Children in Romanticism. What should I know?

[B-DASH]

Hello everybody,
I'm studying English at university (not my mother tongue), and I have to write an essay to my 19th Century literature subject. I've chosen Children in Romanticism as a topic, focusing on the concept and different examples and perspectives of 1st generation writers as Wordsworth, Coleridge or Blake.

After this long introduction :yawnb:, here is my question: I am reading about "the innocence"... but I don't really know which concepts I should have in mind for my essay !!

Any comments on it will help me a lot!

[qimissung]

http://librivox.org/songs-of-innocence-and-experience-by-william-blake/

Here is a start on your research. This short article specifically refers to Blake and his beliefs about children and innocence.

[B-DASH]

Thanks for the link.
I've started researching on the concept on nature and loss of innocence too.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Ha, ha, did almost the exact essay myself a couple of months ago!

[JBI]

Read, for instance, Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth's Ode (and Coleridge's Dejection), and The Prelude and examine how Wordsworth recasts "The Fall" as the fall inherent in all of us, as we lose our innocence of childhood, and how poetry functions as the return to the "Paradisaical" state lost when one ages.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yeah, Lyrical Ballads is a good place to turn to. You could also talk about the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution for both Wordsworth and Blake. I also argued about how the adult learns through the innocence of the child, or child-like figure, as mine was also focused on figures on the margins of society, so Lyrical Ballads was perfect for that as well.

Edit: Try for instance "Anecdote for Fathers" by Wordsworth.

[B-DASH]

Thank you very much everybody !

[Silenced Chaos]

I think approaching the topic from the perspective of innocence is very accurate, for instance I would recommend you to use 'The Chimney Sweeper' from Songs of Innocence. Note that childhood in the poem is portrayed as a memory,

'When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue'

I think that will help you a lot.