An_Ode_to_William_Wordworth

1 An Ode to William Wordsworth: The Life and Works of William Wordsworth Cody G. Daniels 2 William Wordsworth 3 Introduction William Wordsworth was, in my eyes one of the best know romanticist writers of his time. Most of his pieces talk about nature and religion. It is for the religious aspect of his poetry and literature that I feel so strongly towards him as an author. Wordsworth is considered a romantic writer because his writings were very imaginative, emotional, and visionary. He regularly discussed poetry with his friend Samuel Coleridge, who at the time was also a romantic writer. In their time as friends they wrote and discussed many poems. For myself I would love to have had the opportunity to been such a friend of Wordsworth for I feel like I could‟ve learned a lot from him. That being said, I feel an even greater appreciation for his work because of the knowledge which I have of the restored gospel. Oftentimes Wordsworth is quoted by the general authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in General Conferences, and is considered to be the most quoted romantic poet in such conferences. In fact, President Thomas S. Monson, a man who has spent his life within the world of literature, said of Wordsworth‟s view of the gospel “William Wordsworth, the revered poet, captured in verse a glimpse of this glorious”. An amazing detail to the life of Wordsworth to me is that although he began to write poetry while attending school, not one of his poems was published due to his young age. This is evidence that from the beginning William Wordsworth was destined to have part in several classics that would touch the lives of millions everywhere. Throughout history many have considered nature to be the true temple of God, clearly Wordsworth felt this way too as evidenced with his love of nature and its role in the spiritual realm of life. Some feel that Wordsworth's powerful writing connected with his love for nature is 4 what made his poetry great. To me it goes back to the fact that nature oftentimes takes us closer to God. Wordsworth's poetry is still affecting the literary world. His ideals have provided popular phrases still used and his diction is admired and applied in many different authors writings to this day. To me it shows the impact which he had on the world and illustrates just how great of an author he was. Chronology April 7, 1770 William Wordsworth is born in Cockermouth, he is the second of five children of John and Ann Wordsworth. December 25, 1771 Dorothy Wordsworth born. They become close friends and literary collaborators. 1778-1779 Mother dies, and he moves to Lake District. 1787 Enrolls at Cambridge University where he publishes his first work, a sonnet. 1791 Graduates from Cambridge University with a bachelor‟s degree, after which he moves to France and falls in love with a woman named Annette Vallon. December 1792 Desperate and broke Wordsworth leaves France before his first daughter is born illegitimately, leaving behind Annette Vallon. 5 Due to the French war Wordsworth is unable to return to his family. 1793 Descriptive sketches and An Evening Walk published. 1794 Reunited with family. 1795 Meets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the two become great friends. Additionally, he inherits legacy of ₤900 and establishes a house in Dorset, England with Dorothy. 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge collaboratively publish Lyrical Ballads which sparks the Romantic Age of English literature. 1802 Travels to France with Dorothy to meet Caroline and make arrangements for her support. Upon his return he Marries Mary Hutchinson, a schoolmate and longtime friend. 1810 Wordsworth grows estranged from Coleridge, due to his addiction to opium. After moving out, Coleridge learns that Wordsworth warned a mutual friend against taking him in, and is distraught. The men reconcile a few years later but are never as close as they once were. 6 1839 Receives an honorary degree from Oxford University to boisterous applause from all in attendance. 1843 Named Poet Laureate of England. April 23, 1850 William Wordsworth dies of pleurisy. Shortly after his death, Mary Wordsworth publishes The Prelude, the autobiographical poem now considered to be Wordsworth's masterpiece. Websites Poets.org This site contains brief biographies of William Wordsworth and many other poets. The biographies provide general information and events in the poets' lives as well as a selected bibliography of their works. The site also prescribes additional readings links related to the poet. http://www.poets.org. ClassicAuthors.net This site contains many of Wordsworth's works and gives a brief timeline biography of his life. In addition, it possesses a large variety of authors and works are available. Another nice aspect is that this site is always expanding to include more. http://www.classicauthors.net. The Victorian Web I really liked this site despite its primitive nature. It contains a brief biography sketch of William Wordsworth. Also it has information 7 regarding Wordsworth‟s works, themes, and political history. Finally, it speaks about Wordsworth‟s religion as well as his impact on religion itself. http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/wwov.html. Literary Criticism The great thing about literature is that we all can have our own opinions and insights to it. This is especially seen from critics. This website points out the views of critics and their response to Wordsworth. It contains a selective list of authors of literary criticism from LiteraryHistory.com for Wordsworth. http://www.literaryhistory.com/19thC/WORDSWORTH.htm. Biographical Impressions In our lives there are many different people and events that end up having a lasting influence in the decisions and accomplishments that we are faced with and achieve. A major impact in the lives of successful individuals is the relationships in which they form throughout the course of their lives. In fact in the one of his first addresses as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke