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The power of literary analysis
The power of literary analysis
Why do you consider literary analysis
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William Wordsworth rejected all the traditional assumptions about the proper style, words, and subject matter for a poem during the Romanics period. When explaining his writing Wordsworth said, “There will be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetry diction; I have taken as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take to produce it.” (Marshall) Because he took such a different approach to his writing, many people criticized his poems. Literary critic Harold Bloom said, “The fear of mortality haunts much of Wordsworth’s best poetry, especially in regard to the premature mortality of the Imagination and the loss of its creative joy.” Wordsworth does in fact express fear of mortality in the poems The World is too much with us, London, 1802, The Prelude, and Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey. To begin, Wordsworth shows fear of mortality throughout the lines in the poem The World is too Much with Us. He explains that we continue to waste our lives by only being concerned with material things. Once we start caring more about money, we are lost! The speaker claims that our obsession with "getting and spending" has made us insensible to the beauties of nature. "Getting and spending" refers to the consumer culture accompanying the Industrial Revolution that was the devil incarnate for Wordsworth .(Shmoop Editorial Team) We lose our chances to do better and accomplish things when we give away our hearts because we become enthralled with love. Soon we become blind from what really matters in life and drift away from Nature. We take for granted the little things in life and become out of tune. In addition, London, 1802 Wordsworth also expresses fear of mortality. To start off, he references Milton, ... ... middle of paper ... ...Web. 10 Mar. 2014. . Notari, Debbie. "London, 1802 by Wordsworth." Educational Portal. Educational-Portal, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. . Phillips, Jonathan. "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." GradeSaver.com. Grade Saver LLC, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. . Rush, Tayna. "The Prelude: William Wordsworth - Summary and Critical Analysis." BachelorandMaster.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. . Shmoop Editorial Team, ed. "The World is too Much with Us." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. .
(ll. 19-24) Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This small
In Percy Shelley's poem, "To Wordsworth", Shelley addresses Wordsworth's diminishing connection with his past. As age progresses, memories grow dim along with their ability to inspire new poetry. Shelley does not fault Wordsworth for that. Shelley writes, "Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know /That things depart which never may return /These common woes I feel."(701 lines 1-5) Shelley is sympathetic to Wordsworth in regards to his declining ability to be inspired by past experience. It is a common experience shared by other poets, as Wordsworth asked himself in "Ode: Imitations of Immortality", "Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"(288 lines 56-57)Wordsworth feels something is missing, as Shelley notes, something has "fled like swee...
Initially, Wordsworth exhibits what could be called an ‘anxiety of influence’. In Book III of The Prelude, he incorporates Milton into a scene that comes to a troubling conclusion:
In “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” we find the purest expression of Wordsworth’s fascination with friendship.
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, authored by William Wordsworth, is a 160 line poem. Written in 1798, this poem reflects upon William Wordsworth’s second visit to the valley of the River Wye and the ruins of Tintern Abbey. Mainly, the poem is about how the poet describes what he hears and sees again five years after he last visited this scene. He describes things that be both sees in real life and things he imagines were there, however this time he is accompanied by his sister. More specifically, in lines 25-35 he focuses on his true memories of the ruins; how he remembers the peaceful scenes and escapes nature has to offer while being in a crowded city.
William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey As students, we are taught that William Wordsworth's basic tenets of poetry are succinct: the use of common language as a medium, common man as a subject, and organic form as an inherent style. Yet beyond these rudimentary teachings, it should be considered that it was the intimacy with nature that was imperative to the realization of Wordsworth's goals set forth in the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads. In his "Preface," Wordsworth states, "Poetry is the image of man and nature" (Norton 247). A study of "Tintern Abbey," the intended finale and last impression of the Lyrical Ballads, reveals Wordsworth's conviction that the role of nature is the force and connection that binds mankind not only to the past and the future, but to other human beings as well. Regardless of the language employed, the subject used, or the method of delivery, it was the primal connection with nature that fueled Wordsworth's poetic genius.
