The Romantic literary period spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries saw a poetic revolution in form spurred by poets such as William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Although the content of these authors' poetry is undoubtedly political, this essay will question whether the forms used by these authors had any political significance. James Baldwin said that “the purpose is to do your work, and your work is to change the world” (Horvath). This observation can be applied to the work of Shelley and Wordsworth, where their focus is seen in every aspect of the poem, including the form. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Much of the content that emerged in poetry during this era was in reaction to the French Revolution and the radical politics it inspired. Wordsworth and Shelley drew inspiration not only from the revolution, but also from the reaction of the British government at the time and the social and economic effects this had on the British people, particularly the lower classes. In the 18th century, the idea emerged that the content of a work should determine the shape of its form (Stewart 57). Their chosen forms were also undoubtedly influenced by the British government's reaction to a revolution in France and the implementation of the Treason Act and the Seditious Meetings Act in 1795. As a result of these acts, published writers had to become less explicit in their writings. and were forced to find other ways of communicating their thoughts, thus encouraging them to use all aspects of the poem, including language and form, to achieve their goals. Stewart argues that the poets of 1798 "awakened to throw off the shackles of 18th-century prosody and expressed individual passion through their newly invented measures and themes." by Spenser and Milton (72). The emphasis on accentual meter allowed poets to focus on certain words, because the reader must read the accents and concentrate on the words, rather than just listening to a syllabic lyrical melody. Certain choices of form also had a practical purpose: the sonnet form fit perfectly into a newspaper column. Simon Jarvis has also made the argument that the verse's popularity was due to its ability to respond to historical changes and events too "terrifying" or "exhilarating" to address explicitly (99). In the case of Shelley and Wordsworth, this would also be due to legal limitations placed on the press and new criticism of the British government. Roberts argues that literary critics are always looking for ways to historicize texts based on their “living context,” focusing on how and why they were written (7). Roberts recognizes the possibility that a text might mean something different if placed in a different context, such as the application of Romantic texts to contemporary politics (9). For Roberts, “if a text wants to change society, it must impose a discontinuity between the society that produced it and the society that consumes it” (12). The ballad form allows "The Female Vagrant" and "The Mask of Anarchy" to have the potential to change society in Roberts' terms because of their universality, simple diction, and use of allegory. Shelley personifies the abstract concepts of “murder, fraud, and lawlessness” in “The Mask of Lawlessness” (line 101). Non-specific terms can be applied toany revolution or political event. In this sense, the ballad form had a universality that was transferred from its oral tradition to its use in the Romantic era. Chandler and McLane observe the different context of each poets' movement, comparing the Augustan poets and their successors, who responded to coffeehouses and the growth of newspaper distribution, to those of the Victorian era who, decades later, responded to a time of “unprecedented growth in London” and industrialization (1-2). The Romantics, on the other hand, were responding to revolution, mass literacy, and an increased discourse of knowledge (Chandler and McLane 2). For Shelley, the French Revolution was "the main theme of the age in which [they] live" and inspired the themes of poetry written at the time. However, although a direct comparison can be drawn between "The Mask of Anarchy" and the events of Peterloo, the ambiguity regarding the metaphors Shelley uses and the universal language when referring to characters in the text such that “Anarchy” and “Destructions” opens the text to other contexts and can be applied to other events such as the industrial revolution or the world wars (lines 26, 74). Wordsworth deliberately chose "low and rustic life" to describe in his ballads because together the content and form speak more clearly and thus the purpose of the poem can be more "forcibly communicated", as Wordsworth stated that each of his poems had a specific purpose (“Preface” 295-296). He opens "The Female Vagrant" with a picturesque picture of village life from "A Field, a Flock" and the "charms" that once adorned the vagabond's "garden" (Wordsworth "The Female Vagrant", lines 3, 19 , 20). . Wordsworth had visited France in 1790, at the height of the "revolutionary debate" and had personal experience of the country's immense poverty. By using this simple language, Wordsworth would have seen himself as giving those suffering from poverty a voice and a political platform. Thomas Love Peacock criticized first-generation Romantics, such as Wordsworth, for merely piecing together “disjointed relics of tradition” (Chandler and McLane 2). This criticism, however, rejects any purpose a poet might have had in choosing and adapting a traditional poetic form as Wordsworth does with his Lyrical Ballads. Lynch and Stillinger argue that the Romantics had a defiant attitude toward limits, including limits of form, because they were impatient with the literary genre they had inherited and therefore turned to creating hybrids, such as the " lyrical ballads” (20). Wordsworth was writing at a time when poetry was dominated by highly educated authors who imitated the great classical poets, such as Milton who revisited the formal language and form of the epic. Horvath seems to argue that the content was designed to fit the meter, rather than the form attached as an instrument to better communicate the content, as Wordsworth does in "The Female Vagrant", and therefore increases the political significance of the poem by easily communicating the poet's criticisms. of society. This can be seen as the result of combining the "intellectual upheaval" of the Enlightenment period with the thought and creativity of the Romantic period, as Horvath observes. In his studies in the “Preface to 1802,” Wordsworth observes that language and the human mind act and react to each other, meaning that writing in verse would have certain expectations from the audience. He denied the existence of a poetic hierarchy, as short lyric poems had previously been considered the lowest level of the poetic ladder(Lynch and Stillinger 292). Wordsworth chose the lyric form not only to subvert this hierarchy, but also to reach a wider audience by writing with