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Romanticism and nature
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When glancing through the capacious history of literature, an ample amount of literary categories can be classified. One section of history that is a league of its own is the Romantic Era (1785-1832). This era of literature emphasizes emotion, imagination, personality, vision and even irrationality. It is truly an era based on nature and celebrates the ordinary people over the aristocrats. Authors who wr ote during this time rebelled against the conventional forms of Neoclassicism and rather created works that sparked a dramatic change in literature's history. One author that precisely emanates these elements is William Wordsworth (1770-1850). With the utilization of nature as an embolden force, the use of personal experience to inspire impeccable …show more content…
His birth parents are John and Anne Wordsworth, who also had four children besides William. As a child, William would wander through the beautiful and natural scenery of Cumberland; these are the types of experiences that would deeply affect Wordsworth's imagination and give him a love of nature (Barker 23). At the age of eight, his mother passed away and this experience greatly affected him. Wordsworth soon attended Hawkshead Grammar School, where his sincere enjoyment for poetry was entrenched in his heart, mind, and soul. He was also extremely fascinated by the legendary poet John Milton (Gill 78). At Hawkshead, William met Mary Hutchinson, who would later ironically become his wife. With all things considered, William genuinely enjoyed his childhood years under the short but brief time of loving care under his mother and the close bond he had with his sister, Dorothy. Suddenly, that's when another disturbing event daunted upon him and utterly shook William's childhood. Occurring just five years later after his mother's death, his father passed away, leaving him and his four siblings as orphans. With the death of both his mother and father taking place in his early childhood, they both affected him distressingly. However, these painful events would soon shape his later works as a revolutionary writer of the Romantic …show more content…
At this elite university, he consistently distinguished himself as an undedicated scholar and without any detectable goal for life (Davies 102). Considering the agonizing events that took place during his childhood, this was not a surprise to anyone. Before his final semester, William set out on a walking expedition of Europe. This experience would influence both his poetic and political capabilities. During this journey, Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution. As a troublesome period for any citizen living in France at the time, it was a harsh site to witness for anyone. Another awakening resulted in William and this one was full of sympathy for the life, the grief, and the lack of freedom of speech for the "common people." These encounters would demonstrate the utmost significance to Wordsworth's literary pieces of work. However, even though this period of suffering was unbearable for William, he had the support of his sister, Dorothy, and the companionship of his friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor
The Norton Anthology English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: WW Norton, 2000. 238-50 Wordsworth, William. "
G. Ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. New York: Norton, 2000. Barth, Robert J. Romanticism and transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Religious Imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
...s’ poems, his purpose remains to identify with the thing, not just to describe it, and to allow it a way to express itself. In Young Sycamore William uses free verse lines to mimic the real curves and sways of a tree. In doing this, Gray states that it was Williams’ goal is to allow the reader to in essence become like the tree. By creating this effect upon the reader, Williams is able to show how beautiful a regular tree can be if it is looked at in a new way (Gray).
Wordsworth, William. Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. M. H. Abrams Gen. ed. New York, London: Norton. 2 vols. 1993.
The entire poem is about the interaction between nature and man. Wordsworth is clearly not happy about the things that man has done to the world. He describes Nature in detail in the second and third stanzas when he personifies the periwinkle and the flowers. He is thinking about the bad things that man has done to nature and he wants the reader to sit back and think about the fact that there used to be something so beautiful and alive, and because of man's ignorance and impatience, there is not a lot left. He also wants him to go sit in his own grove and actually see what is living and breathing and whether or not he enjoys it. Wordsworth makes it seem appealing to want to go and do this through his descriptions and thoughts, so that you get a feeling of what is there and what is being lost. He makes the reader want to go and see if those things, the budding twigs, the hopping birds, and the trailing periwinkle, really do exist and if they really are as alive as he says.
William Wordsworth, like Blake, was linked with Romanticism. In fact, he was one of the very founders of Romanticism. He wrote poems are about nature, freedom and emotion. He was open about how he felt about life and what his life was like. Also, Wordsworth wrote poems about the events going on around him ? for instance the French Revolution. Mainly, Wordsworth wrote about nature, however, rarely used simple descriptions in his work. Instead, Wordsworth wrote complexly, for example in his poem ?Daffodils?.
Despite its name, the Romantic literary period has little to nothing to do with love and romance that often comes with love; instead it focuses on the expression of feelings and imagination. Romanticism originally started in Europe, first seen in Germany in the eighteenth century, and began influencing American writers in the 1800s. The movement lasts for sixty years and is a rejection of a rationalist period of logic and reason. Gary Arpin, author of multiple selections in Elements of Literature: Fifth Course, Literature of The United States, presents the idea that, “To the Romantic sensibility, the imagination, spontaneity, individual feelings and wild nature were of greater value than reason, logic, planning and cultivation” (143). The Romantic author rejects logic and writes wild, spontaneous stories and poems inspired by myths, folk tales, and even the supernatural. Not only do the Romantics reject logic and reasoning, they praise innocence, youthfulness and creativity as well as the beauty and refuge that they so often find in nature.
‘It is often suggested that the source for many of William Wordsworth’s poems lies in the pages of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal. Quite frequently, Dorothy describes an incident in her journal, and William writes a poem about the same incident, often around two years later.’ It is a common observation that whilst Dorothy is a recorder – ‘her face was excessively brown’ – William is a transformer – ‘Her skin was of Egyptian brown’ . The intertextuality between The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals and ‘I wandered lonely as a Cloud’ allows both Dorothy and William to write about the same event, being equally as descriptive, but in very differing ways. Dorothy writes in a realist ‘log-book’ like style, whereas William writes in a romantic ballad style. This can be very misleading, as it gives William’s work more emotional attachment even though his work is drawn upon Dorothy’s diary, which in its turn is very detached, including little personal revelation. When read in conjunction with William’s poetry, Dorothy’s journal seems to be a set of notes written especially for him by her. In fact, from the very beginning of the journals Dorothy has made it quite clear that she was writing them for William’s ‘pleasure’ . This ties in with many of the diary entries in which she has described taking care of William in a physical sense. In a way this depicts the manner in which William uses his sister’s journal to acquire the subject of his poetry, which makes it seem as though Dorothy is his inspiration.
Wordsworth's Poetry 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.
Wolfson, S. & Manning, P. 2003. The Longman Anthology of English Literature Vol 2: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. London: Longman.
Peters, John G. “Wordsworth’s TINTERN ABBEY” The Explicator(Washington) , Winter 2003, Vol. 61, Iss. 2, pg. 77 : eLibrary. Web 05 Mar 2002
William Wordsworth is a British poet who is associated with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was seven years old, and he was an orphan at 13. This experience shapes much of his later work. Despite Wordsworth’s losses, he did well at Hawkshead Grammar School, where he firmly established his love of poetry. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry.
There were two particular events that helped to give William a newfound sense of direction in his work and career. In January of 1795, a close friend of William died and in his will, he granted Wordsworth a legacy of 900 pounds; this money helped him to devote more time to his poetry. That same August, he met S.T. Coleridge and they quickly became close friends. In July of 1797, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxden House, which was only a few miles from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. Speaking of Coleridge, himself and Dorothy, Wordsworth said, "we were three persons with one soul" (Hanley). Each day, Wordsworth and Coleridge would work on their poetry, discuss their ideas o...
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them.
"The Poetry of William Wordsworth." SIRS Renaissance 20 May 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 06 February 2010.