Big R Romantic Poetry

OR: Not that "roses are red" crap


The picturesque descriptions of nature and the feelings it evokes is a staple of Romantic poetry. I, however, think the most interesting aspect of Romanticism is it's knee-jerk reaction against the rational ideas of the Enlightenment. Although the principals involved with the Rationalist and the Romantic movements were all progressive thinkers who sought to question traditional institutions and values, the Rationalists did so through reason while the Romanticists did so through feeling. Therefore, when reading Romantic poetry I like to pick out the aspects where a Rationalist would take issue and examine those aspects of the poem.

To me, the part of "Floating Island" that epitomizes the Romantic reaction against the Rational is the opening stanza:

"Harmonious Powers with Nature work
On sky, earth, river, lake, and sea:
Sunshine and storm, whirlwind and breeze
All in one duteous task agree."



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The Rationalist thinkers of the period just before Romanticism (like Jock Locke, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, etc.) were extremely good at categorizing. The very basis of rational thought is to break something down and analyze its separate parts. Dorothy Wordsworth's poem does the opposite here, calling Nature's powers "harmonious," and calling their work "one duteous task." I like this idea of the multiple aspects of Nature being fundamentally united, but rational thinkers would have likely liked more input on the interactions between the opposing and cooperating forces (if they would have bothered to analyze nature at all). While Wordsworth make it a point to name the different forces of nature, she emphasizes their unity above everything else. This is an important break from Rationalist thought, which would have been more preoccupied with interaction and conflict between forces.

I appreciate the Romanticists because they balance out all the categorizing and breaking down that the Rationalists do. I realize that it is important to break complex ideas and analyze them, but the Romanticists realized that there was a bigger picture that is sometimes just too big (or too small) to dissect. Romanticism focuses on the overall feelings that big, complicated ideas or simple, minute details can evoke in an individual and doesn't one over the other. It's a very intuitive way of looking at the world, and it helps people overcome "paralysis by analysis" that can occur when rationalization overly complicates something. Wordsworth's poem about the "little island" focuses on the effects nature has on the individual without breaking down why the forces do what they do. For instance, in the fifth stanza Wordsworth writes, "And thus through many seasons' space / This little Island may survive" (17-18). Romanticism focuses on the effect of complex and natural forces, rather than the impetus behind the effect.