William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Wordsworth’s Life

The 20th-century philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up Wordsworth’s career1 as:“In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with2 the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period he was called a ‘bad’ man.Then he became ‘good’, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and wrote bad poetry.”- this is amusing but unfair.

Having graduated from Cambridge in 1791 (with an undistinguished degree) Wordsworth returned to France.3

There he fell in love with Annette Vallon, the daughter of a surgeon.They had a daughter, Caroline, in 1792.

Wordsworth returned to England because war with France meant it was too dangerous for him there.However, he kept up correspondence with Annette and evidently intended to marry her.

In 1802 – a decade later – he decided to marry childhood friend Mary Hutchinson.- However, before doing so, he took advantage of a temporary Anglo-French peace to go to France with Dorothy and square things with4 Annette.Even after this he kept in touch with5 Annette and Caroline.

In 1820 William took Mary to France to meet Annette and Caroline.

Annette finally died in 1841, Caroline in 1862.

1 career – (false friend) trajectory 2 to sympathize with – support, back 3 he had been on a walking tour in France in 17904 to square things with sb. – get sb’s approval 5 in touch with – in contact with

Other Events

1770 born in the Lake District1776 educated in Cockermouth school, Cumberland, with Fletcher Christian6!1778 mother dies.1783 father dies.1787 goes to Cambridge1793 walking tour of southwest England and Wales. First visit to Wye valley.1797 collaborates with Coleridge. William and Dorothy move to Somerset to be

near him. Although they were innocently writing poetry the trio was viewed with suspicion by the local rural population and were monitored by Government agents as possible French spies!

1798 Lyrical Ballads1799 William and Dorothy visit Germany and then settle7 in the Lake District1800 Coleridge moves his family to Lake District to be near the Wordsworths.1802 marries Mary Hutchinson ( - 1859) and they have five children by 18101803 ‘pilgrimage to Ayrshire’ to visit Burns’s grave and sites associated with the

Scottish poet.1810 falls out with8 Coleridge.1812 reconciled with Coleridge1813 Wordsworth appointed9 stamp distributor (financial independence)1817 Wordsworth meets Keats10 (que rima)1842 Civil Lists (pension)1843 appointed poet laureate. From then until his death he didn’t write a single poem.1850 dies.

Wordsworth’s best work was all written before 1810. - Ironically, as his literary abilities declined in the last 40 years of his life his reputation soared11.

From the 1820s onwards tourists thronged to visit12 the ‘sage of Rydal’ at home.- Sometimes there were as many as 30 visitors per day, who were usually charged for tea.

Dorothy was more or less a vegetable for the last 20 years of her life (1835-55), cared for by William and Mary.

6 yes, the bloke who organized the famous ‘Mutiny on The Bounty’7 to settle – establish one’s permanent home 8 to fall out with (fall-fell-fallen) – argue with 9 to appoint – (false friend) officially name 10 the young poet tried to intervene during one of Wordsworth’s perorations; Mary Wordsworth laid a hand on

his arm and whispered ‘Mr Wordsworth is never interrupted’.11 to soar – increase diametrically 12 to throng to visit – visit in great numbers

- She just13 sat by the fire having lost almost all her memory (though she could still recite her brother’s poems!).

13 just – (in this case) simply

Wordsworth’s Reputation

Wordsworth is hated by liberals because he gave up14 his radicalism and became part of the Tory Establishment.- Byron and Shelley were two early critics on these grounds.

Keats admired Wordsworth more than his two aristocratic contemporaries but even so coined the term ‘egotistical sublime’ to describe some of Wordsworth’s writing. - Wordsworth’s poems are almost always about himself.

The Victorians placed Wordsworth alongside15 Shakespeare, Molière, Milton and Goethe.

Wordsworth poetry became a kind16 of Victorian religion: “Wordsworth taught people how to feel and how to manage their feelings”.

Partly because of the Victorian hyperbole, Wordsworth’s reputation has fallen almost continuously since the late 19th Century.

In 1892 James Stephens famously described Wordsworth as, “A half-witted17 sheep who bleated18 articulate monotony”.

His renunciation of democratic values has come back19 to haunt20 him - alongside21 the unfair criticisms we have seen regarding his first daughter.

