The Romantic literary period that covered the late 18th and early 19th centuries saw a poetic revolution of form spurred by poets such as William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Although the content of the poetry of these authors is undoubtedly political, this essay will ask whether the forms used by these authors had a political meaning. James Baldwin stated that “the point is to get your job done, and your job is to change the world” (Horvath). This observation can be applied to the work of Shelley and Wordsworth, where their purpose can be seen in every aspect of the poem, including the form. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Much of the content that emerged in poetry during this period was a reaction to the French Revolution and the radical politics it inspired. Wordsworth and Shelley drew inspiration not only from the revolution but also from the reaction of the British government at the time and the social and economic effects this had on the British people, particularly the lower classes. In the 18th century, the idea emerged that the content of a work should determine the shape of its form (Stewart 57). The forms chosen were no doubt also influenced by the British government's reaction to a revolution in France and the implementation of the Treason Act and the Seditious Meetings Act in 1795. As a result of these acts, published writers had to become less explicit in their writings. and they were forced to find other ways to communicate their thoughts, thus encouraging them to use all aspects of poetry, including language and form, to achieve their goals. Stewart argues that the poets of 1798 "awakened to shake off the shackles of eighteenth-century prosody and expressed an individual passion through their newly invented meters and themes", this included a shift in focus from syllabic to accentual meter, partly under the influence of Spenser and Milton (72). The focus on an accentual meter allowed poets to focus on certain words, as the reader must read the accents and concentrate on the words, rather than simply hearing a syllabic lyric melody. Some formal choices also had a practical purpose, that is, the sonnet form was perfectly suited to a newspaper column. Simon Jarvis also advanced the thesis that the verse's popularity was due to its ability to respond to historical changes and events that were too “terrifying” or “exhilarating” to address explicitly (99). In the case of Shelley and Wordsworth this would also have been due to the legal limitations imposed on the press and further criticism of the British government. Roberts argues that literary critics always look for ways to historicize texts in terms of “living context,” focusing on how and why they were written (7). Roberts recognizes the possibility that a text might mean something different when placed in a different context, such as the application of Romantic texts to contemporary politics (9). For Roberts, “if a text wants to change society, it must force a discontinuity between the society that produced it and the society that consumes it” (12). The ballad form allows "The Female Vagrant" and "The Mask of Anarchy" to have the possibility of changing society in Roberts' terms due to their universality, simple diction, and use of allegory. Shelley personifies the abstract concepts of “Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy” in “The Mask of Anarchy” (line 101). Non-specific terms can be applied to any revolution or political event. In this sense the form of the balladit had a universalizability that was transferred from its oral tradition to its use in the Romantic era. Chandler and McLane look at the different context for each movement of poets, comparing the Augustan poets and their successors, who responded to coffeehouses and the growth of newspaper distribution, to those of the Victorian era who, decades later, responded to a period of “growth without precedents to London” and of industrialization (1-2). The Romantics, on the other hand, were responding to revolution, mass literacy, and increased discourse about knowledge (Chandler and McLane 2). For Shelley, the French Revolution was “the chief theme of the age in which [they] live,” and inspired the themes of the poetry written at the time. However, although a direct comparison can be drawn between "The Masque of Anarchy" and the events of Peterloo, the ambiguity relating to the metaphors used by Shelley and the universal language when referring to characters in the text such as "Anarchy" and "Destructions ", opens the text to other contexts and can be applied to other events such as the industrial revolution or even the world wars (lines 26, 74). Wordsworth intentionally chose "low and rustic life" to portray in his ballads as together, the content and the form, speak more clearly and therefore the purpose of the poem can be "communicated by force", as Wordsworth stated that each of his poems had a specific purpose ('Preface' 295-296). He opens "The Female Vagrant" with a picturesque picture of village life of "A field, a flock" and the "enchantments" that had once adorned the vagrant's "garden" (Wordsworth "The Female Vagrant" lines 3, 19 , 20) . Wordsworth had spent time in France in the 1790s, at the height of the "revolutionary debate" and had personal experiences with the country's immense poverty. By using this simple language, Wordsworth would have seen himself as giving those suffering poverty a voice and a political platform. Thomas Love Peacock criticized first-generation Romantics, such as Wordsworth, for merely piecing together "disjointed relics of tradition" (Chandler and McLane 2). This criticism, however, dismisses any purpose a poet may have had for choosing and adapting a traditional poetic form as Wordsworth does with his lyrical ballads. Lynch and Stillinger argue that the Romantics had a defiant attitude towards limits, including the limits of form, as they were impatient with the literary genre they had inherited and therefore turned to creating hybrids, such as the "lyrical ballads" ( 20). Wordsworth was writing in a period when poetry was dominated by highly cultured authors who imitated the great classical poets, such as Milton who revisited the formal language and form of the epic. Horvath seems to argue that the content was created to fit the meter, rather than the form attached as a tool to better communicate the content, as Wordsworth does in "The Female Vagrant", and thus increases the political significance of the poem by readily communicating the criticisms of the poet. of the company. This can be seen as the result of combining the “intellectual upheaval” of the Enlightenment period with the thought and creativity of the Romantic period, as Horvath notes. In his studies in the 'Preface of 1802', Wordsworth notes that language and the human mind act and react to each other, which means that writing in verse would have certain expectations from the audience class. He denied the existence of a poetic hierarchy, as short lyric poems were previously considered the lowest level of the poetic ladder (Lynch and Stillinger 292). Wordsworth chooses lyric form not only to subvert this hierarchy but also to achieve awider audience writing in the “true language of men” as he aimed to fit the metrical arrangements