desire: motive that drives the mind to discover things that it cannot learn by rational or logical thinking.
- The purpose of this imitation is to create new realities in the mind.
The Romantic Poet
- Wordsworth makes it clear that the poet is special.
- For William Blake the poet was an inspired revealer and teacher.
- Shelley called poets the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
- Keats wrote that a poet is a physician to all humanity.
- In a sum of that, a poet is someone who human beings and society can't live without.