Psychoanalytical critics have accused him of half-repressed incestuous love towards22 his sister.

Ezra Pound commented, “Mr Wordsworth never ruined anyone’s morals, unless, perhaps, he has driven some susceptible persons to crime in the very fury of boredom.”

14 to give up (give-gave-given) – abandon 15 alongside – next to 16 kind (n.) – sort, type 17 half-witted – stupid, idiotic 18 to bleat – make a plaintive sound like a sheep 19 to come back (come-came-come) – return 20 to haunt – torment 21 alongside – together with 22 towards – (in this case) for

Lyrical Ballads

The title ‘Lyrical Ballads’ is almost an oxymoron.

Lyric:a poem about feelingexpressed by the poet as personal and individual andaddressed to the reader in the manner of a private and intimate conversation

Ballad: narrative poemusually presented from an anonymous point of viewnarrating the fate23 of characters in relation to public and historical events, such as war.

Interest in ballads had been growing since Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765)

This interest in the popular tradition was the bedrock24 of Robbie Burns’s poetry- however, while Burns could appeal to popular nationalist sentiment by writing in Scots, there was no obvious dialect for Wordsworth to write in to tune into a similar sentiment.

Lacking this, he wrote in colloquial Standard English (as opposed to ‘poetic diction’).

In any event he – like Burns – was writing for the urban middle class, - not the common people, who didn’t read poetry.

Lyrical Ballads Written in reaction against his own earlier poetry (couplets and ornate). Main tenets:

o Language should mimic that of ordinary people in statements of strong feeling;o Poetry focuses on states of emotion rather than25 on making political points;o Tragic compassion.

Power of nature to give access to joy and love. Questions of voice and perspective challenge the reader.

Nature means several things in Wordsworth’s poetry: it can mean 1. physical nature (a.k.a.26 the Great Outdoors),

23 fate – (in this case) fortunes 24 bedrock – basis, foundation 25 rather than – as opposed to, instead of 26 a.k.a. – also known as

2. the sense of unity or connection between everything (a.k.a. ‘the Force’ in Star Wars), 3. a divine ‘presence’ in Nature, like Mother Nature.

Originality?

A critic in The Guardian once compared Lyrical Ballads to punk rock in terms of its challenge to27 convention.

There is not a single character in Lyrical Ballads whom the Augustans would have deemed worthy of28 poetic effort.

Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads was the first serious attempt29 by a poet to explain and justify his method;- in a sense the first real document of literary analysis.

Perhaps the greatest originality of the Preface was its new conception of ‘the Poet’.- he was different from other men in his deep sensitivity, his powers of expression and his specially gifted consciousness.

In other words the poet was a man apart, subject only to self-imposed constraints, an outsider both mentally and socially; a Byronic hero.- Both Percy Shelley and Byron played his part to the full.

However, according to Robert Mayo there is nothing very original in Lyrical Ballads and it is mostly an imitation of popular verse written to make money (as Wordsworth states30 in letters).

The variety of subjects and stylesthe themes of nature, simplicity and humanitarianism

were commonplace in books of popular verse:“... the more one reads the popular poetry of the last quarter of the 18th Century, the more he is likely to31 feel that the really surprising feature32 of these poems in the Lyrical Ballads (as well as many others) – apart from sheer literary excellence – is their intense fulfilment of an already stale33 convention.”

Poetry about rural life had certainly been common in the latter half34 of the 18th Century:- Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village (1770)- Crabbe’s The Village (1783)

We can even look back to Gray’s Elegy (1751)

27 challenge to – defiance of, confrontation with 28 deemed worthy of – considered meriting 29 attempt – effort 30 to state –say, confirm 31 is likely to – will probably 32 feature – characteristic, aspect 33 stale – tired, clichéd 34 latter half – second half

Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, 13 July 1798

The Title

In 1798 William revisited the Wye Valley with Dorothy. This gave rise to35 Tintern Abbey.

The title is not actually36 true: - he wrote the poem after he got home from the walking holiday, not in the Wye Valley.

The title implies37 a description of a landscape: a prospect poem38 (‘topographical poem’)

- but in fact the landscape only appears in the first stanza of the poem. In other words the poem alludes to39 a specific time and place but goes on to elude40 that location.

The poem is principally concerned not with space but with time and memory.

