WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

(1772-1850)

BACKGROUND

  • born Cockermouth, in Cumberland

    • near the Lake District

    • WW explored this scenic mountain region of NW England in his childhood

    • --> formulated his “Romantic” inclinations ****

    • April 7, 1772

  • father:  John Wordsworth, law agent

    • for Sir James Lowther

    • “richest and most powerful political magnate in the north-west” (l.e.)

    • --> “lived rent free in the most impressive house and grounds in Cockermouth High Street” (literaryencyclopedia.com)

  • elder brother:  Richard (1768)

  • younger siblings, in order:

    • Dorothy (1771), John (1772), Christopher (1774)

  • 1778: WW = 8

    • mother died

    • WW = sent to school at Hawkshead Grammar School

      • his love of reading & poetry began, encouraged

    • with 3 brothers at Ann Tyson’s cottage

      • ** WW roams the countryside, meets cottagers, shepherds, wanderers

  • 1783: WW = 13

    • father died (now Wordsworth & siblings = orphans)

    • father = owed $$$ by Sir James Lowther (see 1802)

    • still at Hawkshead

  • 1787-91:

    • St. John’s College, Cambridge University

    • on a scholarship

    • ** uninspired by the Classical education (Neoclassicism)

    • --> independent studying, long countryside walks, poetry writing

  • 1790:

    • summer before his final semester = walking tour of Europe (Switzerland & France)

      • (instead of studying for his Comprehensive Exams)

    • WW & Robert Jones spent the summer in the Alps & France

    • ** great influence on rest of his life, poetry

  • FRENCH REVOLUTION:

    • ** radicalized his political thinking

    • ** sympathies for the common man

      • his causes, speech, lifestyle

    • 1st anniversary of the storming of the Bastille (July 14)

    • --> Prelude 6

    • “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was heaven!” (Prelude)

  • 1791:

    • college degree

    • 4 months in London, Wales, France

    • in Wales: climbed Mt. Snowdon --> Prelude 14

  • 1791-92:

    • back to France

    • “democrat”

    • supporter of French Revolution

    • falls in love with Annette Fallon (no marriage)

      • Catholic, Royalist

      • they have a daughter, Caroline

        • BUT Annette & he = not married

        • BUT WW left France for England before Caroline = born

    • back to England

    • December of 1792

    • b/c of lack of $$$$$

    • b/c of declaration of WAR between England and France (1793)

  • ** DISILLUSIONMENT:

    • 1793: advent of the Reign of Terror in France

    • followed by reign of Napoleon Bonaparte

    • “I lost / All feeling of conviction, and …Yielded up moral questions in despair” (Prelude)

  • 1793:

    • 1st published poetry collections:

    • An Evening Walk

    • Descriptive Sketches

  • BREAKDOWN:

    • guilt over not seeing daughter, Caroline

    • guilt over drifting apart with Annette

    • divided loyalties between England & France

    • gradual disillusion with the French Revolution

    • (Prelude 10, 11)

 BACKGROUND

  • REBOUND:

    • * 1795:

    • Raisley Calvert, friend, dies & leaves WW $$$$ (£900)

      • --> WW could live off poetry

      • lives with sister Dorothy at Racedown

    • meets ST Coleridge **

    • * 1797: moves to Alfoxden House

      • 4 miles away from STC at Nether Stowey

  • 1798:

  • LYRICAL BALLADS with a Few Other Poems ***

    • initially published anonymously

    • disapprovingly/disdainfully received by critics & poets

    • 23 poems

    • 19 by WW (“Tintern Abbey”)

    • 4 by STC, including Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  • WONDER:

    • WW: to “give the charm of novelty to subjects everyday life”

    • STC: to let his imagination roam over more unusual & supernatural subject matter

  • 1799:

    • moved to Dove Cottage, Grasmere

    • STC at Greta Hall, Keswick (13 miles away)

  • 1800:

  • 2nd edition to LYRICAL BALLADS ***

    • expanded

    • written in Germany (1789-90)

    • homesick

    • famous Preface to Lyrical Ballads ***

      • enunciated the principles of the new criticism

      • WW’s theory of poetry

      • “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility”

