The Implications of Dorothy Wordsworth's Own Intellectual Evaluation
Dorothy Wordsworth is extremely critical of her poetic abilities; she personally goes as far to say that she has, "no command of language." Her lack of self-confidence in her poetic talents makes her reluctant to publish poems like A Winter's Ramble in Grasmere Vale. Even when Dorothy overcomes her unwillingness to publish her work she still displays a certain level of self-consciousness for she transmits her poetic works to her audience anonymously or under pennames. Partially, this feeling of incapacity as a writer is the result of the public resistance toward female poets of the Romantic period. Consequently, arenas of publication are very difficult to enter into as a female Romantic poet. Furthermore, Romantic poets of female gender are limited in their ability to generate a broad and loyal audience. These gender related limitations results in Dorothy's dual dependency upon her brother, William Wordsworth. She is dependent upon William, one of the most well renowned Romantic poets of all time, because he has access to both publication mediums and a loyal audience to his own poetic works. Inevitably, this dependency breeds a feeling of inadequacy within Dorothy.
The publication history of Dorothy Wordsworth's poem, A Winter's Ramble in Grasmere Vale projects the complex feelings Dorothy has in regard to her own talents as a poet. Dorothy's poetry undoubtedly lives in the shadow of her elder brother William Wordsworth; some researchers have expressed this fact to such lengths that they have formed a consensus where they believe that Dorothy's poetry, "lacks literary merit, especially when compared to that of the other writer and chief poet of the house...
... middle of paper ...
...oit sexual politics. This more positive feminine imagery in nature is most likely more attractive to such female authors.
Bibliography
Homans, Margret Women Writers and Poetic Identity; Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1980
Knight, William Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth; London, Macmillan and co., ltd.; New York, The Macmillan co., 1904 1897
Levin, Susan Dorothy Wordsworth & Romanticism; New Brunswick : Rutgers, the State University, c1987
Mellor, Anne Romanticism and Feminism; Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1988, Individual in Community, Susan J Wolfson
Selincourt, Ernest The letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth; Oxford, Clarendon P., 1967
Zimmerman, Sarah Romanticism, Lyricism, and History; Albany : State University of New York Press, c1999
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/dickinson/titanic/clampitt10.html
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, to KeziahWims Brooks and David Anderson Brooks. Brooks’ family didn’t have much income. Her father David Brooks was a janitor. Keziah Brooks, Gwendolyn’s mother was a school teacher. Soon after Gwendolyn was born her family moved away from Kansas. The Brooks family relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where Brooks remained the rest of her life. Brooks, as a child, loved to read. She was encouraged by her family and friends to do so. She spent most of her childhood immersed in her writing. Gwendolyn became a published poet at an early age. At age 13, Brooks’ poem Eventide was published. Her poem appeared in “American Childhood.” Brooks’ poems were frequently published in the Chicago Defender. At age 16, Brooks had written over seventy poems (J.Williams 28).In Brooks’ early years of writing she spoke on a lot. She talked about racial discrimination and praised African American heroes. Also, Brooks satirized both blacks and whites (A.williams1). In 1993, Gwendolyn meet poet James Weldon Johnson and writer Langston Hughes. The two influenced Brooks’ writing tremendously. The influence lead her to write over seventy poems (Bloom 12).
Shields, John C. (Eds.). (1988). The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
She makes you think about the wrong doings that were going on in this time period. It was very brave of her to talk about the things that she talked about especially while being a slave. During this time period she probably faced a lot of criticism of her works and many believed that someone was writing her poems for her because they were so good and it was uncommon for a black lady to write a poem as well as she did. As a young black lady who has to go through slavery and other adversities this was a very hard time period for them but Wheatley stood strong and followed in what she believed in. She fought for equality and freedom for African American men and women.
Barnstone, Aliki, and Willis Barnstone. A book of women poets. New York: Schocken Books, 1980. Print.
In 2007, Oprah organized the Oprah Winfrey Foundation which supports the education and empowerment of women, children, and families in the United States and around the world. She then opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls near Johannesburg in South Africa, helping young African American girls get an ed...
Dorothy Parker was not your average twentieth century writer. She was full of wit, sarcasm, and scathe (Rathbone). Her bold personality does not fail to show through in her writing. Her reviews for Vanity Fair, as a staff writer and drama critic, have been described as “a combination of acumen and nonsense,” (Bloom). Dorothy often got fired for offending clients, however, she was a large part in changing the "humorless and prudish" reputation that women had (Beilke). She developed a reputation for witty and out of the ordinary writing. She won the O. Henry Memorial Award for her short story, “Big Blonde” ("Parker, Dorothy"). Dorothy Parker participated in the elite group, the Algonquin Round Table, where talented writers, editors, and actors -mostly men- would lunch and trade witticisms and make each other laugh (Grant). Things weren’t always great for Ms. Parker; she often had a hard time reaching deadlines due to her heavy drinking and writing anxiety which caused her work to be sporadic and unreliable (Bloom). Devastated by her miscarriage, Dorothy found writing tough and wrote less frequently (Grant). She kept her standards high, but her sarcasm was shadowed by her unhappiness and the unhappiness around her (Grant).