What would be the implication of a poem written about a ruined abbey in the 1790s?Does the abbey have a symbolic function in this poem?

The River Wye is the real name of a waterway in the West of England. However, is it relevant that Wordsworth focuses his poem on a river called ‘why?’? What is the symbolism of rivers?

35 to give rise to (give-gave-given) – generate, result in 36 actually – (false friend) in fact 37 to imply – suggest 38 prospect poem – topographical poem, 18th-century genre in which a landscape is described and moral reflections are

attached to it. The poetic equivalent of a landscape painting.39 to allude to – refer to, suggest 40 to elude – avoid, circumvent

Structure

1. First Stanza. Tintern Abbey begins as a prospect poem. However, after a brief description it becomes a meditation on:

epistemology: how knowledge of the world is acquired, andpsychology: how experience is stored in the form of memory and utilized in the mind.

2. Second Stanza (to l. 49). Wordsworth’s concern is not so much with the scene41 itself but with the sensations it has generated. Nature, it seems, offers humankind (‘we’) a kind42 of insight43 (‘We see into the life of things’) in the face of mortality (‘we are laid asleep’).

3. In the third stanza (to l. 111), he begins to consider what it would mean if his belief in his connection to nature were misguided44, but stops short45; seeming not to care whether the connection is valid or not.

4. Fourth Stanza: (to the end) Addressing Dorothy.

41 scene – (in this case) panorama, landscape 42 kind (n.) – sort, type 43 insight – profound understanding 44 misguided – wrong, mistaken, erroneous 45 to shop short – stop abruptly

Time

‘Tintern Abbey’ is about the ways that we change over time, and the ways that we try to figure out46 just47 when and how and why we’ve changed. In short, it’s about trying to square48 the person you used to be with the person you’ve

become. - When did I become the person I am now?- Why don’t my memories measure up with49 the facts?

Now the narrator has returned he can measure how much he has changed by how little the natural landscape has changed.- the natural world is seasonal and essentially timeless, but human life is time-bound, not

seasonal and cyclical but rather50 heading towards age and death (“red nature/green nature”).

Nature is presented as an unchanging moral constant in a changing amoral world.- This is disingenuous since the valley was in fact experiencing rapid change.

The poem is about subjectivity and time- about what time does to subjectivity.

The passage of time is felt through the relationship between memory and loss- through the memory of what we have lost.- part of what has been lost is one’s earlier self.

The narrator sees but no longer feels what he once did- this fills him with “a sad perplexity” (l. 60).

The fact that nothing has changed in the landscape measures how all the change that he perceives is in himself.

46 to figure out – determine, discover 47 just – (in this case) exactly 48 to square A with B – make A compatible with B49 to measure up with – coincide with 50 but rather – by contrast it is

Inward Focus

This is the first poem in which Wordsworth, instead of51 focusing on the external world, examines his own consciousness.

It is the first of his major works to be explicitly autobiographical.

At the time of Wordsworth’s first visit in the summer of 1793 he was an anxious, aimless52 and disillusioned young man:

- the father of an illegitimate child to a woman in revolutionary France, - the recent author of two unnoticed poems, and - a political radical beset with53 concerns54 about Britain’s entry into the war against

France.

On his return he has matured, gained perspective.

The poem expresses Wordsworth’s central ideas about nature, perception and spiritual growth.

51 instead of – rather than, as opposed to 52 aimless – without direction 53 beset with – troubled by 54 concerns – worries

Memory & Nature

The memory is not just55 of five years before.Wordsworth remembers a more direct contact with nature, a time when “nature... To me

was all in all” [ll. 73, 76].- The senses were more than enough; there was no need for the “remoter charm” [l. 82]

of thought. But this is no longer the case.

There is consolation for this loss. There is a gain which has balanced it and is “abundant recompense” [l. 89], and that is

thought.Wordsworth perceives a nature from which ‘humanity’ is no longer absent.It is this which he ‘hears’ when he ‘looks’ [ll. 90-91].

Nature is not now something to be passively perceived [ll. 103-8], but is ‘infused’ with the perceiver [l. 97]. - There is a list of spectacular natural objects and events (sunsets, ocean, air and sky),

which concludes “And in the mind of man” [l. 100].

