This is made immediately apparent through the poem’s opening stanza, which sensuously depicts the “soft inland murmur” and “steep and lofty cliffs” (7) of the banks of the Wye in intricate detail, thus elevating Wordsworth’s natural surroundings to an almost spiritual level. Composed during a period of significant doubt towards previously accepted doctrines and a gradual shift to rationalist thought, Wordsworth’s piece implicitly rejects the standards of traditional Christianity, instead beginning to replace it with a new, more exclusive, form of worship towards nature’s beauty. As an eighteenth century prospect poem, Tintern Abbey is irrevocably shaped by the historical circumstances in which it was written. The ways in which the poets respond to both their surroundings and wider social changes, such as the process of Enlightenment, differ significantly, therefore making it possible to regard Ammons’ ambulatory poem as a post-Romantic rejoinder to Tintern Abbey. However, through his wandering depiction of the randomness and emergence of nature, Ammons offers a critique of the Romantic tradition, instead using loco-descriptive verse to express his sense of membership and discovery of the New World. Ammons’ Corsons Inlet, an American poem similarly composed following a walking tour, shares the Romantic tradition of expressing a deep emotional connection with rustic surroundings. Likewise, it is possible to claim that A. This description holds true for William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, an eighteenth century prospect poem that summons spiritual meaning out of nature through introspection and metaphorical explorations of the physical world. Writing in 1818, Samuel Taylor Coleridge characterises romantic landscape poetry as “the mediatress between, and reconciler of nature and man”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |