Romanticism and Utopia

This paper is an attempt to illuminate the utopian nature of the British Romantic Poetry through both poetic and non poetic projects of Wordsworth and Coleridge in their early years. The early phase of the French Revolution in the 1790s, in which the British Romantic Poetry was conceived, was undoubtedly utopian in its basic principles, which predetermined the trajectory of the Romantic movement from its very beginning.  The early poetic projects of Wordsworth and Coleridge, including Lyrical Ballads, along with "Pantisocracy", their unfulfilled project of community movement, were pursued with a strong Utopian impulse. Wordsworth and Coleridge came to review their radial politics in their later years of course, but their poetic works composed even after their so called political recantation should still be described as utopian in their own distinctive ways.

In/Out 6(1999): 8-35

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