Final answer:
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are the writers who held to traditional ideology and style as opposed to modernists. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were poets who brought exploration and inventiveness to American literary tradition, fostering new forms of expression.
Step-by-step explanation:
The direct answer in two lines to the student's question is: Contrasting with modernists, the two writers in the text who held to traditional ideology and style are William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These poets are associated with the Romantic movement, which is different from the modernist approaches of writers like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.
An explanation in 200 words about why Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are not considered traditional in their style is that both poets introduced new voices and innovations that diverged from earlier American literary traditions. Dickinson and Whitman, classified as late Romantics, challenged existing forms, with Dickinson's concise and often abstract verses opening new realms in lyric poetry, and Whitman's free verse establishing a unique and expansive rhythmic style that mirrored the dynamism and expansiveness of the American spirit. They promoted a spirit of exploration and inventiveness that aligned with the United States' growth in various sectors. While they emerged from a Romantic backdrop, their works are not derivative but innovative, with Whitman and Dickinson contributing to the evolution of poetic expression and helping to set the stage for later movements, including modernism. Therefore, they are not the traditionalists in contrast to modernists; it is Wordsworth and Coleridge who fit this description.