William Wordsworth

Benjamin Robert Haydon, William Wordsworth, 1842, London, National Portrait Gallery.

1770 Cumberland, Lake district

1791 Journey to France

Attracted by the new democratic ideas

Love affair with Annette Vallon

A daughter, Caroline

Compelled to return to England

War between England

and France

Ostracism by his family

Lack of money

Sense of guilt and failureMarried Mary Hutchinson

Cockermouth,

His life

Friendship with Coleridge

1795 He met Samuel Taylor Coleridge•Long and productive

friendship•Same love for nature and poetry•It was through Coleridge’s influence that Wordsworth passed from his fragmentary ideas upon impressions and emotions to a philosophical theory

Appointed as England’s Poet Laureate1843

1850 death

Works

Lyrical ballads

The Prelude

Poems in Two VolumesThe Excursion

Autobiographical poem in 14 books -

An incomplete philosophical poem in 9 books

1798

1800

1807

1814

1850

This edition contains the famous Preface

(posthumous)

published with Coleridge as anonymous

Lyrical ballads

Lyrical Ballads•A collection of poems written in cooperation by Wordsworth and Coleridge

•Unlike anything that had come before, and paved the way for everything that has come after

•The publication was not received well

Coleridge - would try through poetic means to make the uncommon (supernatural) credible

Wordsworth - would attempt to make the common uncommon

Why Lyrical Ballads?

A ballad is a poem or song which usually tells a story in the popular language of the day, and has associations with traditional folk culture.

In ancient Greece, a lyric was a song to accompany music from a lyre . Later the word was used for any short poem in which personal moods and emotions were expressed. Today, the words of popular songs are called lyrics.

Lyric

Ballad

•The belief that Nature is far from being a decorative background (Augustans) •Nature is Endowed with a spirit and a life of her own

•Wordsworth celebrates the idea of fusion between man and his natural element

pantheism

•Nature is a kind of religion in which Wordsworth has the utmost faith

•People become selfish and immoral when they distance themselves from nature by living in cities•Wordsworth believed in the apprehension of reality through the senses

Romantic view of Nature expressed in

poetry

•Upon being born, human beings move from a perfect, idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. •As children, some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains

•But as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature dies.•Still, the memory of childhood can offer an important consolation, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access to the lost purities of the past.

Romantic view of Childhood

The power of memory

•Memory allows Wordsworth’s speakers to overcome the harshness of the contemporary world•Recollecting childhood gives adults a chance to reconnect with the intense relationship they had with nature as children and they are happy again.

•The act of remembering also allows the poet to write

•Considering his own mortality, memory is again a huge comfort.

A physical sense of Universe

•Wordsworth exploited the sensibility of his eye and ear

•Through his ear he could perceive the sounds of the woods, of the birds, of the waters, but also the silence of solitary places. Through his eyes he could see the loveliness of the natural world penetrating the ideal truth that lay behind it.•Influence of associationist philosopher David Hartley

Romantic poetry

•Poetry is a form of knowledge which is based on concrete experience; it has its origins in sensations and spontaneous feelings which are transformed into emotions.

•Poetry is not the masterly use of imagery and ornament and it does not depend on rhetorical devices

•poetry represents “emotions recollected in tranquillity”and should have same effect on the reader

Romantics believed

What is a poet?

“What is a poet? […] He is a man speaking to men: a man […] endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind”.

From the Preface to Lyrical ballads

The poet’s task

•He must teach men to improve their feelings and their moral life by drawing attention to the ordinary things of life where the deepest emotion are to be found.•This can be achieved not through the language of reason but through the language of imagination

“The principal object […] was to choose incidents and situations from common life […] and at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary thing should be presented to the mind in an usual aspect”From the Preface to Lyrical ballads

•Poetry should deal with everyday situations or incidents and with ordinary people, especially humble, rural people.•In low and rustic life man is more direct, since he is in close contact with nature and nearer to his own pre-passions.•Imagination is to play a very important role

“ A certain colouring of imagination”

A new language

•style had to be simple so that poetry could be read and understood by everyone easily. 

18th century poetry •dominated by admiration for the correctness of phrase and urbanity of the Latin poets Virgil and Horace•imitation of an elegant and polished language codified in stereotyped formulas

Poetic diction

•The language of poetry for Wordsworth had to be that of the people actually concerned with the experiences of life

•the simple prose-like language of peasants

Was Wordsworth a revolutionary poet?

Here are some ideas that made him revolutionary:

The origin of poetry derives from emotion and not from reason; Poetry must deal with common people and common events ; The language of poetry must be the one spoken by peasants, even if purified from its defects; A more democratic concept of poetry , addressed to a larger audience; A new conception of nature, with which a closer contact is necessary;

Revaluation of children ; Importance given to personal memories and experiences ; Imagination is superior to reason.

The poet as a teacher of everlasting truths

nature child

Rustic lifeSimple

language

Recollection in tranquillity

Main ideas of Wordsworth poetry

The End