      • subject matter = “humble and rustic life”

      • language = common speech, as of “man speaking to man”

      • anti-Neoclassicism

      • against hierarchy of poetry

        • (epic = #1, lyric = worst)

    • “Ruined Cottage”

  • 1802:

    • $$$ owed to his father by Lord Lansdale

    • returned to France (#3) with Dorothy

      • 4 weeks

      • to meet Caroline

      • settlement with Annette Vallen

    • later that year, WW married Mary Hutchinson

      • childhood friend/schoolmate (see Poe’s 2nd wife)

      • WW and Mary had 5 children together

  • MID-LIFE DISASTERS: (BUT prosperous, popular)

    • 1805:

      • favorite brother, John, a sea captain, wrecked in a storm

    • 1812:

      • 2 of his 5 children died

      • Catherine & John

    • 1810:

      • culmination of estrangement with STC = open quarrel

      • * WW’s powers & revolutionary zeal began to fade

      • (see PB Shelley’s “To Wordsworth”)

    • 1830+:

      • physical & mental decline of sister Dorothy

  • 1813:

    • Stamp Distributor (revenue collector)

  • 1843:

    • named “poet laureate”

      • --> money/stipend $$$$

      • --> prestige

  • 1847: death of his daughter, Cora

  • 1850:

    • Prelude

    • its poems = written throughout his life

    • frequently revised

    • chronicle WW’s spiritual life

    • marks the birth of a new genre of poetry

    • published posthumously

      • (by his wife Mary, 3 months after WW’s death on April 23, 1850, at Rydal Mount, England)

THEMES

  • ROMANTIC:

    • natural metaphors (compares her to nightingale, cuckoo)

    • common person

    • alone with nature

    • singing while work (happiness in unhappy situation)

    • * remembered/recollected in tranquility:

      • “the music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more” -- end of "Solitary Reaper"

  • * memory & evaluation

  • * nature metaphors

  • * nature = teacher

  • * childhood = nature:

    •  innocence/joy of childhood = innocence/joy of nature

    • Man = Nature (LINK)

  • *BLAKE:  (similarities w/ Blake)

    • innocence of youth

    • link with nature

      • (Man = Nature)

      • (LINK)

    • loss of innocence

      • (in adulthood; “civilization,” Fallen Man)

    • FALLEN WORLD = city

      • (civilization, industrialization, materialism, institutionalization)

    • BROTHERHOOD:

      • share, community

      • re-establish LINK

    • DISCONNECT:

      • with Nature, with society, with Self

      • state of FALLEN MAN

THEMES

  • * Solutions to “DISCONNECT”:

    • society -- brotherhood

    • nature

    • memory (of childhood innocence)

    • Death:

      • natural: cycle of life

      • re-unification: rejoin nature

  • restoration & reconnect =

  • (1) through remembering what it was like to be a child

    • (“TA”)

    • innocence + experience

    • child = father to the man

    • sense of wonder in the world

  • (2) reconnect with nature

    • (“Tintern Abbey” “Michael”)

    • see the beauty

    • interact with nature, become one with nature

    • tap into its energies

  • (3) reconnect to society

    • (“Michael” “Ruined Cottage”)

    • share time & experiences with someone

    • pass on to the next generation (children)

    • which cannot be done with Neoclassical language/style, rationalization

  • (4) Faith & Perseverance

    • (“Ode Imitations” “Michael” “R & I”)

    • be like nature: see storms (hardships, misfortunes, loss) as natural part of life

STYLE

  • PREFACE

  • 3rd edition 1802 (2nd edition 1800)

  • keep it SIMPLE:

    • simple, honest, real

    • feelings, nature, language, people

  • COMMON man:

    • middle & lower classes

    • “democratic” --> French Revolution

    • “incidents and situations from common life”

  • 1st edition =

    • advertisement @ experiment

  • 2nd edition =

    • preface, not experiments; what good poetry is

  • *ATTACK on 18thC NEOCLASSICAL Poetry:

