Romanticism In William Wordsworth And The British Industrial Revolution

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By the 1780s, the British Industrial Revolution, which had been developing for several decades, began to accelerate further; technology changed. The economic transformation brought about the British industrial revolution along with social reformation (Sparknotes.com, n.d.).
But, not everyone was happy with this change. The poets involved in the Romantic Movement were critical about the Industrial Revolution. They reacted to the philosophy that man could employ science to control the earth the way he pleased. They claimed that man was a part of nature and needed to respect and care for the earth. This view extended to other forms of life as well as the earth. The romantic poets felt that a few powerful people were making decisions for their …show more content…

Romanticism emerged in the late eighteenth century in reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Wordsworth and other Romantics emphasized the vigor of everyday life, the importance of human emotions, and the enlightening power of nature. Romanticism also stressed the power of imagination, which encouraged freedom from standard conventions in art and sometimes provocatively reversed social conventions (Newworldencyclopedia.org, n.d.)
He helped to unite the serenity of nature and the inner emotional world of men; poetry that reunited readers with true emotions and feelings. (Shmoop, 2008). He became England's poet laureate in 1843, a role he held until his death in 1850 (Kettler, n.d.)
Originally inspired by the French Revolution and the social changes it brought, Wordsworth tried to create poetry of the people, in the language of the common man. In both in his poems and his prose, Wordsworth was particularly concerned with discovering a sort of divine ecstasy that, for him, could be found only in nature and the innocence of childhood. With a mind ever wandering after the wonders of nature and the emotions of the heart, Wordsworth was originally criticized for his sentiment and the familiarity of his verse by his contemporaries. (Newworldencyclopedia.org,