from Romanticism to Materialism

          
                                        
                                        
is not an idea I would have thought of, but is one I
think is worth pondering.  When I encountered it, I  
immediately thought of William Wordsworth and Ralph   
Waldo Emerson and William Carlos Williams with their:
"The world is too much with us"; "Things are in the   
saddle"; "No ideas but in things."  Could most poets  
alive during the rise of Industrialism be considered  
Materialists in spite of whatever intellectual and/or
spiritual values they held?  In spite of their poetic   
and/or aesthetic positions?  A step back to take in      
how thoroughly things--especially those "practical"  
things which by our ingenuities we humans have made   
and continue to make--have captivated us/ definitely  
promotes this idea.  See                               
                                                     
William Wordsworth
                                                            
Ralph Waldo Emerson  
                                                                
William Carlos Williams                                 
                                                     
but also see                                          
                                                   
Samuel Taylor Coleridge                                     
                                                          
                                                     
and then go to this Joshua Corey post:                    
                                                
6/18     
                                              
It is his idea, and it seems to have arisen out of his    
thoughts about Ammons, whose works he has been   
reading; and out of his concurrent thoughts about Ashbery.    
This post is heavy with conclusions I, for one, had never   
entertained.  However, if his general thesis is accepted,
most schools of poets since the Romantics could easily    
be Materialists.                                         
                                                          
                                                       
                                                        
                                                      
                                                        
                                                       
bl00356