William Wordsworth: Romantic Poet during the French Revolution

1432 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Nature in the poems of William Wordsworth

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

INTRODUCTION

William Wordsworth is a romantic poet who wrote during the French revolution. He is

Regarded as one of the greatest English poets of his time. Wordsworth was the oldest among the

Group of romantic poets of his time. Wordsworth wrote most of his poems before he was forty

And in the rest of his life he spent revising it, among all his poems, tentern ABBEY and I

WANDERED LONELY AS a Cloud€ which I will be discussing in this paper, are regarded

as his greatest poems, he wrote mainly on the theme of NATURE, MEMORY AND

IMAGINATION, CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION. Among all these the theme of nature

is found in all the poems he wrote. Wordsworth as a romantic poet believed in the freedom of the

human spirit and how it interacts with nature. In most of his poems, Wordsworth always reflects

on natural beauty most of which he has seen and these natural beauties influenced him and made

him to write many poems in the theme of nature.

BIOGRAPHY

Wordsworth was born in 1770 to the family of John and Ann Wordsworth, in

Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. He had three brothers, and a sister, Dorothy whose help

was one of the driving forces in his life, “an important factor in Wordsworth’s success was

Dorothy’s lifelong devotion: she encouraged his efforts at composition and looked after the

details of their daily life.”(gale.ency.of world lit. pg. 1706) Wordsworth lost both of his parents

at a young age, Wordsworth’s parents loved reading, at home their library was filled with books

and poems this was one of the things that helped Wordsworth to become a good writer. When his

parents were alive Wordsworth was at liberty to move around and on one of such occasions he

came upon the derwent riv...

... middle of paper ...

...tern Abbey." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary Ruby. Vol. 2.

Detroit: Gale, 1998. 247-260. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.

Warsh, Lewis. "Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)." World Poets. Ed. Ron Padgett. Vol. 3. New

York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000. 175-185. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 12 Apr.

2013.

"Wordsworth, William." Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature. Vol. 4. Detroit:

Gale, 2009. 1705-1708. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.

Aubrey. Brian. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Poetry for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis.

Vol. 33. Detroit: Gale, 2010. 69-85. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.

Furr Dereck. "Tintern Abbey." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary

Ruby. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 247-260. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 12

Show More
Related

  • Tenacious Tintern Abbey (An Analysis of Tintern Abbey)

    733 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...om everyday life that he will die, and the memories will live on in his younger sister. Wordsworth tells of a future that is unknown with the life and passage of this life cannot be without the past, it is the instrumental being in how we live our lives. Our future depends on the decisions that we make in the past, it is a circle.

    Read More

  • Lyrical Ballads Captures The Hour of Feeling

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lyrical Ballads were written in a time of great change. They were dominated by the French Revolution and both Wordsworth and Coleridge felt great impact from this. There was disruption all over with the American War of Independence and other wars worldwide. Britain itself was changing rapidly due to colonial expansion, which brought new wealth, ideas and fashion, and there was much disturbance to both the people and the land with the act of enclosure, which may have meant more effective farming but less work. The introduction of the Poor Laws meant that landowners paid their remaining staff very little knowing that they would be supplemented by poor relief. However the conditions stated by the Laws before aid would be given were very similar to ?The Last Of The Flock? with people having to give up every means of self support and therefore reduce the chance of them ever living independently again. The Industrial Revolution introduced the new ?middle? class for which many of these poems were written for. They use simple language to allow them to understand and self educate, which many of them were very interested in doing and bettering themselves, much like Wordsworth himself and his sister as shown in ?Tintern Abbey?. Here he talks of her being at the stage of education that he was five years before when he last visited.

    Read More

  • Analysis of William Wordsworth's Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Five different situations are suggested in "Lines" each divided into separate sections. The first section details the landscape around the abbey, as Wordsworth remembers it from five years ago. The second section describes the five-year lapse between visits to the abbey, during which he has thought often of his experience there. The third section specifies Wordsworth's attempt to use nature to see inside his inner self. The fourth section shows Wordsworth exerting his efforts from the preceding stanza to the landscape, discovering and remembering the refined state of mind the abbey provided him with. In the final section, Wordsworth searches for a means by which he can carry the experiences with him and maintain himself and his love for nature. .

