William Wordsworth Flashcards
1770
born in West Cumberland (in Lake District)
1787
enters Cambridge University
1790
spends summer vacation hiking through France and the Alps; exposed to French revolution and the anniversary of the fall of Bastille
1791-92
spends year in France and becomes fervent supporter of French Revolution
1795
moves in w/ sister Dorothy in Dorsetshire; befriends Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1798
Lyrical Ballads (co-written w/ Coleridge) anonymously published
1800
published 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads w/ Preface (drafted in consultation w/ Coleridge)
-believed he wrote the Preface himself
-authored by one person but theorized by 2 people
1810
quarrels w/ Coleridge (renews friendship in 1830)
1843
elected poet Laureate of Great Britain
- huge advocate for working class, democracy
1850
passes away
- The Prelude published (first written in 1799, then expanded in 1805, and revised until 1840s)
Lyrical Ballads
- founding text of British Romanticism
- preface: manifesto regarding poetry, the poet, and the imagination
- begins w/ Coleridge’s Rime of Ancient Mariner
- ends w/ “Tintern Abbey”
Lyrical Ballads a new type of poetry
“Several of my friends…theory upon which the poems were written” (304)
- defensive tone of genre/style => both knew they were doing something different
- gives reader a chance to theorize
- reinventing poetry in general
defending the merits of Lyrical Ballads
“They who have been accustomed…prevents him from performing it” (305)
- he and Coleridge have failed to live up to politics
- neoclassical: “neo” = new
lyric
a poem in which the speaker expresses his or her thoughts using first person perspective rather than an explicit dramatic or narrative plot
- foregrounds emotions and sentiment
- almost like a dramatic monologue in the poems
ballad
a song or poem that narrates a story, usually in sparse, informal language
- descended from folk tradition: typically anonymous and passed down orally
- using ballads in literature
depicting “common life”
“The principal object…associate ideas in a state of excitement” (305-06)
- defamiliarizing with the common => how we associate ideas in the state of excitement
- more elevated, religious the better => show off how well read you are
“Low and rustic…permanent forms of nature”
- folks more connected to nature
- rise in industrialization/urbanization
- lose rustic simplicity of the working class/common folk => reclaim and preserve history in these elementary feelings
“The language…unelaborated expressions”
- what do you lose when you go higher up in society? => more like you’re watching a play than living your own life, more artificial and stilted, lack empathy/sympathy on behalf of other people, isolating themselves w/ people who fit their like-minds
“Accordingly…of their own creation”
- people who are narcissistic and sealed from the world => removes you from common folk
- somehow more philosophical to gain from poems => how emotions and human mind works
“I have said that poetry..in a state of enjoyment” (314)
- poetry is spontaneous, can’t predict where it goes or the emotions that come up
- have to recollect it in tranquility => have to distance from original effect
- poetry recreating sense of overpowering feeling => poet has ability to make you feel something artificial
The purpose of Lyrical Ballads
“This purpose will be found…simple affections of our nature” (306-07)
- “fluxes and refluxes of the mind” = mind is not always rational and logical in the way we want it to be
- understanding marks romantic poets apart from society => mythologize romanticism
the poet known for emotions
“I ask what is meant by the word…without immediate external excitement” (310)
- tortured poet who can think and feel a lot
- can people cultivate this quality in themselves? => Marianne
- closed off from society so they have a sense of how humans work
- nostalgic, fantasy of nature may not have existed => made it a destination readers can go, can relate to them but can’t be them
Expostulation and Reply
Reading and idleness
“Why, William, on that old grey stone…and dream your time away?” (lines 1-4)
- romantic idea of young boy dreaming his time away: what is the value? => in his creativity, squandering time. art isn’t necessarily about time
- child sits alone, isolated from people in society => he’s not thinking his time away but succumbing to his imagination
“One morning thus…in a wise passiveness” (lines 13-24)
- how Marianne feels with the world
- tension b/twn human will and body’s own atonomy => human will doesn’t make a difference: out body will feel with or without us
- “impress” => children’s minds are blank states that are impressed by surroundings
- “wise passiveness” => how to let things be impressed upon us but have to be wise about it
- something about wise passiveness that children can teach us => children can teach us something that we, ourselves, lose
The Tables Turned
“Up, up…that watches and receives”
- more wisdom to be gained in nature than in books
- “leaves” = pages of a book
- “ a heart that watches and receives” = the wise passivity
- if you want to study the world, go into the world => “may teach you more of man, or more evil and of good”
- nature can teach you how to be receptive to the world, how to be impressed upon => humans fail to teach that
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the wye during a tour AND Composed upon Westminister Bridge
- both poems about the relationship b/twn city/country or urban/natural environment
- romantic poet as a visionary => able to keep in mind the past and peer into the heart of life
What’s the relationship b/twn nature and the imagination? How can nature prompt of inspire us?
when you look at nature => inspire emotions
“Tintern Abbey”
- refers to the ruins of a medieval abbey
- passage of time and role of nostalgia
- the ruins of the abbey similar to the poet’s imagination and memory?