In the second half of the poem a religious vocabulary (‘spirit’, ‘soul’, ‘prayer’, ‘faith’, ‘blessing’, ‘worshipper’, ‘holier’) is applied to nature and its interaction with memory.

This is a movement towards the sublime – the experience of a power in nature that is greater than oneself – and it culminates with moral restoration.

There is a desire to store up experience, so that what happens now (which includes the experience of remembering) will be remembered in the future.

Message: that the memory of pure communion with nature in childhood works upon56

the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion has been lost, and- that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers compensation for the loss of that communion.

In Tintern Abbey, memory is more effective than immediate experience in bringing on a transcendental state of understanding. - In immediate experience, we are too distracted by our senses.

However, memory is never as intense as immediate experience; - it is always “dim and faint” (l. 59), so, ironically, it is only a feeble substitute for the

real thing.

55 just – (in this case) only 56 to work upon – affect, influence

Originality? Revisited

Is this just57 a restating of Blake’s views on innocent and experience?

The ‘sense sublime’ that ‘rolls though all things’, including all ‘thinking things’ is, as many critics note, a pantheistic life-force, an echo of the ‘One Life within us and abroad58’ celebrated by Coleridge in The Eolian Harp (1795).- it is also similar to Manley Hopkins concept of God through Nature.

Other Considerations

It concludes the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. Blank verse: unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called English heroic verse, a ten-

syllable line and the usual rhythm of English dramatic and epic poetry. Full of enjambments and different placed caesural pauses to reflect changing feeling and thought.

Conversational qualities from Coleridge. Two climaxes in the poem:

o The affirmation of the value of memory which allow59 access to a quasi-mystical ‘blessed mood’ (l. 38);

o The acceptance that time is past and the weighing up60 of lost joys against new gifts.

Tintern Abbey is certainly not a ballad and is much closer to being an ode614.

Tintern Abbey was only included in Lyrical Ballads because Wordsworth finished it just in time for its inclusion. - It doesn’t fit very easily with the other poems.

57 just – (in this case) simply 58 abroad – (in this case) outside us 59 to allow – permit, enable 60 weighing up – pondering 61 ode – a serious lyric poem celebrating a specific event or subject

Tentativeness

Notice Wordsworth’s deliberate withdrawal from a statement of absolute conviction - this is characteristic of the Romantic mode:To them I may have owed another gift (l. 37)If this / Be but a vain belief (ll. 50-51)and so I dare to hope (l. 66)

Notice how often arguments are expressed in the negative - with ‘no’, ‘not’, ‘nor’ or ‘un-’

Although the speaker seems to include Dorothy in the system of transformation brought about by recollections of nature, she is not allowed to speak- he is actually62 just projecting his own experiences onto her.

The real Dorothy is excluded from the system described by the speaker.

Vagrants

There is a surprising amount of controversy around the line:“wreathes of smoke ... Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods [17-20]

New Historicist Jerome McGann sees this as a political statement since in the 1790s the ruined Abbey was “a favorite haunt63 of transients and displaced persons”.- the ‘happy cottagers’ are in fact, not so far removed from64 the homeless vagrants.- however, there is in fact no comment in the poem upon the conditions of vagrants who

lived in the Abbey at the time.

In any case the smoke that Wordsworth could see didn’t come from vagrants’ or hermits’ fires but from charcoal burning for the incipient iron industry!

In his Observations on the River Wye (1782), which influenced Wordsworth, William Gilpin mentions both the charcoal burning as the source of the smoke and the vagrants living in the Abbey.- indeed65 Prof. Philip Shaw argues that Tintern Abbey “seems simultaneously to

acknowledge and efface66 in its mention of ‘vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods’.”

62 actually – (false friend) in fact 63 haunt – place frequented by a specified person or group 64 to be far removed from – be socially and economically distant from 65 indeed – (emphatic) in fact 66 to efface – erase, minimize

I Wandered67 Lonely As A Cloud68

Some critics have expresses discomfort with the first line (and title):- at least in England clouds are rarely69 ‘lonely’.

Indeed, we know that the poet was accompanied on this walk by Dorothy, though he has painted her out70.

A generous interpretation would claim that the speaker is not troubled by the absence of other people.Rather, he is ‘lonely’ in the sense that he feels separated from the world around him- a separateness that is emphasized by the comparison with a cloud “That floats on high

o’er vales and hills”.

