Does Romantic Writing Interrogate the Events of its Timeframe? William Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence" and Dorothy Wordsworth's "From The Grasmere Journals"

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, The University of Western Australia (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), course: Romanticism and Revolution, language: English, abstract: The Romantic age, stretching from 1785 to 1830, can arguably be regarded as a turbulent period, rife with historical, political and cultural upheavals. Not surprisingly, echoes of these momentous events can often be found in Romantic Writing, such as in Blake¿s ¿A Song of Liberty¿, which interrogates the French Revolution.

For England, however, it was probably the Industrial Revolution with its countless social and labour-related repercussions that played the most pivotal role. Urban manufacturing centres transformed the primarily agricultural society into a modern industrial nation. The mechanization of the working processes, numerous enclosure acts, and resultant unemployment of agricultural labourers, led to a population drift to cities as well as rural pauperization. The end result: three million labouring poor with low incomes from 6 to 15 pounds a year made up the largest section of the British population.