WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

1. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH(1770-1850) A Poet’s Quest for Nature or for His Self?`

2. Note: Romanticism from Different Perspectives • Deconstruction & Feminism - what Romanticism really valorizes is not nature, but the human/male imagination, human language and male quest; • New Historicism- • the ideological function of romantic imagination and pastoral was to disguise the exploitative nature of contemporary social relations; • Bate – • Wordsworth repositioned in a tradition of environmental consciousness, according to which human well-being is understood to be coordinate with the ecological health of the land. (p. 162)

3. WHAT IS NATURE TO YOU? … nature then/ … To me was all in all.- … I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime …

4. OUTLINE • Introduction • Wordsworth as a Poet and as a Person • The Lyrical Ballads • “Tintern Abbey” • The Immortality Ode • Short Poems

5. WORDSWORTH THE POET -- 1797 - 1807 Wordsworth in 1798, about the time he began The Prelude. • 1791 2nd visit to France, disillusioned. • 1797 He made friends with Coleridge; lived near him in Sommerset • 1798 PublishedLyrical Ballads • 1798-1799 German Period (Lucy Poems)  Lake District • 1805 completed The Prelude, without publishing it. • 1807 published Poems in Two Volumes, also Lucy Poems. Image source: Wikipedia

6. WORDSWORTH THE PERSON Portrait of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon • 1795 Received a legacy sufficient to keep him independent, and settled down with his sister Dorothy • 1798 tour to Tintern Abbey • 1802 Received another sum of money, which allowed him to marry Mary Hutchinson; Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary • 1843 made poet Laureate • 1850 died (80 years old); The Prelude published. Image source: Wikipedia

7. LYRICAL BALLADS Significance Three Editions • Style: break with the conventional poetical tradition of the 18th century, i.e. with classicism; in the language of “the rustics” • Content: about common life; “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, recollected in tranquility” --memory (e.g. Daffodil poem, Tintern Abbey) • Poet: A Poet is “a man speaking to men : a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness…” • 1798 – published anonymously • 1800 – Coleridge laboriously transcribed all of W’s poems, while “Wordsworth… refused to include "Christabel," …, and insisted on adding to the preface an apology for the ‘great defects’ of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which he had always regarded with scorn.” (Toynton) • 1802

8. WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE • Although it is probably an exaggeration to suggest, as the critic I. A. Richards does, that "Coleridge was Wordsworth's creator," Coleridge certainly gave him a metaphysical perspective, a largeness of understanding, that Wordsworth might never have found for himself. His previous work had drawn almost exclusively on instinctive sympathies; now [the writing of “Tintern Abbey”] it took on the language of transcendence.(Toynton) • Coleridge: … "No Hope of me! absol. Nuisance! God's mercy is it a dream!" … "Wordsworth, Wordsworth has given me up.” (Toynton)

9. WHAT ENDED THEIR FRIENDSHIP & COLLABORATION? Next week: Pandaemonium (2000) Toynton

10. “TINTERN ABBEY” Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey -- A tourist poem about the picaturesque? -- A nature poem? Or about memory? -- A political poem or a religious poem with unmediated contact with a pantheistic deity

11. TINTERN ABBEY AND RIVER WYE Source: WikipediaLeft: Tintern Abbey viewed from the far (English) bank of the River Wye Right: The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking towards the East Window by J. M. W. Turner, 1794

12. SAMUEL IRELAND, PICTURESQUE VIEW OF RIVER WYE (1797)

13. WILLIAM GILPIN OBSERVATIONS ON THE RIVER WYE.

14. TINTERN ABBEY: STRUCTURE

15. TINTERN ABBEY: STRUCTURE (2)

16. “Tinturn Abbey”: Discussion Questions • Describes the interactions of the self and nature first, and with Dorothy • stanza 1: Present “Once again/Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs. . .” Self cliff; sky, cottage  larger landscape; • Stanza 2 & 3: in a city • Stanza 4: past and present • Stanza 5: Dorothy 2. Wordsworth’s omission of the abbey? -- To avoid the picturesque or to avoid the implied social relations of the landscape

17. Wordsworth & the Picturesque • Bate draws upon Wordsworth as an exemplar of ecocritical thinking, for Wordsworth did not view nature in Enlightenment terms - as that which must be tamed, ordered, and utilised - but as an area to be inhabited and reflected upon. • e.g. ll 94-102. “refuses to carve the world into object and subject; the same force animates both consciousness and ‘all things.’”

18. Parody of the Picturesque • Dr. Syntax In Search of the PICturesque (William Comb) The aesthete bemuses the locals

19. Wordsworth on the Picturesque • “He [another poet] used to go out with a pencil and a tablet, and note what struck him, thus: ‘an old tower,’ ‘a dashing stream,’ ‘a green slope,’ and make a picture out of it . . .But Nature does not allow an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil behind, and gone forth in a meditative spirit; and, on a later day, he should have embodied in verse not all that he had noted, but what he best remembered of the scene, . . . “ (qtd in Bate 148)

20. SOCIAL REALITY • Observations on the River Wye . . . Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (Rev. William Gilpin) ”the ruined abbey, however picturesque, served as a habitat for beggars and the wretchedly poor; also the Wye, in the tidal portion downstream from the abbey, had noisy and smoky iron-smelting furnaces along its banks, while in some places the water was oozy and discolored.” (Norton Anthology “The Romantic Period: Topics) (See also this page)

21. Examples II: Nature & Childhood Romanticized? • Immortality Ode: Structure – • Stanzas I-II:past glory vs. his present sense of loss; • Stanzas III – IV: his confirmation of the present beings while missing the visionary gleam bespoken by a tree, a field and the pansy; • Stanzas V-VII – the process of human (our) growth and learning of different ‘arts,’ lies and imitation in the lap of ‘Earth’ • Stanza VIII – XI – reconfirmation of both past affections, recollections and truths and the present natural beings and child (child --we)

22. WORDSWORTH Immortality Ode

23. IMMORTALITY ODE • Do you agree that the child is father of the man? • How is nature presented in this poem? • Who are the “you” addressed in the poem? • How does Wordsworth resolve the issue of inevitable aging, forgetting and death?

24. IMMORTALITY ODE: STRUCTURE Dialectic between Present beauty vs. past glories 1 2 4 5

25. IMMORTALITY ODE: STRUCTURE Process of forgetting. “Thou little child” 6 7 8 9

26. IMMORTALITY ODE: STRUCTURE Conclusion: 10 11 Q Q

27. DISCUSSION FOCUS • Stanzas 5-7 – give examples of the process of forgetting • Stanzas 10-11 – what are Wordsworth’s solution to aging and the loss of childhood glories?

28. WORDSWORTH’S Shorter Poems

29. WE ARE SEVEN & A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL We Are Seven A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal • How does the poem represent the child? • And the speaker? • Why does the speak keep asking the child questions? • What tone does the poem’s speaker take? What does the “slumber” imply? • What kind of “thing” is she? • What effect is achieved in its having just one sentence? Its predominantly iambic meter?

30. “I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD” • See Dorothy’s journal here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud • How are the speaker and the daffodils set in contrast? • Is the poem all set in past tense?

31. I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD • I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.Continuous asthe stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

32. I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD The waves beside them danced; but theyOut-did the sparkling waves in glee:A poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund company:I gazed---and gazed---but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

33. WORKS CITED • Toynton, Evelyn. "A delicious torment: the friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge." Harper's Magazine June 2007: 88+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Sep. 2012. • Bate, Johnathan. The Song of the Earth.