the "true language of men" in an attempt to fit the metrical arrangements of a lyric ballad ("Preface" 293 ). Writing "The Wanderer" in the Spenserian stanza, Wordsworth wrote in the 1850 "Preface" that his aim was to explore how "more pathetic situations and feelings, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, can be borne in metrical composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose” (Stewart 59). This is seen in the poem where the audience's expectations of a lyrical ballad with a joyful rhythm are subverted with grotesque imagery of the "unburied dead who lay in festering heaps" (Wordsworth "The Female Vagrant", line 147). Wordsworth creates a tension between the expected form and the form that emerges. Addison believed that the simplicity of the ballad form also helped the poet capture the public's imagination (Lynch and Stillinger 31). Ballads had sound effects that reconnected printed poetry to a living voice as the musicality brought it to life, with accentual focus closely tied to natural speech (Lynch and Stillinger 31). This is a technique that Wordsworth experimented with in Lyrical Ballads, such as in "The Female Vagrant" where the voice shifts from the speaker to the woman who thus "tells her naive story" in the opening stanza. The Wanderer is therefore able to recount her plight in the face of increasing urbanization, industrialization and the American War of Independence, highlighting the effect these events had on rural life and the discontent that resulted. , created among the working classes, like the “pains and plagues that arise.” [their] heads have fallen” (Wordsworth “The Female Vagrant,” line 127). The simple language and form of the poem make this fate realistic and believable. Wordsworth's chosen form and diction reflect the wanderer's voice and upbringing, immersing the audience into her life. Simple diction, for Wordsworth, is more emphatic and, combined with the steady rhythm of the ballad, it helps to accurately reflect the universal experience of rural dwellers, in Wordsworth's mind, communicating a universal truth in the poem which can be extracted from its "living context" and applied to other moments and events in time, such as industrialization in the Victorian era or the current plight of refugees in Europe. In his "Preface" to the Ballads Lyrically, Wordsworth wrote that poetry was made to be "the language actually spoken by men" (Stewart 58 He also expressed the view that poetry was the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", on which a meter). would provide a regulating force (Stewart 58) also argued that such formal language and diction caused other poets to "separate themselves from the sympathies of men", a result which would have negatively affected his writing (Horvath). . While Wordsworth was writing from Britain at the time of "The Female Vagrant", much of Shelley's later writing was done in exile in Italy and he relied on reports from England, such as news of the Peterloo massacre. Shelley's exile situation, however, allows him to be more explicit in his criticisms. The significance of the "Two Acts" adopted in 1795 is, however, visible in the fact that Shelley's "The Mask of Anarchy" was not published until 1832, after Shelley's death. Both poets were, however, influenced by William Godwin's "Inquiry into Political Justice", which predicted an inevitable but peaceful development towards the final stage ofsociety with equal distribution of property and no government (Lynch and Stillinger 6). Shelley was seen as an atheist, revolutionary, and libertine, whose morals and opinions were said to have influenced his poetry (Lynch and Stillinger 749). After moving to Italy in 1818 with Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft, Shelley considered himself an exile from England, a “foreigner” and an “outcast,” “rejected by the human race” (Lynch and Stillinger 750). This distant perception of events in England gave him a broader view as well as a platform to express his opinion on the events at Peterloo. In August 1819, a famous public orator, Henry Hunt, and a group of peaceful protesters met at St Peter's Field, Manchester, to campaign for parliamentary reform. The end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 had seen an increase in the number of workers becoming involved in the reform movement, campaigning for universal suffrage in the belief that it would lead to better use of public money and lower taxes. fair. The demonstration was broken up by the Manchester Yeomanry, a group of volunteer soldiers, and the resulting violence left between ten and twenty demonstrators dead and hundreds injured. The response was a cry of sympathy from the public for the situation of the demonstrators. The British government responded by passing the "Six Acts", which contributed to the suppression of public and press freedom, and many critics considered it an act of paranoia. While Shelley was in exile and could freely write poetry on the subject of Peterloo, intending to have it published in England by Leigh Hunt, he would have seen the need for its meaning to be more implicit and communicated through the allegory, language and form. For Shelley, “language, color, form, and habits of religious and civil action are all the instruments and materials of poetry” and would therefore be instruments of communicating the political purpose of the poem (Roberts 288). Roberts states that Shelley aimed to redefine what was political, which gave his poetry the opportunity to be a political voice (289). Politically, for Shelley, the struggle had to be against the existing order rather than towards a utopia. This political thinking translates into the form of the poem where Shelley adapts and transcends the limitations and expectations of a ballad, similar to Wordsworth, rather than creating an entirely new form. "The Mask of Anarchy" was Shelley's call for revolution after the Peterloo Massacre, alternating between a call for violence and a call for an approach of passive resistance, reflecting the speaker's internal battle, then that he calls on men to “rise like lions” while they have “a fierce thirst to trade/Blood for blood,” but encourages them “not to do this when you are strong” (lines 151 , 194-195, 196). The conflicting views expressed reflect Shelley's inspiration from Godwin who advocated passivity and the inevitability of change, as well as Shelley's own disappointment with the outcome of the French Revolution after 1815, where the poor suffered of a serious economic depression and where the old autocratic monarchies were restored, a disappointment which may have aroused a desire for violence, expressed in the poem. For Reno, this conflict was due to Shelley's "skeptical idealism", as the poem calls for violence, but then repeatedly "turns in on itself" in the repetition of passive resistance, particularly in the stanzas 73 to 81, where he begins each with “Let us” rather than rebel against it. The last lines of the poem evoke a lightly veiled incitement to revolt with violence.