Wordsworth - Disdain for Industrialism/ Disillusionment Flashcards
To My Sister
- “Joyless forms” - materialistic goods - industrial city
- “Living calendar” - refers to clocks starting to dictate lives
- Defying conformity to corrupted ideals of society
- Adversity won’t get them down
“No joyless forms shall regulate / Our living calendar”
Nutting
- Tore off a hazel branch
- Tone shift from awe inspiring appreciative to greedy and harsh
“with crash..merciless ravage…mutilated”
Michael
- Corrupted ideals of city - destroys people that were previously good - this is why living rural in solitude is considered better by WW
- Symbolic of industrialisation’s destructiveness to the rural way of life - shows importance of immortalising it as it will disappear when city encroaches on peoples lives
Michaels son moves to the “dissolute city” where he fell into a life of “evil courses: ignominy and shame”
Michael
- Needed to be immortalised - such an example of destruction of happy lives due to corrupt society should never be forgotten
“The cottage which was named The Evening Star / Is now gone”
Resolution and Independence
- Dispair that fills him when thinking of other Poets who have come before him
“The fear that kills” “the hope that is unwilling to be fed”
Lucy Gray; or, Solitude
- She was a lovely girl despite being raised in a conventional restrictive society and not exposed to nature
“The sweetest thing that ever grew/ Beside a human door”
Tintern Abbey
- Unpleasant, overwhelming harsh
“din of towns and cities”
Tintern Abbey
- Because of this Wordsworth turns to Nature - specifically the Wye river
- Suggests society has become unhealthy both physically and psychologically for humanity
“fever of the world”
Tintern Abbey
- Things that cannot take away the calm/happy mood brought on by Nature - Nature has strengthened him
“Evil tongues, / Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men”
“The dreary intercourse of daily life”
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
- Aporia - philosophising and lamenting over childhood - “glory” that we had in childhood
“Where is now the glory and the dream?”
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
- Metaphor - society is a prison
- “Shades” furthers the negative connotation of society - culpable for separation from nature
‘’Shades of the prison-house begin to close’’
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
- “Light” could be referring to God’s “celestial light” which connotes truth and intelligence. Therefore this paradoxical description could be illustrating how when a child ages their intelligence is lost / “fade(s) into” the broader intelligence of society and thus they take on society’s corrupted values and ideals through conformity
“fade into the light of common day”
The Two Part Prelude
- Gifts guide him through this - disillusioned by industrialisation
“Fretful dwelling of Mankind”
Lines written in Early spring - 1798
- Society is not following Nature’s holy plan - Industrialisation
- Refrain
“Have I not reason to lament / what man has made of man?”
The Tables Turned
- Science and reason-based thinking have replaced learnings from Nature
- Analytical thinking has overtaken deep thinking/ philosophy
- Hyperbole - used to emphasise Wordsworth’s belief that analyisng is as destructive as murder
“We murder to disect”
The Tables Turned
- Metaphorically describing books as “barren leaves” implies cannot impart wisdom - they are bleak and lifeless
“Close up those barren leaves”
The Tables Turned
- Speaks to Wordsworth’s belief that the Age of Reason has gone too far and is taking over important things such as listening to the innate wisdom of nature
- Why he left Cambridge University - it was not teaching him anything substantial
“Enough of Science and of Art”
My heart leaps up when I behold
- Hyperbole highlights his need to be able to admire/love Nature in order to survive - “food”
“Or let me die!”
1801
- Food - relates back to “food for future years” - clearly wasn’t Nature’s “food” that he grew up with
“What food / Fed his hopes?”
The World is too much with us; late and soon
- Title
- The world is “too much” for society - Wordsworth valued a simple life
- “late and soon” - helplessness at neverending/ omnipresent frantic chaos of modern society - relates to inability to be present especially in Nature
The World is too much with us; late and soon
- Humanity has traded its ability to think and philosophise (our hearts) for materialism this is described as a We have given our hearts. away, a sordid boon!” paradoxical__exclamatory language evinces speakers confusion about over society
“Getting and spending we lay waste our powers / Little we see in Nature that is ours”
London, 1802
- Apostrophe
- Only way to rectify humanities wrongdoing is to bring someone back from the dead - link to ‘The Worlds is too much with us…’ where the resolution was to go back in time
“Milton! Thou shouldn’t be living at this hour”
London, 1802
- Sees industrial revolution as damaging not progressive
- “Fen” - rotting humanity thus damaging to health of the individual and society
“England hath need for thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters”
London, 1802
- Triad - what England is in need of - particularly in the church, military and literature
“give us manners; virtue, freedom, power”
Written in London September 1802
- Expressing anguish over materialistic values and obsession with self image
- Modern day implication with social media - more relevant now than ever
“our life is only for dress”
Written in London September 1802
- Feeling of suffocation - depression felt during this period - in need of solace
“I know not which way I must look/ For comfort, being, as I am, opprest”
