The Difference Between Augustanism and Romanticism Sebastian Melbourne College

Alexander Pope’s poems ‘An Essay on Criticism’ and ‘Windsor Forest – To the Right Honourable George Lord Landsdowe’ compared with the critical extract of William Wordsworth’s Preface ‘Poems Volumes 1’ creates a basis in which one can demonstrate the difference between Augustanism and Romanticism. Pope was regarded as ‘one of the primary taste makers of the Augustan Age’ whose works appraised the work of Augustan Age writers such as: Horace, Ovid and Virgil. Whereas Wordsworth was a primary influence in the launch of Romanticism in literature through the joint publication of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ with Samuel Coleridge. This essay will first define both movements, providing historical context to analyze both movements separately. It will then discuss Augustan conformity and taste with Romanticism and its individualistic style. And, by comparing Wordsworth’s Poem ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour’ and Pope’s ‘Windsor Forest’ this essay can compare their use of nature and place in their respective literary movements, and the poetic form that naturally follows.

Augustanism was a literary period dating approximately from 1700-1745, reacting against the lack of discipline of...