William Wordsworth

Name : Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester : 1

Year : 2021 - 2023

Topic : Wordsworth as poet

E-mail ID : dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction :   

Name: William Wordsworth

Date of birth: 7 April 1770

Place of birth: Cockermouth, Cumberland, England

Date of death: 23 April 1850 (aged 80)

Place of death: Cumberland, England

Occupation: Poet

Spouse: Mary Hutchinson 

Children: Dora Wordsworth, Thomas Wordsworth, Catherine Wordsworth, John 

Wordsworth, William “Willy” Wordsworth

Notable works: Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion, The 

Prelude, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

So, what is Romanticism? 

It was basically a literary and artistic movement that originated during the late 18th Century in Europe. The movement saw artists from various walks of life, like painters, writers, poets, musicians, singers, etc. glorify the subtleties and beauty of nature, emotions, and past. Romanticism saw the birth of a new genre of poetry, which was later christened as the ‘Romantic Poetry’. The period between the late 1780s & 1790s until the 1850s came to be known as the ‘Romantic Age’. The famous poets, apart from William Wordsworth, of the Romantic Age include William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Shelley, Walter Alva Scott, Robert Burns, and Lord Byron.

William Wordsworth changed forever the way we view the natural world and the inner world of feeling. He also connected the two indivisibly. We are his heirs, and we see and feel through him. His vision illumined our landscape.

William Wordsworth an early leader of romanticism in English poetry, ranks as one of the greatest lyric poets in the history of English literature.William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and important intellects. He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry.

Early Life : 

William Wordsworth was born in Cookermouth, Cumberland, on April 7, 1770, the second child of an attorney.His name is inextricably connected with the Lake District, where he was born in Cockermouth in 1770. His mother died when he was only eight, his father five years later. These early losses gave him an acute apprehension of mortality, but did not impair the flow of his affections. His mother had loved him enough, and her love lasted beyond the grave. He had a free and happy country childhood, and joy is one of his themes, through his vocation as a poet he transformed fear of mortality to intimations of immortality. 

The story of his early life – his schooldays, his education at Cambridge, his wanderings in France, his response to the French revolution, his love of his sister Dorothy and his passionate friendship with Coleridge – are told in his great autobiographical work in blank verse, The Prelude, most of which written when he was in his 30s only sections of it were published in his lifetime.It is a work of astonishing originality, both in its subject matter childhood and the growth of the mind, described with a pre-Freudian insight unprecedented in literature and in its form. The verse is powerful, supple, subtle, freely flowing. Wordsworth revered both Shakespeare and Milton. He is the third great iambic voice in the English language.

 Unlike the other major English romantic poets, he enjoyed a happy childhood under the loving care of his mother and in close intimacy with his younger sister Dorothy As a child, he wandered exuberantly through the lovely natural scenery of Cumberland. At Hawkshead Grammar School, Wordsworth showed keen and precociously discriminating interest in poetry. 

The great decade: 1797–1808

While living with Dorothy at Alfoxden House, Wordsworth became friends with a fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They formed a partnership that would change both poets’ lives and alter the course of English poetry.

Writting career :

His first volume of poems, Lyrical Ballads, written in collaboration with Coleridge and published in 1798, stakes his territory: the plain, the rustic, the thoughtful, the everyday, the organic: a poetry in which "the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature". It includes The Idiot Boy, a moving ballad treating its challenging subject a mother's love for her "idiot" son sent out into the night to fetch the doctor for a sick neighbour with the deepest respect and in the plainest language, and Tintern Abbey which records in higher language the intensity of the solitary poet's youthful response to a sublime landscape his "aching joys" and "dizzy raptures" and his sense of a more "sober pleasure" associated with maturity, the presence of his beloved sister, and the power of re-creative memory and recollection.

