Poetry: Comparing Elizabeth Barret Browning and William Wordsworth
I've been studying poetry with my current online Creative Writing diploma and have been encouraged by the course to research 2 poets of my choice, who wrote in the same genre. So I chose two of my favourites from the late 18th and early 19th century period of Romanticism: Elizabeth Barret Browning and William Wordsworth. While Wordsworth wrote during Romanticism, especially in its "great decade," (1797-1808), Elizabeth Barret Browning was heavily influenced by this literary and artistic phase, but wrote poetry primarily in the Victorian era. This means that some of Elizabeth's poems address Victorian social and political issues, such as child labour, abolitionism and women's rights. But a crucial similarity between these two poets is that they both wrote passionately and emotively. While Wordsworth often focused on nature in his poetry, as many Romantic poets did, Elizabeth explored her own love life, emotions and experiences in Sonnets Fr...