Dorothy may have saved ‘Daffodils’ from turning into doggerel71 from the first line. - Legend has it that72 Wordsworth originally wrote, “I wandered lonely as a cow” and

that the last word was only changed to ‘cloud’ on the insistence of his sister Dorothy!

Dorothy’s actual presence confirms the accusation that ‘Daffodils’ is a simpler, more concise version of Tintern Abbey.

Both poems deal with the restorative effect of remembered moments. Both suggest that pleasurable experiences often have their most profound effects

after they have been absorbed and contemplated.

This poem is unusually happy for Wordsworth: there is no sense of death or despondency

Despite the fact that he liked writing about flowers, Wordsworth had no sense of smell.

Form: The four six-line stanzas of this poem follow a quatrain-couplet rhyme scheme: ABABCC. Each line is metered in iambic tetrameter.

67 notice how wandering – condemned as an aberration, straying from rectitude in the 18th Century – is here the poets means of participating in nature

68 Britain’s 5th favourite poem in a recent survey.69 rarely – seldom 70 to paint sb. out – omit sb. 71 doggerel – unintentionally idiotic poetry72 legend has it that – according to legend

The Unity

The poem’s main73 brilliance lies in the reverse personification of its early stanzas: the speaker is metaphorically compared to a natural object, a cloud and the daffodils are continually personified as human beings

This technique implies an inherent unity between man and nature.

Indeed, the unity links microcosm and macrocosm (the daffodils and the stars) the heavenly ‘host’, the animistic (‘spritely’) and the terrestrial the inanimate waves and the living daffodils

Notice how both the daffodils, the waves and the human heart/mind all dance (as do all four stanzas).

The alchemical imagination of the poet transforms a lesser substance – the colour of the daffodils – into a greater wealth, something like metaphysical joy.

Though the experience of the ‘outer’ eye was joyful, the experience of the ‘inward eye’ was more joyful.

Wordsworth calls this “an acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe... by which [mankind] knows, and feels, and lives, and moves”.- here he is daringly paraphrasing Acts 17:28, where St. Paul tells the Athenians that in

God “we live, and move, and have our being”.

73 main – principal, primary

Symbolism

Daffodils are traditionally associated with the approach of spring.

From this point of view the unexpectedness of encountering the daffodils on a stormy74

day is partly because winter is still being felt, though spring is promised; - every lonely cloud has a silver lining75, if you like.

One could also point out76 that daffodils are associated with Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection.

Is Wordsworth commenting on his own obsessive introspection?77 - It’s unlikely78, the poet took himself far too79 seriously for that!

Wordsworth’s Interpretation of Nature

Through the power of nature the poet transcends nature’s material forms and contemplates a higher, more divine state of being.

Wordsworth’s poetry is surprisingly undescriptive of nature because what he is interested in is his emotions aroused by scenes of nature.

He is interested in the influence of the natural world on human consciousness.

Nature teaches moral truth through our emotions.

Wordsworth believed in a ‘universal benevolence’ in Nature: nothing could be further from Darwinian Nature.- this is pastoralism, re-written.

74 stormy – tempestuous75 every cloud has a silver lining – all difficulties bring some compensations 76 to point out – mention 77 what Keats called Wordsworth’s ‘egotistical sublime’78 unlikely – improbable 79 far too – much too

Journeys

Notice the journey- First ascent from walker through the clouds to the stars - then down into the waves on the lake and - into the human mind.

Three stages of human life:childhood,youth and maturity

have three different states of awareness.

In childhood nature is enjoyed through physical activity, there is no conscious awareness of the natural world.In youth nature is enjoyed in emotional intensity In maturity a ‘sense sublime’ replaces the corporeal fire; - through it the poet can apprehend the great soul of the universe.There is also a journey from loneliness to blissful80 solitude.

The poem is an example of Wordsworth’s doctrine of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquillity”- here the emotion is the poet’s unexpected gaiety at seeing the daffodils, and- the tranquillity would be the vacant or pensive moods when he suddenly remembers them.

The fact that memories can surprise us with pleasure like this is what Wordsworth is noticing and celebrating.

80 blissful – ecstatic, euphoric