"Tintern Abbey"'s opening lines prepare the reader for a reunion, notable in tone not only for the sense of anticipation with which the poet apprehends this moment, but equally so for the poignancy which immediately inflects the poem's proceedings. My reading of "Tintern Abbey" takes as its most prominent concern the sense in which Wordsworth's "Revisiting the Banks of the Wye" represents a haven-seeking of sorts. Since his visit to the Wye in 1793, much has happened to Wordsworth: he has found, and relinquished, his first romantic love in Annette Vallon. As a young would-be radical, sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, he finds himself at odds with London's entrenched conservatism. In 1795, after well over a decade of only intermittent contact with his sister, Wordsworth and his beloved Dorothy are reunited at Racedown, at about the same time that they make the acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Within two years of this happy occasion, the two Wordsworths will move to Alfoxden to be near Coleridge. The ensuing years of intense friendship and creative discourse will yield, by 1798, the collaborative Lyrical Ballads, to which "Tintern Abbey" belongs. As we consider the tumult and activity that have characterized this period of his life, we might well speculate upon the nature of the thoughts going through Wordsworth's mind as he surveys the Abbey from his vantage on the riverbank; my own temptation is to equate the quietly reflective tone of the poem with the Taoist notion of hsü.
Wordsworth, William. “The Thorn.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. 2B. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Longman, 1999. 319-325.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
Gwendolyn Brook’s “Ballad of Pearl May Lee” came from her book called Street in Bronzeville. This book exemplifies Brook’s “dual place in American literature” (Smith, 2). It is associated with Modernist poetry, as well as the Harlem Renaissance. This book is known for its theme of victimizing the poor, black woman. “Ballad of Pearl May Lee” is a poem that uses tone to represent the complex mood of the ballad. While tone and mood are often used interchangeably, there are differences even though they often work together in a poem. A poem’s mood refers to the atmosphere or state of mind that the poem takes on. This is often conveyed through the tone, which is the style or manner of expression through writing. In this poem, Brooks uses tone to enhance the mood. This paper will shed light on the idea that the mood of the poem is affected by the tone in several ways in order to make the mood inconsistent. Some of the ways that tone does this is by several episodic shifts in the scene of the poem, the repetition of stanzas at the end of the poem, the use of diction, and the change in the speaker’s stance throughout the poem. These poetic techniques enhance the speaker’s current feeling of self-pity and revengeful satisfaction by her mixed emotions associated with this reflection.
A lot of literature has been written about motherhood. Wordsworth is a well known English poet who mentions motherhood and female strength in several of his poems, including the Mad Mother, The Thorn, and The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman. This leads some critics to assume that these poems reflect Wordsworth's view of females. Wordsworth portrays women as dependent on motherhood for happiness, yet he also emphasizes female strength.
Peters, John G. “Wordsworth’s TINTERN ABBEY” The Explicator(Washington) , Winter 2003, Vol. 61, Iss. 2, pg. 77 : eLibrary. Web 05 Mar 2002
He explains many times thatbeing involved in nature helps him deal with life.Typically, most poets write about things that mean the most to them. Even though thispoem was about nature, William Wordsworth also included his sister in the poem near the end.William Wordsworth was born in England on April 7, 1770. When William Wordsworth was ayoung boy, both of his parents died. He and his siblings were basically split apart and he wassent to grammar school. He didn’t get to see his siblings until he was much older. In the poem,William Wordsworth is speaking with his sister, Dorothy. He cherished his siblings. Dorothy mayhave even lived with William’s family, where she helped the family out. However, WilliamWordsworth’s life seemed to be full of tragedy. For example, three of his children has died andhis navy brother had drowned in a shipwreck. According to Bryan Aubrey, in The Salem PressBiographical Encyclopedia, “Dorothy had become seriously ill and lived the last twenty years ofher life as a physical invalid”. One of his best friends was poet Samuel Coleridge. Wordsworthand Coleridge even wrote together. According to Aubrey, “they published a joint collectiontogether titled Lyrical Ballads”. However, the reason Tintern Abbey was in ruins was because of Henry VIII. Hedisbanded the Catholic monasteries, this church at the time of the suppression was over 400years old. The roof eventually was gone and
Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing.
"The Poetry of William Wordsworth." SIRS Renaissance 20 May 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 06 February 2010.