William Wordsworth: Nature vs. Humanity

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Wordsworth has been considered to be one of the most significant romantic writers in history. The romantic period was one of the most influential time periods of British literature and was referred to as incidents of life. Romanticism followed little of the same old boring rules and left authors free to write as they felt. Most literature from this period was based on love, fascinations, obsessions, myths, and nature, these and other such emotions or areas of interest are what changed the eighteenth-century ideas of poetry forever. Wordsworth is considered a romantic poet, because his writings were very imaginative, emotional, and visionary. A majority of Wordsworth’s literature expressed his obsession with nature. He had many literary works, some on nature and some on humanist topics. Although Wordsworth considered himself to be a humanist writer, most of his readers still consider him to be more of a writer on nature. Once a reader has begun to read some of Wordsworth’s poetry they soon realized he is a naturalist romantic. When the Industrial Revolution started, Wordsworth was appalled by the idea of factories and how workers were hired to work such long hours, with hardly any pay for all of their hard work. During the Industrial Revolution there were many factories being built up, these took away most of the open countryside that everyone had so enjoyed. So like most romantic poets of his time Wordsworth decided to revolt against the Industrial Revolution and wrote many pieces about nature to show his feelings of opposition to the revolution. Wordsworth always thought of himself as a humanist writer, so it just made sense that his poems written during the industrial revolution were completed about nature du... ... middle of paper ... ...dsworth has all the qualities of a romantic naturist, and very few of the humanistic qualities. Sometimes it takes another person to point out that you are actually doing the opposite of what you think you are. In Wordsworth’s case he always thought he was a humanist poet when in reality he was a naturalist poet from the very beginning. References Roper, Derek. “Reviewed works: Shelley's Annus Mirabilis, The Maturing of an Epic Vision, The Critical Heritage.” The Review of English Studies, New Series. 28 (1977) 459-466. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar. 2010 Beach, J.W. “Reason and Nature in Wordsworth.” Journal of History of Idea. 1 (1940) 335-351. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar. 2010 Cosgrove, Brian. “Review: Wordsworth, Reality, and the ‘Absolute Self’.” “Reviewed works: The Prose Works of William Wordsworth”. An Irish Quarterly Review, 64 (1975) 49-58. JSTOR. Web. 21 Mar. 2010

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