WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY

 Early life and education

- He was born in April 7th 1770, in
England
- His sister, Dorothy was born in
December 25th 1771
- After the death of their mother,
they were separated by their
father
- Wordsworth began attending St
John’s College, Cambridge in 1787
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY

 Relationship with Annette Vallon

- In November 1791, Wordsworth visited to France
- Fell in love with a French woman, Annette
Vallon
- Lack of money and Britain's tensions with France
made him return alone to England the next year
- During this period, he wrote his acclaimed “ It is
a beauteous evening, calm and free, "
recalling his seaside walk with his daughter,
whom he had not seen for ten years
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY
 First publication and Lyrical Ballads
- 1793 saw Wordsworth's first published poetry and received a
legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795.
- In 1795, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom
Wordsworth quickly developed close friendship
- In 1797, Wordsworth and Dorothy moved to Somerset, near
Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey
- Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy)
produced Lyrical Ballads in 1798, an important work in
the English Romantic movement
- The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth
listed as author, and included a preface to the poems
- A fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in
1805
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY
 Germany and move to the Lake District
- In the autumn of 1798, Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge
travelled to Germany
- During the harsh winter of 1798–1799, Wordsworth lived with
Dorothy in Goslar, and despite extreme stress and loneliness,
he began working on an autobiographical piece later titled
The Prelude
- He also wrote a number of famous poems, including "the
Lucy poems”
- He and his sister moved back to England, now to Dove Cottage
in Grasmere in the Lake District, nearby a fellow poet Robert
Southey
- Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey came to be known as the
"Lake Poets”
- Through this period, many of his poems revolve around
themes of death, endurance, separation, and grief
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY
 Autobiographical work and Poems in Two Volumes
- Wordsworth had plans to write a long philosophical poem, which he
intended to call The Recluse
- In 1798–99 He had started an autobiographical poem, which he called
the "poem to Coleridge", which would serve as an appendix to The
Recluse
- In 1804 he began expanding this autobiographical work, having
decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix to The Recluse
- By 1805, he had completed it, but refused to publish until he had
completed the whole of The Recluse
- In 1807, his Poems in Two Volumes were published
- For a time (starting in 1810), Wordsworth and Coleridge were
estranged over the latter's opium addiction
- In 1812, two of his children, Thomas and Catherine, died
- The following year, he received an appointment as Distributor of
Stamps
- His family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside,
where he spent the rest of his life
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY
 The Prospectus
- In 1814 he published The Excursion as the
second part of the three-part The Recluse
- He also wrote a poetic Prospectus to "The
Recluse" in which he lays out the structure and
intent of the poem
- By 1820 he enjoyed the success accompanying a
reversal in the contemporary critical opinion of
his earlier works
- By 1828, Wordsworth had become fully
reconciled to Coleridge, and the two toured the
Rhineland together that year
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY
 The Poet Laureate and other honors

- Wordsworth received an honorary Doctor of Civil

Law degree in 1838 from Durham University, and
the same honor from Oxford University the next
year

- In 1842 the government awarded him a civil list

pension amounting to £300 a year

- With the death in 1843 of Robert Southey,

Wordsworth became the Poet Laureate
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LIFE STORY

 Death
-William Wordsworth died in Rydal
Mount in 1850 and was buried at St.
Oswald's church in Grasmere
- His widow published his lengthy
autobiographical "poem to
Coleridge" as The Prelude several
months after his death
- Though this failed to arouse great
interest in 1850, it has since come to be
recognized as his masterpiece
 MY HEART LEAPS UP

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky
So was it when my life began
So is it now I am a man
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man
and I could wish my days to be
bound each to each by natural piety
 MY HEART LEAPS UP

 My heart leaps up when I behold

My heart feels so high when I see a rainbow in
the sky
→ Wordsworth expresses his desire to be a
part of the rainbow and its magnificence.

* leap - jump ; when your heart leaps up, you experience a

sudden, very strong feeling of surprise or happiness.
* behold - see
 MY HEART LEAPS UP
 So was it when my life began
When I was young, I was very happy when I saw a
rainbow.

 So is it now I am a man
Now I grow up, I'm still very happy when I see a
rainbow.

→ This line insinuates that Wordsworth found

life to be beautiful and still believes so to this
day.

*So was it → It was so

 MY HEART LEAPS UP
 So be it when I shall grow old
When I am old, I hope that I'll still be excited
when I see a rainbow.

 Or let me die!
If I don't, just let me die.

→ Wordsworth claims that he would rather die

than lose his wonder of the world. This
represents his fervent wish to maintain pure
love for nature.
 MY HEART LEAPS UP
 The child is father of the man
→ This is a famous line for paradoxical expression. Father means
fatherly or fatherlike. Child is fatherly to adult. This line suggests
that the child produces the man. The man is made from childhood
experiences. The past is the father of the present.
 And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety
I wish I can be joyful over natural beauty through out my life.
Wordsworth hopes that he will always appreciate the wonders of
nature throughout his life. He treats the feelings of wonder, joy and
awe at the sight of beautiful things as a manifestation of “piety” in
the sense of reverence for God's creations.
* be bound by st.- the thing is its most important aspects and it is limited or restricted by that
thing.
 MY HEART LEAPS UP
 Lyrical ballad
- It is a brief, often musical expression of the speaker’s emotion.

