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How do Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poetry styles compare?
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Wordsworth and Coleridge are both groundbreaking poets whose poetry rejects Neoclassic subjects and form. However, Wordsworth's most famous poetry emphasizes simple and everyday interactions with nature, while Coleridge's is most famous for its emphasis on the dreamlike and supernatural.
I think that the basic premise of work from both Wordsworth and Coleridge has to start out on their beliefs of Romanticism. They both felt that the artist had to carve out a new identity through their work. This is part of the reason why their work is so distinctive, not seeking to follow any sort of established and accepted conventions, but rather seeking to create something new and different. Their style of writing seeks to forge links with the audience, bringing them into a story telling reference point about experiences and one's own subjectivity. For example, Coleridge's "Kubla Khan " is meant to create intrigue and sense of wonderment within the reader. Wordsworth's poems accomplish much the same as they highlight a reverence for internal subjectivity emotions, and natural beauty. In both writers, the belief of Romanticism's fundamental primacy on individual experience is of vital important to their...
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work and how it is created.
Comparing Wordsworth and Coleridge is a huge task, and I suggest you start a Discussion Group question with this to get as much information and as many ideas as possible.
That said, I'll give you some basics.
Wordsworth is famous for changing the diction thought acceptable in poetry, or at least strengthening the movement toward a "common" or simplified poetic diction. He took some of the formal language out of poetry and replaced it with simple, concrete words. "Common" may be too strong of a word when you compare Wordsworth with, say, contemporary poetry.
Wordsworth's poetry also emphasizes nature in a personal, lyrical way. Personal reactions to nature and insights gained from nature are paramount.
Coleridge, in contrast, emphasized the imagination. His poetry dwells in the land of fantasy. Whereas nature may receive the most emphasis in Wordsworth's poetry, the imagination is central to Coleridge's. His speech, in contrast to Wordswoth's, is exotic and imaginative. His language is the language of fantasy.
Those are some basics to get you started, but there is much, much more to this comparison.