William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Themes
Nature was Wordsworth’s most important subject, with different meanings:
 nature as countryside opposed to the town. The landscape is mainly rural and
solitary, the landscape of London in “ Composed upon Westminster Bridge”
becomes a sort of rural landscape because of the beauty of the morning sun and
the proximity of the countryside (line 7-“Open into the fields and to the sky”).
 nature as a source of feelings - Wordsworth’s poems are filled with words which
emphasize joy, they record man’s response to nature = man is a part of nature
which produces an emotional response when he looks at it
 nature as an active force, a power which reveals itself, manifests itself in the wild
countryside. This vision of nature implies a pantheistic view of the world which is
seen as an expression of God.
Childhood Wordsworth attached importance to childhood as the time when man is
closest to God and can feel the splendour of the world around him. Wordsworth ideas
derive from J.J.Rousseau who revaluated the status of childhood as the period closer
to nature, therefore purer and less corrupt.
Traits in common with Blake:
- youthful radicalism
-visionary philosophising
-reverence for the power of imagination
-sympathy for ordinary people
preference for simple language
The poet’s task and style
The poet has a greater sensibility than common man and becomes a teacher who
shows man how to understand their feelings and improve their moral being. His task is
to draw attention to the ordinary things of life, where the deepest emotions and
truth are to be found.
Wordsworth abandoned the 18th century heroic couplet and almost always used Bbank
verse in sonnets, odes and ballads with short lines and simple rhymes.
The Lyrical Ballads W.Wordsworth/S.T.Coleridge
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800)
The Lyrical Ballads is considered the manifesto of Romanticism. It is the most
important volume of verse since the Renaissance because it began MODERN POETRY,
the poetry of the growing innerself, of man’s inside world made of feelings, irrational
aspects, instinct besides reason.
In the Preface Wordsworth fixed the themes and canons of his poetry:
1. the themes of poetry: he chose humble and rustic life because he wanted to
express the feelings and thoughts of all mankind. “incidents and situations from
common life” is the most famous sentence of the Preface. (Coleridge would deal
with the supernatural).
2. the nature of the POET: the poet is a man speaking to other men, but different
from them because of his sensibility, passion and power of expression.
3. the audience: poetry has to produce immediate pleasure to man and must please
human nature.
4. the language of poetry: the language really spoken by men, the expression of their
feelings. “Real” means natural, the language of nature. (the 1st generation lived
close to nature and wrote naturally, the 2nd generation will write in a different
kind of language). Natural language is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings” into words.
5. “ poetry is immortal as the heart of man”. It is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings; the mind is in a state of enjoyment. Poetry arises from impulse
and it is free from rules. A poem originates “from emotion recollected in
tranquillity”. For Wordsworth imagination modifies and transforms the data of
experience through “recollection in tranquillity”. (for Coleridge imagination
creates).
As a conclusion : the 18th century had regarded poetry as an imitation of human life,
Wordsworth described poetry as the manifestation of the feelings of the individual
poet. As poetry expresses the inner world and feelings of the author, the lyric poem
is written in the 1st person, free from rules. The outer world is a living entity which
shares these feelings. Above all, Wordsworth wanted to represent the real world,
“situations from common life” overthrown with “a certain colouring of imagination”, so
that “ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect”. He was
interested in common life and ordinary things: that’s why he gives great importance
to such words as common, ordinary, everyday, humble.(he contrasts with Coleridge
because in his poems the incidents were to be supernatural).
Literature
Name........................................................
Test
Romanticism
Class.........................................................
Date.........................................................
Choose two of the poems by W.Blake - The Lamb / The Tyger or by Blake and
Wordsworth - London / Composed upon Westminster Bridge. Compare and contrast
them analysing the Romantic elements (theme - theories and concepts - linguistic
devices - tone - atmosphere - style).
Support your comment with appropriate quotations from the texts.
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