Romantic Innocence

wild-eyed Innocence Though sentimentalistism at large is non c at a timerned with lost innocence only, unless a whole swan of human emotions, it is certainly an important theme for writers of this literary epoch. Several Romantic poems testify to this, as well as other Romantic or pre-Romantic literary texts. In the England of the 18th century, scientific progress along with industrialism had completed great changes in society.Europe on the whole was shifting cursorily economically, socially and politically. In France, Enlightenment writers such as Rousseau had already started call into question whether Reason as such could solve all human problems, and in England too, Swiftian satire, for instance, had shown how insufficient rational thought can be in effecting solutions to upcoming problems, not the least social ones of which there were to be plenty in the growing urban areas, as Industrialism progressed.Romanticism in literature was assert itself towards the end of the ce ntury, and someone wish well William Blake, for instance, in his collection of poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, potently questioned the postulate of affairs where individuals were fed into the ugly mouths of industrial society like innocent lambs crammed into the gaping jaws of the tyrannical machinery of economic progress, administered by a state which subscribed to laissez-faire economic politics, cheered by industrialists, bankers, financiers and manufacturers.The sentiment that much of this was against record itself was prevalent among many romantic poets and writers. In both cry of every Man,/ In every Infants cry of fear,/ In every voice in every ban,/ The mind-forgd manacles I hear, wrote Blake,1 and his was not the only voice of criticism. Blake juxtaposes, as it were, two areas of human experience (Innocence/Experience) but with his lament at lost innocence, there is also the realise that these phases are inevitable in human experience perhaps complemen tary.William Wordsworth, on the other hand, indeed brings forth the view that character carries a spectator threatened by materialism The world is too much with us late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers Little we conceive in Nature that is ours We have given our hearts away, a miserly boon 2 The poem focuses on the loss of natural determine by subscribing to distasteful materialism. The general idea is that we are more at a loss than gain in treating nature and ourselves this way. At this Romantic horizon a lost paradise takes shape an innocent nature disdained by human greed or folly.This sentiment, obviously, is an ancient one. Where did we lose our step, once out of Eden? Blake would probably say that we never wholly did, whereas Wordsworth might have suffered more from nostalgia? 1 2 Blake, Songs of Experience London, 1791 William Wordsworth, The conception Is Too Much With Us Sources Alastair Henry, Catharine Walker Bergstrom Texts and Events, Stude ntlitteratur 2008 (2001) William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience William Wordsworth The area is Too Much With Us