Wordsworth - Context

Question 1

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

• 1700’s and early 1800’s what WW believed was occurring due to industrialisation and the French Revolution - human potential was being destroyed by this

Answer 1

“A multitude of causes, unknown to former times [were] acting with combined forces to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind”

Question 2

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

• What WW believed a poet should be - radical for the time - created poetry for all and did not discriminate by class or intellect

Answer 2

• He is a man speaking to men

Question 3

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Answer 3

• “Cities are the abyss of the human species” - Tintern Abbey
• “Natural innocence … is corrupted by the evils of society” - Ode
• “Reason deceives us; conscience never” - The French Revolution As it Appeared to Enthusiasts
  
  • Wordsworth was not fooled by reason he used his own mind to decide what was right during the French Revolution

Question 4

Seamus Heaney

Answer 4

• Sublime “spots in time” - “such moments were not only the foundation of his sensibility, but the clue to his fulfilled identity”
• Wordsworth was “naturally inclined to accept the universe a s a mansion of spirit rather than congeries of matter”
• WW poetry is “democratic…visionary…philosophic..cathartic [and] masterful”
• The collection is considered by Heaney to be WW’s best starting in 1797 going to 1807

Question 5

Industrial Revolution

Answer 5

• People moving from agrarian society to cities
  
  • Cramped - horrific working conditions
  • Worked in factories - long hours

Question 6

French Revolution

Answer 6

• Ideals: liberty, equality and fraternity
  
  • Present in WW poems
• Began in 1789 with the fall of the Bastille

Question 7

Romanticism

Answer 7

• AKA Romantic era
• Emotive - emotion free to run wild
• Free expression
• Challenging status quo - politically rebellious
• Rural/ common people
• Humans viewed as in synergy with nature
• Child is embodiment of the Romantic spirit
  
  • Creative, innocent, uncorrupt
  • Lay emotional and psychological foundations
• Cities and urban environments are depleting on the human self

Question 8

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

• As a First Generation Romantic feeling emotion was valued

Answer 8

• “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”