William Wordsworth's Expostulation and Reply and Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known William Wordsworth is well known for his great works of poetry, spawned from his unique idea of how good poetry should be written. Wordsworth was a firm believer in using simple language, and more importantly emphasized the need to have a reflective component to his poetry. As a result of his writing poetry in the Romantic era, elements such as nature and spirituality have a more profound effect on the poem. In two of his own poems, “Expostulation and Reply” and “Strange fits of passion have I known,” Wordsworth demonstrates the use of nature and spirituality combined with his more reflective style to create stunning poetry.
One of our greatest fears is the fear of death. Immortality is something any of us would take in a heartbeat, so we do not have to face death. But this is something that we cannot run away from. Mortality is an unpleasant thought that sits in the back of our minds form our day to day lives. Yet, this fear is something that is developed more over time as we grow older. Children believe that the world is such a wonderful place, they fell invincible. They also have wonderful creative skills and imaginations which is often revealed to us when they can play one game for hours at one time. Yet, as a child ages, this imagination and creativity can disappear. This is what William Wordsworth is terrified of. Wordsworth is an English poet as well as his colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the first edition of Lyrical Ballads and it changed everything as mentioned Evelyn Toynton, “In early 1798, Coleridge and a little-known poet named William Wordsworth decided to publish a joint volume of their poems.” (Toynton, Evelyn). William expressed this fear of premature mortality of the imagination in each of his works, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, The Prelude, The World is Too Much with Us, and London, 1802.
William Wordsworth is a British poet who is associated with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was seven years old, and he was an orphan at 13. This experience shapes much of his later work. Despite Wordsworth’s losses, he did well at Hawkshead Grammar School, where he firmly established his love of poetry. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry.
William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805 text), in William Wordsworth: The Major Works edited by Stephen Gill (Oxford World’s Classics)
Moreover, searching for the different mechanics in each of these poems makes it easier for the reader to analysis and interpret them. To begin, in “The World is Too Much with Us” the way the punctuation is fit into the poem is different since there are many semicolons between each line and one period suggesting that the poem is actually one long sentence. Then I believe the speaker to be someone who acknowledges that he too has lost connection with nature since he’s been preoccupied with other things in the world. This is proven throughout the whole poem since he talks in first person using the word “I.” The tone of this poem is angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied because of how the world has changed. The rhyme scheme is also another appealing mechanic here too since Wordsworth only uses fou...
He is writing the poem as if he were an object of the earth, and what it is like to once live and then die only to be reborn. On the other hand, Wordsworth takes images of meadows, fields, and birds and uses them to show what gives him life. Life being whatever a person needs to move on, and without those objects, they can't have life. Wordsworth does not compare himself to these things like Shelley, but instead uses them as an example of how he feels about the stages of living. Starting from an infant to a young boy into a man, a man who knows death is coming and can do nothing about it because it's part of life.
The Influence of Nature in Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth
Tintern Abbey is just an old ruin (William). However, throughout Wordsworth’s poetry Tintern Abbey becomes something slightly more than a ruin. His poem recognizes the ordinary and turns it into a spectacular recollection, whose ordinary characteristics are his principal models for Nature. As Geoffryy H. Hartman notes in his “Wordsworth’s poetry 1787-1814”, “Anything in nature stirs [Wordsworth] and renews in turn his sense for nature” (Hartman 29). “The Poetry of William Wordsworth” recalls a quote from the Prelude to Wordsworth’s 1802 edition of Lyrical ballads where they said “[he] believed his fellow poets should "choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them...in a selection of language really used by men” (Poetry). In the shallowest sense, Wordsworth is using his view of the Tintern Abbey as a platform or recollection, however, this ordinary act of recollection stirs within him a deeper understanding. In his elaboration in “Tintern Abbey”, he says “For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, s...
Lancashire, Ian. "William Wordsworth: The Solitary Reaper." Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries, 2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.