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Minkee Kim

Professor David Latané

ENGL 321 - Paper 1

5 October 2010

The Romantics and the Reconstitution of the Human

In ‘A Defense of Poetry’, Percy Shelley asserts that, “Poets are the unacknowledged

legislators of the World” (Shelley 850). He believed in the notion that great poetry, firstly,

emanates from the imagination and, secondly, that they share universally permanent values.

This idea of the imagination seems to be highly emblematic of an intrinsically prevailing

current within the literary zeitgeist that energized Romantic era writers, which, as Shelley

puts it, “is connate with the origin of man” (838). Indeed, his ‘world’ could be characterized

by a climate of expansion and evolution, giving birth to the almost organic life-force that

constituted the poetry born out of it. It is a sentiment more recently echoed by M. H. Abrams

in his conception of Romantic literature being like a ‘lamp’ as opposed to a ‘mirror’, through

which the writer’s inner soul illuminates the world, rather than merely reflecting it. In

addition, the great poets of the age reflected this newly found Romantic ideal in their work

allowing them to explore the philosophical and metaphysical definition of both poetry, and of

poets. Filtered behind the poetry lies, in essence, a preoccupation with the nature of the

human which serves as the matrix for what William Hazlitt describes in ‘My First

Acquaintance with Poets’ as the nexus of “poetry and philosophy” (Hazlitt 772). This account

of his meeting with Coleridge, then, provides an apt starting point on which to base this

analysis since this it is predicated on the way poets are defined by writers of his era.

Given the context of the period, the emphasis on the notion of what a ‘poet’ is can

clearly be seen from both its poetry and criticisms. Furthermore, the ideas expressed by
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Wordsworth and Coleridge on the subject reinforce the notion of ‘poets’ as being a category

of the human. The thesis of this analysis will correlate their thinking and suggest that the way

in which they define the nature of the ‘poet’ actually constitutes the very essence of human

nature itself, and what it means to be ‘human’.

Hazlitt was clearly fascinated by Coleridge as evidenced by his detailing of how the

‘poet’ thinks and sees the world as he notes that, “In digressing, in dilating, in passing from

subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on ice,” and later describing the

title of “poet” as being an “inspired name” (776-777). These insights give a sense of Hazlitt’s

elevated view of ‘poets’ as distinct from ‘men’ and it seems that “the face of Poetry” is what

defines this delineation (778). Nevertheless, Hazlitt appears unable to translate his thoughts

into concrete ideas and can only speak of Coleridge’s “imaginative creed” and his own

“sensation” that gave him “new hopes and prospects” (778). This apparent indefinable quality

highlights the philosophical nature of ‘poets’ as an idea, yet it is capable of somehow raising

his human consciousness to a previously unattainable level.

Much of the poetry of the era could be said to exemplify “the cradle of a new

existence” which Hazlitt alludes to (778). Poems such as Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans

Merci’ and Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ have come to characterize a period that played on the

themes of the unseen world, the mysterious, and the supernatural. Coleridge himself, on the

subject of imagination, stated that it is, “the living power and prime agent of all human

perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I

AM” (Coleridge 477). On this construction, it is imagination that feeds into the very notion of

humanity, which, when coupled with poetry, begins to disambiguate the relationship between

‘poets’ and ‘the human’. It is a central idea which the young Hazlitt also considers:

In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt so) our imagination has

a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and waking, and have
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indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always

something to come better than what we see. (Hazlitt 779)

Interestingly, he evokes a corporeal image of imagination, which in the context of this study,

not only fits with the idea of poets as essentially human, but also with Wordsworthian ideals.

Turning, then, to Wordsworth, the philosophical ruminations upon the nature of ‘the

poet’ is clearly identifiable in his work. In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he avers that poetry

can be equated with the language of the common man and that its characteristics act in

harmony with the human mind since he considers, “man and nature as essentially adapted to

each other” (Wordsworth 271). What he seems to be suggesting is that man, by his very

nature, possesses an innate ‘poetic’ consciousness. Clearly, a poet is a human being, but the

philosophy that Wordsworth develops is axiomatic of a dichotomy which affords ‘poets’ the

position as a category within the given human spectrum. Indeed, he tackles the very question

of what the notion of a ‘poet’ entails, to which he gives this answer:

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 amongst mankind. (269)

He further qualifies this view with the now famous aphorism that, “poetry is the spontaneous

overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility”

(273). The fusion of these two points crystallizes this idea that the notions of the human,

imagination, poetry, and poets are mutually constitutive. So, in a sense, it is the very capacity

of poets to fulfill an inherent human potential for feeling certain sensations, which are in turn

triggered when certain circumstances are met.