    Read More

  • Lines Written in the Early Spring, by William Wordsworth

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Percy Shelley And The Sublime/Beautiful

    1126 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Wordsworth is easily understood as a main author whom expresses the element of nature within his work. Wordsworth’s writings unravel the combination of the creation of beauty and sublime within the minds of man, as well as the receiver through naturalism. Wordsworth is known to be self-conscious of his immediate surroundings in the natural world, and to create his experience with it through imagination. It is common to point out Wordsworth speaking with, to, and for nature. Wordsworth had a strong sense of passion of finding ourselves as the individuals that we truly are through nature. Three poems which best agree with Wordsworth’s fascination with nature are: I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud, My Heart leaps up, and Composed upon Westminster Bridge. In I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud, Wordsworth claims that he would rather die than be without nature, because life isn’t life without it, and would be without the true happiness and pleasure nature brings to man. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me

    Read More

  • Analyzing The Idiot Boy

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stephen Gill, editor. The Oxford Authors: William Wordsworth, pp. 67-80. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

    Read More

  • Wordsworth's Poetry

    1494 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Fear of Mortality (A response to Wordsworth’s poetry themes)

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin, Wordsworth shows fear of mortality throughout the lines in the poem The World is too Much with Us. He explains that we continue to waste our lives by only being concerned with material things. Once we start caring more about money, we are lost! The speaker claims that our obsession with "getting and spending" has made us insensible to the beauties of nature. "Getting and spending" refers to the consumer culture accompanying the Industrial Revolution that was the devil incarnate for Wordsworth .(Shmoop Editorial Team) We lose our chances to do better and accomplish things when we give away our hearts because we become enthralled with love. Soon we become blind from what really matters in life and drift away from Nature. We take for granted the little things in life and become out of tune.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    2505 Words  | 6 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Nature and God

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nature and God are consistent themes throughout all three poems.  Whether it is the calming tone in Wordsworth’s ,“It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free”, the abrupt tone in Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” or whether it contains ebb and flow as it does in Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much With Us”, they all showed the connection between Nature and God.

    Read More

  • If the Romantic poet is as William Wordsworth said a man speaking to men

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    to the work of Blake. "In the preface to the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth, when describing a poet, says that a poet is a man. speaking to men and is someone who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life which is in them. It needs to be defined what Wordsworth means by'man', whether he is referring to'man' as a gender. or man as in humanity.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Wordsworth existed in a time when society and its functions were beginning to rapidly pick up. The poem that he 'Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye', gave him a chance to reflect upon his quick paced life by taking a moment to slow down and absorb the beauty of nature that allows one to 'see into the life of things'; (line 49). Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'; takes you on a series of emotional states by trying to sway 'readers and himself, that the loss of innocence and intensity over time is compensated by an accumulation of knowledge and insight.'; Wordsworth accomplishes to prove that although time was lost along with his innocence, he in turn was able to gain an appreciation for the aesthetics that consoled him by incorporating all together, the wonders of nature, his past experiences, and his present mature perception of life.

    Read More

  • Comparison of the Use of Nature by Shelley and Wordsworth

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    He is writing the poem as if he were an object of the earth, and what it is like to once live and then die only to be reborn. On the other hand, Wordsworth takes images of meadows, fields, and birds and uses them to show what gives him life. Life being whatever a person needs to move on, and without those objects, they can't have life. Wordsworth does not compare himself to these things like Shelley, but instead uses them as an example of how he feels about the stages of living. Starting from an infant to a young boy into a man, a man who knows death is coming and can do nothing about it because it's part of life.

    Read More

  • Nature in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...

    Read More

  • Wordsworth’s Romantic Style Present in Tintern Abbey

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    "The Poetry of William Wordsworth." SIRS Renaissance 20 May 2004: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 06 February 2010.

    Read More

More about William Wordsworth: Romantic Poet during the French Revolution

Open Document