of a lyrical ballad ('Preface' 293). In writing "The Female Vagrant" in Spenserian verse, Wordsworth wrote in the 1850 "Preface" that his aim was to explore the ways in which "more pathetic situations and feelings, that is, those with which a greater proportion of pain is connected, can be borne in metrical composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose” (Stewart 59). This is seen in the poem in which the audience's expectations of a lyrical ballad with cheerful meter are subverted by grotesque images of the “unburied dead who lie in rotting piles” (Wordsworth 'The Female Vagrant' line 147). Wordsworth creates tension between the expected form and the emerging form. Addison believed that the simplicity of the ballad form also helped the poet capture the imagination of the audience (Lynch e Stillinger 31).The ballads had sound effects that reconnected the printed poetry to a living voice as the musicality brought it to life, the accent was closely connected to natural speech (Lynch and Stillinger 31). This was a technique that Wordsworth experimented with in lyrical ballads, as in "The Female Vagrant" in which the voice is shifted from the speaker to the woman who "so her naive tale told" in the opening stanza. The Tramp is, therefore, able to narrate her difficult situation in the context of increasing urbanization, industrialization and the American Revolutionary War, highlighting the effect that these events had on rural life and the resulting dissatisfaction created among the working classes as the “pains and sores that fell upon [their] heads” (Wordsworth 'The Female Vagrant', line 127). The simple language and form of the poem make this situation realistic and believable. The form and diction chosen by Wordsworth reflects the voice and upbringing of the tramp, immersing the audience in her life. Simple diction, for Wordsworth, is more emphatic and, combined with the normal ballad meter, helps to accurately reflect the universal experience of those living in rural settings, in Wordsworth's mind, communicating a universal truth in poetry that can be taken out of its "life context" and applied to other moments and events in time, such as industrialization in the Victorian era or the current plight of refugees in Europe. In his “Preface” to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth wrote that poetry was made to be “the language actually spoken by men” (Stewart 58). He also expressed the opinion that poetry was the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” over which a meter would provide a regulating force (Stewart 58). Wordsworth also argued that such formal language and diction caused other poets to “separate themselves from the sympathies of men,” a result that would negatively affect his writing (Horvath). While Wordsworth was writing from within Britain at the time of "The Female Vagrant", much of Shelley's later writings were written in exile in Italy and relied on news arriving from England, such as the news of the Peterloo massacre. Shelley's position in exile, however, allowed him to be more explicit in his criticisms. The significance of the "Two Acts" passed in 1795 is demonstrated, however, by the fact that Shelley's "The Masque of Anarchy" was not published until 1832, after Shelley's death. Both poets were, however, influenced by William Godwin's Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, which predicted an inevitable but peaceful evolution toward the final stage of society with equal distribution of property and no government (Lynch and Stillinger 6). Shelley was perceived as an atheist, revolutionary andlibertine, morals, and opinions that would influence his poetry (Lynch and Stillinger 749). After moving to Italy in 1818 with Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft, Shelley considered himself an exile from England, an “alien” and an “outcast,” “rejected by the human race” (Lynch and Stillinger 750). This removed perception of the events in England gave him a broader view and a platform to express his opinion regarding the events in Peterloo. In August 1819, a famous public speaker, Henry Hunt, and a group of peaceful demonstrators met at St Peter's Field in Manchester to campaign for parliamentary reform. The end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 had seen an increase in the number of workers involved in the reform movement, who fought for universal suffrage in the belief that it would lead to better use of public money and fairer taxes. The protest was quelled by the Manchester Yeomanry, a group of volunteer soldiers, and the resulting violence left ten to twenty demonstrators dead and hundreds injured. The response was an outcry of public sympathy for the demonstrators' plight. The British government had responded by passing the "Six Acts", which contributed to the suppression of the freedom of the public and the press, and many critics saw this as an act of paranoia. While Shelley was in exile and could freely write poems on the theme of Peterloo, with the intention of having them published in England by Leigh Hunt, he would have seen the need for its meaning to be more implicit and communicated through allegory, language and module. For Shelley, “religious and civil language, color, form, and habits of action are all the instruments and materials of poetry,” and thus would be tools for communicating the political purpose of poetry (Roberts 288). Roberts states that Shelley aimed to redefine what was political, this gave his poetry the opportunity to be a political voice (289). In terms of politics, for Shelley the struggle had to be against the existing order, rather than towards utopia. This political thought translates into the form of the poem in which Shelley adapts and transcends the boundaries and expectations of a ballad, similar to Wordsworth, rather than creating an entirely new form. “The Mask of Anarchy” was Shelley's call for revolution after the Peterloo massacre, moving from a call for violence to a call for a passive resistance approach, reflecting the internal battle of the speaker, as he asks men to " rise like lions" while they are "fiercely thirsty to exchange/blood for blood", yet he encourages them "do not do so when you are strong" (lines 151, 194-195, 196). The conflicting views expressed reflect Shelley's inspiration taken from Godwin who promoted passivity and the inevitability of change, as well as Shelley's disappointment with the outcome of the French Revolution following 1815, when the poor suffered from severe economic depression and the old autocratic monarchies were restored, a disappointment which may have encouraged the desire for violence expressed in the poem. For Reno, this conflict was due to Shelley's "skeptical idealism", as the poem calls for violence, but then repeatedly "folds in on itself" in the repetition of passive resistance, particularly in stanzas 73–81, where he begins each with “Let us leave” rather than rebel. The final lines of the poem evoke a thinly veiled incitement to revolt with violence where the massacre experienced “swells as inspiration” (Shelley 'The Mask of Anarchy 361). Rather than a direct simile, Shelley might infer that an inspiration similar to the massacre will be awakened in his audience. Shelley's choice of form reflects his goal of.