How Values of Romanticism Are Inscribed in Two of Coleridges Poems?
Discuss how values of romanticism are inscribed in two of Coleridges poems. Make references to ‎specific images and key passages.‎
The Romanticism movement occurred between 1752 and 1832. The structure of English society was ‎undergoing large changes involving a reassessment of political, cultural, moral and religious values. ‎The French and American revolutions were happening, the industrial revolution had occurred and ‎the rise of the individual was a prominent part of the movement. These revolutionary ideas began ‎in the enlightenment period and resulted with the Romantic movement. Romantic poets such as ‎Coleridge explored the new ways of thinking which grew out of the movement in his poetry, ‎possessing strong philosophical foundations and sophisticated ideological underpinnings. ‎Coleridges two poems Frost at Midnight and This Lime Tree Bower: My Prison are representative ‎of the ideologies and radical thinking about society and the individual.‎
Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a conversation poem set in a isolated cottage ‎during the calm of the night. The narrator, is the only one awake with his child. It is a calm and ‎meditative poem in which a piece of ash fluttering on a grate leads to an imaginative journey ‎beginning with memories of his school days. Coleridge does not leave the confines of the cottage, ‎it is his mind that goes through the imaginative journey, and these thoughts lead him to new ‎understandings and reinforce his faith. This experience of imaginative journey brings comfort to ‎the narrator, the journey assures him of the role of God and nature in the life of his son. It is clear ‎within the poem there are many aspects which reflect the ideologies of the Romantic movement, ‎one being Wordsworth notion of the child. Wordsworths notion is a celebration of the innocence ‎of childhood, the love that only a child can sense in their hearts and the idea that children are ‎‎”closest to the kingdom of God”. Wordsworth believes that children, and their closeness to God ‎have more creativity and innocence to be unspoilt by the unnecessary vanities of life, hence, they ‎also have what it takes to admire, appreciate, accept, embrace, and love nature for what it is. This ‎idea is represented in Frost at Midnight, although slightly twisted. Coleridge rather than believing ‎that nature and childhood is connected as a necessity he sees it as fragile, precious and an ‎extraordinary connection of which he himself was deprived of and is wanting for his child. There is ‎a unity between the child and nature and the adults reconnection with nature through the ‎memories of childhood , Coleridge indicates the fragility of the childs innocence by relating it to his ‎own urban childhood. “And saw nought lovely but the sky and the stars”. It is here which Coleridge ‎demonstrates