 Theme
- He hopes never to lose adoration of nature like a child as he
grows old.
- Represents the relationship of the child to the world, and,
consequently, with the relationship of the adult to the child,
and through the child the relationship of the adult to nature.
 Rhyme scheme A B C C A B C D E

 For many of the Romantics, the memories or visions of an

idyllic childhood become a powerful emotive force as they
aspired for life of greater harmony and simplicity.
 MY HEART LEAPS UP
 Symbolism
- The concept of the rainbow can be construed
as hope, promises or even a fulfilled dream.
- Some cultures believe that the rainbow is a
bridge to the afterlife, one for dead heroes to
cross to reach paradise, or Valhalla.
- The poem as a whole is symbolic of the beauty
of nature and Romanticism.
 I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That 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 as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
 I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had
brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow
a quatrain- couplet rhyme scheme like ABABCC

Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.

Each stanza represents meeting, familiarity,

joy and pleasure of sympathy. -> introduction,
development, turn and conclusion

The theme of this poem is ‘The pleasure of

sympathy with nature’.

Using metaphors and similes creates imageries

of daffodils - the reverse personification.
 I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
- A simile comparing the wondering of a man to a cloud
drifting through the sky that looks lonely.
I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils
- A metaphor to compare the daffodils to a crowd of people
and a host of angels.
- Meeting daffodils.
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
- Personifying daffodils.

This technique implies an inherent unity between man

and nature, making it one of Wordsworth's most basic
and effective methods for instilling in the reader the
feeling the poet so often describes himself as
experiencing.
 I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
 This poem shows the process through which a poem is
created.

 Wordsworth's definition of poetry, in Lyrical

Ballads' preface
: the spontaneous overflow of feelings and emotions
recollected in tranquility. - The last stanza of this
poem proves that

 only in a quiet atmosphere, when he is alone, and

through his imagination (inward eye) he can remember an
experience happened to him in the past and consequently
that remembered thing can be the source of happiness
for him.
 this poem is about the 'ideal state' in which
Romantics of Wordsworth's caliber believed to be as
close to utopia as one could achieve.
 I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
 this poem is about the 'ideal state' in
which Romantics of Wordsworth's caliber believed
to be as close to utopia as one could achieve.

Which is the bliss of solitude;

it was thought that only within nature lay an
ideal state, where one could be free without
restraint and in a constant state of serenity in
one’s own loneliness, accompanied only by their
own contemplative musings as companionship; such
a state was considered to be as close to heaven
as one could accomplish.
neoclassicism and Romanticism 1740-1850

rousseau
Descartes

 These two styles of literature were considered enemies. One

wanted to portray the absolute truth
of life and the other wanted to depict reality through images of
the wild and raw emotions that
prevailed after the Revolution. A vast gulf existed between
them and the debate was often long
and bitter, but in the end Romanticism emerged as the
dominant style of this period.
WHAT NEOCLASSICISM IS
 was born out of a rejection of the Rocco and late
Baroque styles in the middle of
the 18th century.
 These artists wanted a style that could convey serious
moral ideas such as
justice, honor, and patriotism.
 The movement was a profoundly educational one, for its
devotees believed that the fine arts could and should
spread knowledge and enlightenment.
 public and political concerns, social responsibility,
manners & morals; "The proper study of mankind is
Man" (Alexander Pope)
 absolute, public, rational, humanist
WHAT ROMANTICISM IS
 was concerned with the expression of the individual's feelings and
emotions.
 is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the
middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, during the Industrial
Revolution.
 was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the
Enlightenment period
 reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature.
 arguing for an epistemology based on nature
 emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to
some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.
 private, spiritual, universal through Spirit in nature and in humankind
 It’s being prospered by publishing Athenäum(아테네움) by brothers
Schlegel in Germany and Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in
British.
DIFFERENCE OF NEOCLASSICISM AND
ROMANTICISM
Neoclassicism Romanticism

Late 17c ~ Late 18c Late 18c ~ Early 19c

Period
1660-1798 1798-1837

Thomas Gray William Wordsworth

Representative a poet John Dryden John Keats
Alexander Pope Percy Bysshe Shelley,

Reason and Rationality Sense and Sensibility

Universality imaginative
Characteristic
public order and
Symbol and Intimation
discipline

Nature is being of Nature is friend and

Thinking about nature
imitation being of enjoying
What Lyrical Ballads is!

 is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 is typically considered to have marked the beginning
of the Romantic movement in literature.
 is kind of innovative
 bring poetry within the reach of the average man by
writing the verses using normal, everyday language
 One of the main themes of "Lyrical Ballads" is the
return to the original state of nature
 Purpose of it is to illustrate the manner in which our
feelings and ideas are associated in a state of
excitement
 Preface to Lyrical Ballads

I have said that

poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feeling:
it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquility:
the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of
reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an
emotion, kindered to that which was before the
subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and
does itself actually exist in the mind.
PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS

 Preface to Lyrical Ballads

→discussed the elements of a new type of
poetry

 "real language of men"- avoids the poetic

diction of much 18C poetry.

 a new type of poetry- "the spontaneous

overflow of powerful feelings from emotions
recollected in tranquility.“
Wordsworth and the Revolution in Poetry

 Used a technique that departs completely from the

Neoclassical tradition where the emphasis was
placed on order and balance and reasoned
thoughts, even in form.
 Liberty to write in blank verse, often without
punctuation between lines, underlining the
Romantic ideal of emotion.
 Expression of emotion does not necessarily end at
the last syllable of a heroic couplet, but Reason
invariably did.
"The majority of the following poems
are to be considered as experiments.
They were written chiefly with a view
to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower
classes of society is adapted to the
purpose of poetic pleasure.”

by William Words worth.

It shows that he was

affected by French
revolution’s the dignity of
man. In other words to love
public language means to
love public.