Born in 1770 at Cockermouth in the heart of the Lakes District in England. William Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society and his beautiful and ageless poetry often reflect this. Wordsworth’s mother died in 1778 and in 1779 he was sent to grammar school in Hawkshead. Wordsworth’s father died in 1783, leaving his uncles as guardians. They tried to guide him towards a career in law or in the church and he was accepted into Cambridge in 1787. Wordsworth was uninspired to work towards a career he had little interest in and subsequently his grades, which bordered on the average, reflected this. Before completing his final term of college Wordsworth went for a walking tour of Europe and finally received his degree in 1791 but had no direct plans for his future. He returned to France in 1791 and stayed a full year, during this time became an enthusiastic advocate of the French Revolution. Money concerns forced him to return to England and he was unable to return to France until 1802 due to war breaking out between the two countries.
In 1795 two things happened that ultimately changed the course of Wordsworth’s life. In August of 1795 a young friend whom Wordsworth had been nursing died of tuberculosis and left him a grant of 900 pounds. His friend had hoped that with this money Wordsworth would be able to devote his life to poetry, and in August of 1795 Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Over the next two years their friendship would grow and in 1797 William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxden House, which was only a few miles from Coleridge’s home. The creative partnership between these two young poets would eventuate in the first publishing of Lyrical Ballads.
The publication of Lyrical Ballads represented a turning point for English poetry. It was released anonymously on October 4th, 1798 and the learned old guard of literary England was mostly unaware that a form of “literary revolution” had taken place. Previous ages had considered the aim of poetry to be used as a tool to change people’s behaviour or as a learning mechanism. Wordsworth launched the Romantic Era of poetry and paved the way for many of the romantic poets that came after him. John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley to name but two. Coleridge encouraged Wordsworth to write a preface to Lyrical Ballads. A preface that would explain the work contained within the collection.
Lyrical Ballads were written in a time of great change. They were dominated by the French Revolution and both Wordsworth and Coleridge felt great impact from this. There was disruption all over with the American War of Independence and other wars worldwide. Britain itself was changing rapidly due to colonial expansion, which brought new wealth, ideas and fashion, and there was much disturbance to both the people and the land with the act of enclosure, which may have meant more effective farming but less work. The introduction of the Poor Laws meant that landowners paid their remaining staff very little knowing that they would be supplemented by poor relief. However the conditions stated by the Laws before aid would be given were very similar to ?The Last Of The Flock? with people having to give up every means of self support and therefore reduce the chance of them ever living independently again. The Industrial Revolution introduced the new ?middle? class for which many of these poems were written for. They use simple language to allow them to understand and self educate, which many of them were very interested in doing and bettering themselves, much like Wordsworth himself and his sister as shown in ?Tintern Abbey?. Here he talks of her being at the stage of education that he was five years before when he last visited.
Of all the topics Wordsworth covered in his poetic lifetime, friendship stands out as a key occupation. His own personal friendship with Coleridge led to the co-writing of Lyrical Ballads in 1789. The poem “On Friendship,” written to Keats after an argument in 1854, states, “Would that we could make amends / And evermore be better friends.”
William Wordsworth poem 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey'; was included as the last item in his Lyrical Ballads. The general meaning of the poem relates to his having lost the inspiration nature provided him in childhood. Nature seems to have made Wordsworth human.The significance of the abbey is Wordsworth's love of nature. Tintern Abbey representes a safe haven for Wordsworth that perhaps symbolizes a everlasting connection that man will share with it's surroundings. Wordsworth would also remember it for bringing out the part of him that makes him a 'A worshipper of Nature'; (Line 153).
Wordsworth, William. 1802 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. Romanticism, 1st ed. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 250-269.
W. Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. (1798, 1800, 1802) Ed. R.L. Brett & A.R. Jones. Routledge, 1992.
William Wordsworth, like Blake, was linked with Romanticism. In fact, he was one of the very founders of Romanticism. He wrote poems are about nature, freedom and emotion. He was open about how he felt about life and what his life was like. Also, Wordsworth wrote poems about the events going on around him ? for instance the French Revolution. Mainly, Wordsworth wrote about nature, however, rarely used simple descriptions in his work. Instead, Wordsworth wrote complexly, for example in his poem ?Daffodils?.
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.
Wordsworth's Poetry A lot of literature has been written about motherhood. Wordsworth is a well known English poet who mentions motherhood and female strength in several of his poems, including the Mad Mother, The Thorn, and The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman. This leads some critics to assume that these poems reflect Wordsworth's view of females. Wordsworth portrays women as dependent on motherhood for happiness, yet he also emphasizes female strength.
Since then, a further distinction has been made between first and second generation Romantic writers. But even within these sub-divisions, there exist points of divergence. As first generation Romantics, Coleridge and Wordsworth enjoyed an intimate friendship and collaborated to produce the seminal Romantic work, Lyrical Ballads (1798). But in his Biographia Literaria (1817) Coleridge cast a critical eye over the 'Preface to the Lyrical Ballads' (1800) and took issue with much of Wordsworth's poetical theory. Such discrepancies frustrate attempts to classify Romanticism as a monolithic movement and make establishing a workable set of key concerns problematic.
Toynton, Evelyn. "A DELICIOUS TORMENT: The friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge." Harper's. 01 Jun. 2007: 88. eLibrary. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
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 and Samuel Taylor Coleridge spearheaded a philosophical writing movement in England in the late 18th and early 19th century. Although Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge are often considered the fathers of the English Romantic movement, their collective theologies and philosophies were often criticized but rarely taken serious by the pair of writers due to their illustrious prestige as poets. The combined effort in the Lyrical Ballads catapulted their names into the mainstream of writers in 1798 and with this work; they solidified their place in English literature. Although, most people fail to note that the majority of Coleridge's and Wordsworth's work was him simply bending and breaking particular rules of poetry that were in place during his time and in order to fully understand his work, one must fully understand his views of poetry itself.
William Wordsworth existed in a time when society and its functions were beginning to rapidly pick up. The poem that he 'Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye', gave him a chance to reflect upon his quick paced life by taking a moment to slow down and absorb the beauty of nature that allows one to 'see into the life of things'; (line 49). Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'; takes you on a series of emotional states by trying to sway 'readers and himself, that the loss of innocence and intensity over time is compensated by an accumulation of knowledge and insight.'; Wordsworth accomplishes to prove that although time was lost along with his innocence, he in turn was able to gain an appreciation for the aesthetics that consoled him by incorporating all together, the wonders of nature, his past experiences, and his present mature perception of life.
The Influence of Nature in Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was known as the poet of nature. He devoted his life to poetry and used his feeling for nature to express him self and how he evolved.