Wordsworth articulates these insights in his poetry, most notably in the Second Part of

The Two-Part Prelude. Here, we are presented with a poetic illustration of the philosophical
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ideas at play. He charts the development of the creative spirit from “infant babe … till death”

(269-309) and conveys the central premise that underpins this study within the lines:

Such, verily, is the first

Poetic spirit of our human life,

By uniform control of after-years

In most abated and suppressed, in some

Through every change of growth or of decay. (305-308)

Again, this denotes that poets, although inherently human, have an ability to transcend the

boundaries of a certain consciousness that allows them to be open to the adoption of this

poetic nature - an essential trait of what it means to be human. Thereby, it defines humanity

and human nature itself rather than being defined by it.

While Wordsworth concentrated on the dual function of the ‘poet’ and ‘man’ as

somehow sparking creative action, Coleridge emphasized the adjacent notion of the

imagination. Coleridge’s primacy of imagination has already been quoted. However, it is

argued that the two poets’ reasoning not only achieves the same conclusion, but also is not

radically different in their natures. Accordingly, in ‘On Poesy or Art’, when he asserts that,

“Poetry also is purely human; for its materials are from the mind, and all its products are for

the mind” (254), it is a standpoint that seems to concur with the aforementioned

Wordsworthian principles. He goes on, like Wordsworth, to ponder the question of what a

poet is and for him, the notions of a ‘poet’ and ‘poetry’ are inextricably linked. Although his

methodology is different to Wordsworth’s, their ideas nevertheless dovetail together to form

a coherent whole. Indeed, his description of the poet in Chapter 14 of Biographia Literaria, is

one who:

brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its

faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity …diffuses
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a tone and spirit of unity that blends and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by

that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated

the name of imagination. (Coleridge 482)

This passage echoes Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and in this

sense, Coleridge’s views neatly complement and perhaps complete those of Wordsworth. In

essence, they share a similar outlook: the idea of the “whole soul of man” is similar to the

notion of humanity’s intrinsic “poetic spirit,” whilst having a “primary imagination” is, in

effect, the same as a “more lively sensibility.” Coleridge gives these abstractions a single,

collective label and uses it to illustrate another facet of how poets can be said to define the

parameters of human nature.

From what has been discussed, it is evident from the emotive writings of the

Romantics that this era was compelled into action by the desire to redefine the mimetic

function of poetry in relation to the world. Furthermore, by reconciling the ideas these

prominent Romantic thinkers, the argument that poets and their poetry define and constitute

the human rather than being defined by it seems to be a logical and plausible motivation

behind that desire. We can detect an implicit sense of the poets’ use of “poetic spirit” to

further their understanding of the human, albeit in abstract terms, reconstituting the human as

the “legislators” of their epoch. Such a view reflects a dominant theme of Romantic poets:

their awareness to understand and grapple with the process of creating art through natural

emotion. However, it would be fallacious to conclude that these concepts are neither weighty

nor complex. They are irreducibly so, and the fact that they are still debated today is

testament to the enduring and fractious place of the Romantics within the literary canon.
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Works Cited / Bibliography

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria (1812) in The Norton Anthology of English

Literature Volume 2, 8th ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: Norton, 2006. 474-

488. Print.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. On Poesy or Art in Biographia Literaria, Volume II. J. Shawcross.

ed. London: Clarendon, 1907. 253-263. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2, 8th ed.

New York: Norton, 2006. Print.

Hazlitt, William. My First Acquaintance with Poets (1823) in Romanticism: An Anthology,

3rd ed. Duncan Wu. ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 771-784. Print.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Defence of Poetry (1821) in The Norton Anthology of English

Literature Volume 2, 8th ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: Norton, 2006. 837-

850. Print.

Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802) in The Norton Anthology of English

Literature Volume 2, 8th ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: Norton, 2006. 263-

274. Print.

Wu, Duncan. ed. Romanticism: An Anthology, 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Print.