Tintern Abbey: Summary
William Wordsworth reflects on his return to the River Wye in his poem “Lines: Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour”. Having visited Wye five years prior, he is familiar with how enchanting the place is. He describes the natural wonders of the Wye, which travels past Tintern Abbey, a medieval abbey in the village of Tintern, which is in Monmouthshire, Wales. This Cistercian Abbey was founded by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow, on May 9, 1131. The abbey thrived, with many buildings being added, until it was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1536.
Wordsworth describes his journey through the abbey saying, “…Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect / The landscape with the quiet of the sky” (Wordsworth 7-8). This connection between peaceful solitude and nature is the fore-conceit which he reiterates through the poem, naming the feeling “sublime” (Wordsworth 37). The abbey and Wye are “The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / Of all my moral being” (Wordsworth 110-111).
For Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey and Wye are more a blissful paradise than simply a location. This place he is writing about gives him a sense of freedom and self-awareness, which he illuminates by writing “Lines” in free verse form. In his book on his analysis of Wordsworth’s work The Landscape of Memory, Christopher Salvesen says, “The calm, the seclusion, is the important feature; … [the] memory of such a spot will at least be a reassurance in human time” (Salvesen 157). Clearly Wordsworth finds comfort in revisiting Tintern, but he does not describe why he enjoys this seclusion from in “Lines”.
Personal Influences
Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1970, as the second son of h...
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Tillery, Tyrone. Claude McKay: A Black Poet's Struggle for Identity. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1992. Print.
Wordsworth, William. Lines: Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of Wye during a Tour. 13 July 1798.
Writing during the emergence of the “New Negro” movement, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes work to reconcile black life in white America. The trope used by the two poets within “The Harlem Dancer” and “The Weary Blues” is that of a performance and a single speaker’s recollection of it. While both depict an African-American performer presumably consumed by the isolation and oppression of their condition, the intensity of the performances prove to be vastly disparate. Hughes’ “The Weary Blues” features a much more transcendent performance than that of McKay’s “The Harlem Dancer” not only because of the relationship between the audience and the performer, but the degree of ubiquity in descriptions of the performer and the poetic form through which the performance is framed. While neither performer attempts to gain anything from their audience, the impact of their art on the speaker identifies the importance McKay placed on art as a means to build racial pride as well as Hughes interest in art as a means to communicate a common struggle.
He is very disapproving and wants to persuade the African Americans to make a move. Claude McKay was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance, so this would make it easier for him to persuade the African Americans. McKay believed that the treatment the African Americans were undergoing was utterly humiliating, and it was up to him to start a revolution. He also believed that African Americans deserved honor and respect, and this meant they should do anything to achieve their honor. Claude says, “The monsters he and his readers resist will be obliged to honor them, even though they are dead,” which suggests that McKay knew his poems would one day make a difference in the world even if it was after he died (Poetry for Students). Throughout the entire poem, McKay is encouraging his readers to make a difference and begin fighting back against the white Americans. The poem serves as a battle cry for the African Americans, so they could understand the harsh treatment they were putting up with and make a difference (Griffin). Claude McKay insisted, “Men should not be like penned-up animals that submit to their fate” (Poetry for Students). This shows that McKay thought a revolution was vital to saving the African American race. He did not believe the African Americans should put up with this unfair treatment and submit to this awful faith.
While Romantics did seek inspiration in solitude and the grandeur of nature, it is difficult to say whether there is only one Romantic notion of the sublime. It is doubtful that the sublime we encounter in Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is the same as the sublime of ‘Tintern Abbey’. Wordsworth tells us how “… in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din / Of towns and cities” he has received “tranquil restoration” from the memory of nature, and how this has sometimes led to the realization of a gift of “aspect more sublime”, which is a trance-like state, a “classical religious meditation” (Wlecke, 158) in which he can “see into the life of things” (lines 36-49). This seems to be a notion of the sublime that gradually reveals itself through the interaction between the human mind and the objects of its contemplation. Moreover, this philosophical gift is “abundant recompense” (line 89) for something that he has lost – the ability to be moved at a level below that of thought, by the sublime aspect of nature. At the time of his visit five years before, he had been “more like a man ...
Both authors took a leap by publishing works that criticized their oppressors, a leap that put them each in harm’s way. Each poet was able to inspire and educate in their own way, using their own personal touches; Hughes, working to inform his people and unite them against a common enemy through passionate prose, and McKay, working to ignite the passions of his audience in order to compel them to take a forceful stand. The importance of both perspectives operating in unison cannot be understated. A broader set of perspectives and beliefs about the same issue is effective in inspiring a broader, larger, and more diverse group of readers. The sad image that Hughes creates was most likely effective in reaching even the white Americans who already enjoyed their full freedom, by opening the eyes of whites and other unoppressed races to the plights of early African-Americans. In contrast, McKay’s poem was most likely more effective in rallying African-Americans specifically. The advantage of these (though not greatly) differing messages was immense, and underlines the importance of differing viewpoints, and also inspired different groups of people, in order to bring about a more rapid, and more universally agreed upon change. Against a tyrannical force such as a racist majority, these two viewpoints
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Claude McKay was an important figure during the 1920's in the Harlem Rennaisance. Primarily a poet, McKay used the point of view of the outsider as a prevalent theme in his works. This is best observed in such poems as "Outcast," "America," and "The White House." In these poems, McKay portrays the African-American as the outsiderof western society and its politics and laws and at times, the very land that he is native to.
(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 “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” we find the purest expression of Wordsworth’s fascination with friendship.
Primarily in Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey the mortality of creativeness and imagination is expressed by Wordsworth. This is a poem about the beauty of an old cathedral called Tintern Abbey. He hasn’t been there in five years and he brought his sister along. Even though imagination isn’t immortal, there is a way to reclaim it, “That time is past, / and all its aching joys are ...
In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," William Wordsworth explains the impact of Nature from Tintern Abbey in his every day life. "Tintern Abbey" shows the great importance of nature to Wordsworth in his writings, love for life, and religion. The memories he has of Tintern Abbey make even the darkest days full of light.
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...
In the sestet he tells us of his personal responses to the scene. The poem uses an alternate line rhyming to create the effect of order. It is written in a sonnet using iambic pentameter. This device brings attention and emphasizes the meanings of the words. Wordsworth's shows his feelings for London in a figurative way.
Durrant, Geoffrey. Wordsworth and the Great System, A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetic Universe. Cambridge: University Printing House, 1970.
The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.
William Wordsworth has respect and has great admiration for nature. This is quite evident in all three of his poems; the Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey and Michael in that, his philosophy on the divinity, immortality and innocence of humans are elucidated in his connection with nature. For Wordsworth, himself, nature has a spirit, a soul of its own, and to know is to experience nature with all of your senses. In all three of his poems there are many references to seeing, hearing and feeling his surroundings. He speaks of hills, the woods, the rivers and streams, and the fields. Wordsworth comprehends, in each of us, that there is a natural resemblance to ourselves and the background of nature.