The volume contained poems such as Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” and helped Romanticism take hold in English poetry.The same year that Lyrical Ballads was published, Wordsworth began writing The Prelude, an epic autobiographical poem that he would revise throughout his life it was published posthumously in 1850. While working on The Prelude, Wordsworth produced other poetry, such as “Lucy.” He also wrote a preface for the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, it described his poetry as being inspired by powerful emotions and would come to be seen as declaration of Romantic principles.

The “Preface” is often considered a manifesto of the Romantic movement in English literature. Wordsworth explains his intention in his poems to express incidents from everyday life in everyday language and imbued with poetic sentiment. He defines poetry as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and the poet as “a man speaking to men”. Because poetry speaks of universal human emotions, it should use diction that is natural rather than artificial and self-consciously literary. Thus, Wordsworth sets himself apart from classicist poets who addressed an elite audience in language that was tied to formal rules. Wordsworth argues that poetry and prose should be close in style and that the aim of poetry should be to imitate nature and inspire emotion in the reader in a way that emphasizes pleasure. In the final part of the essay, Wordsworth outlines the procedure whereby a poet may observe the world around them and compose poetry through deep reflection on their experiences.

Wordsworth poetry is based on some legacy and some rules and consistently these rules are followed almost all in his work. Even the language, themes and structures remain the same except for some minor changes. Wordsworth remains consistent on rules which he sets in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

"He believed that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure and so the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling."

Wordsworth says that poetry should give pleasure there is no need of extra formality and rhythms. Here Wordsworth shows turn towards the Romantic era by putting more force on feeling, emotion and expression of human chaotic world means portrayal of reality rather than any imagination and fancy world. Wordsworth rejected classical notions and he started making poetry on the ordinary people, women, farmers, lamen, workers and middle class people. Wordsworth used to write in simple, common language and avoid sophisticated use of ornamental language. Language should be true to traditional form. The poem depicts real characters from realistic worlds and situations.

Wordsworth poetry is preoccupied with emotions. 

According to him, the job of a poet is to examine his own self to recollect the powerful feelings of his life. These recollections include inspirational thoughts and events in his life that have greatly influenced him. Once these emotions are recollected, he then reorganizes them. The recollection of emotions is the most observable feature of the poetry of Wordsworth. His poetry is a result of the ordinary but moving thought.

One of the best examples of his sentimental poetry is his sonnet, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge.” In the sonnet, the narrator is an admirer of nature and looks out at the busy industrial city of London to watch for the arresting beauty.

The unique styles of Wordsworth poetry are noticeable in his two most important works: Lyrical Ballads and The prelude. He wrote these two works in collaboration with S. T. Coleridge. These two works characterize the early style of young Wordsworth and the more advanced style of old Wordsworth. The style of Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads is very emotional and contains natural scenes, whereas, in the epic The Prelude, his verses are composed of more ponderous and exhaustive thoughts on life and his relation to it.

His late poetry is also didactic, as he tried to instruct his readers. Though Keats’s style becomes a little complicated in his later poetry, it is this work that became the most influential works in the English Literature after the death of William Wordsworth. His poems, particularly The Prelude, have been quoted by various poets of the Victorian Era, including Tennyson. The opening verse of the epic poem The Prelude is the best example of his style. 

Laureateship and other honours : 

Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years. 

In 1838, Wordsworth received an honorary doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Durham and the following year he was awarded the same honorary degree by the University of Oxford. In 1842, the government awarded him a Civil List pension of 300 a year.

Following the death of Robert Southey in 1843 Wordsworth became Poet Laureate. He initially refused the honour, saying that he was too old, but accepted when the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, assured him that “you shall have nothing required of you”. Wordsworth thus became the only poet laureate to write no official verses. The sudden death of his daughter Dora in 1847 at the age of only 42 was difficult for the aging poet to take and in his depression, he completely gave up writing new material.

 Death of William Wordsworth : 

William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St Oswald’s Church, Grasmere. His widow Mary published his lengthy autobiographical “poem to Coleridge” as The Preludes everal months after his death. Though it failed to arouse much interest at that time, it has since come to be widely recognised as his masterpiece.

Words count : 1728

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