  • poetic diction, genre, subjects, decorum

  • no hierarchy of poetic genre

    • epic, tragedy, comedy, satire, pastoral, lyric

  • rejects decorum: that diction & subject matter must conform to the status of literary kind

  • real people:

    • peasants, children, outcasts, idiots, criminals

    • can be the subjects of serious poetry

    • (see his time at Anne Tyson’s cottage, while at Hawkshead GS)

  • real language:

    • “really used by men”

    • no difference between prose & verse

    • Neoclassicism: 

      • in poetry, language has to be elevated by special diction & figures of speech to match the dignity of the genre

    • not just vocabulary & syntax

    • but true emotion –

      • not contrived & artful constructions

      • not REASON, intellect,

      • but IMAGINATION, heart

      • “words without thoughts” (Hamlet)

      • “true voice of feeling”

    • LINK:  man & nature

      • mind = mirror of nature

      • transcends time

      • Scientist vs. Poet

  • *WONDER:

    • show “ORDINARY things” in “unusual way”

    • teach the rest of us who do not see

    • “essential passions of the heart”

    • BLAKE

  • *POETIC THEORY:

  • “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.”

  • perspective = reordered, shaped

  • * at the moment of composition

  • before = prior thought & poetic skill

  • ** PROCESS:

    • original experience, chaos

    • --> recollections in tranquility, order

    • --> emotion builds up

    • --> composition, emotion + skill, ordered chaos

      • thoughts: modify & direct feelings

      • thoughts: representatives of past feelings

      • make ASSOCIATIONS

        • metaphoric language—

        • (see BLAKE)

STYLE

  • *MODEN AGE: (and need for Imaginative Poetry, p.1385)

  • Imaginative Poetry:

    • keeps us emotionally alive & morally sensitive

      • (i.e., “human”)

    • in a modern era (i.e., “dehumanizing”)

    • of technological and increasingly urban society

    • with its mass media and mass culture

    • that threaten to blunt the mind’s “discriminatory powers” and “reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor”

      • (indifference, lethargy, stupidity, laziness, gullibility, credulity)

      • how like today!

  • Modern forces:

    • war, urbanization, mass media, mass culture, technology, uniformity/conformity

    • today's Information Age:

  • (1) produce cravings for outrageous stimulation

    • --> (a) “extreme sports,” cheap thrills, gratuitousness, lowest common denominator

    • --> (b) “pop art” & other fads (for WW’s 18thC = )

      • Gothic terror (Anne Radcliffe, Matthew G. Lewis)

      • sentimental melodramas (A. von Kotzebue)

  • (2) separate, divide, alienate us from our own essential nature (BLAKE’S “Universal Man”) and fellow humans

    • FALLEN MAN = isolated, separated, disintegrated

    • Blake, Milton, Shakespeare

    • PSC

  • *GREAT POET (p.1388)

    • “man speaking to men”

      • general, universal

      • more sensitive, greater knowledge of human nature, spirit of life

    • motivates & is motivated by primal human values

      • joy of life

      • reverence for all life

      • pleasure in anything that enhances life

      • “rock of defense of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love”

        • brotherhood, connection

        • see PB Shelley’s “West Wind” (“Destroyer & Preserver”)

        • see BLAKE:  man = essentially good

  • *GOOD POETRY =

  • ("Ruined Cottage," part II, p.205+)

  • good storytelling

  • made Margaret seem as if he knew her & loved her

    • (feel what author feels—honest, real emotion—

    • contrast to Neoclassicism)

  • simple story

  • told familiarly

  • with active face & busy eye:

    • told with passion, in touch with feelings that had then & have now

    • *immediacy of emotions

  • subject/story seem present:

    • vivid, descriptive

    • weave spell

    • see “Resolution & Independence”

    • see “A Revelation”

  • suspense:

    • diversions, stops

    • make them beg for more, draw them in

  • immediacy of emotions:

    • present tense

    • vivid details

    • metaphors

    • Old Man feels them again as he tells the story

    • “it would have grieved you”

  • common tale:

    • happens often

    • “a tale of silent suffering”

LINKS LINKS