about the importance of relationships and the affect that they can have on our lives. President Hinckley taught, “Humbly, I seek the blessing of the Lord. I am overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy. I feel shaken. I'd like to express appreciation to my father, who lies critically ill. No son ever had a better father. I'd like to express appreciation to my mother. I say these things, because I'd like to make the point that all of us in our various situations are the result, largely, of the lives that touch ours. And today, I feel profoundly grateful for all who have touched mine” (Gordon B. Hinckley). This point is no different in the life of William Wordsworth. Having lost his mother at the young age of eight, 8 William Wordsworth had turned to his sister, Dorothy, for support. She later on became neurotic and became an even bigger part of his life. Dorothy later provided William with many thoughts and impressions for his poems about nature. Not only was the life of William Wordsworth impacted by the influence which his sister had on him, but an even greater impact can be arguably be said to have come from his life friend and writing colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet's views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for "common speech" within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric. These two relationships were the most important relationships in the life of William Wordsworth, and in a literary sense brought out the best in him. Indeed, Wordsworth‟s sister is often credited for his use and love of nature in his works. In his poetry, William Wordsworth pushed for his readers to look to nature for an understanding and appreciation of life, and in so doing so he became a major voice behind the Romantic Movement. In his poem The World is Too Much With US, Wordsworth describes his love of nature and the objectivity which he had towards the materialism of the world. This poem is a great example of how his love of nature, which a portion can be accredited to the influence of his sister, affected his work. Furthermore, Coleridge is a contributing factor in perhaps one of the most influential work of Wordsworth‟s career, Lyrical Ballads. In this work Coleridge and Wordsworth set forth what some at the time deemed “the lake school of poetry” (Enotes). This collaborative work is said to be the groundbreaking work for the literary era known as the Romantic Movement. 9 Although this work was received with much criticism from literary pundits, they couldn‟t sway the public opinion which resulted in Lyrical Ballads being a huge success. This collection made Wordsworth instantly famous and the Romantic Movement fully alive. Moreover, this compilation was both innovative and original. There is a connection between an experimental “natural” language and the Romantic aesthetics of a visionary poetry, between innovative dialogue and the monologue of self-proclaimed renewal. Fans and critics alike praised this compilation. Although, it may be worth remembering that Lyrical Ballads is ambiguous in its innovations. Finally as noted before, through this work Romanticism began and the literary world would never be the same again. Critical Interpretations One of the most widely recognized poems throughout the literary community comes from William Wordsworth, and is in fact an autobiography of the Poet Laureate. Due to the secular intricacies of The Prelude, critical attention has been intricately linked with the work. The following are summaries of literature criticism regarding the well known and beloved work. Narrative means to lyric ends in Wordsworth's Prelude by Monique R. Morgan. In this work Monique Morgan discusses how Wordsworth—like many poets during the nineteenth-century—utilized the combination of two seemingly opposing styles, namely lyric and narrative. In fact, this is most important because of the content which is contained in another famous work of Wordsworth, his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, wherein he urges his readers to embrace the narrative side of poetry. Furthermore, Monique Morgan argues that The Prelude uses narrative techniques to create lyrical effects, effects that manipulate the reader‟s experience of time and shapes their intellectual, emotional, and ethical responses. 10 To highlight the productive tension between the two styles, Morgan defines narrative as essentially temporal and sequential, and lyric as creating an illusion of simplicity. Additionally, The Prelude reinforces its larger narrative strategies, she suggests, with its figurative language. The objective of the sonnet is to demonstrate Wordsworth‟s fitness to produce great poetry, and The Prelude itself becomes evidence of that fitness. Through her readings of The Prelude, Morgan questions lyric‟s succinctness and associability, questions hindsight‟s importance for narrative, examines the gendered implications of several genres, and determines the dramatic monologue‟s temporal structure. I believed the heart of the essay can be pointed out when Morgan states, “Narrative Means to Lyric Ends in Wordsworth's Prelude," "Much of the poem consists of Wordsworth‟s interactions with nature that 'assure[d] him of his poetic mission.' The goal of the poem is to demonstrate his fitness to produce great poetry, and The Prelude itself becomes evidence of that fitness." Review of ‘The Prelude’ Ed. Laurie Lanzen and Jay Parini This critical work comes from the Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism edited by Laurie Lanzen Harris and Jay Parini, and gives a brief criticism of the Nineteenth-Century work. In this critical review the authors maintain that The Prelude by William Wordsworth is “hampered by its excessive length, occasional wordiness, and mundane themes”. However, as later pointed out, despite these potential setbacks and restraints the poem is compensated by its charm. The next major theme of the critical review is, in view of the fact that the work never set out to be one of colossal interest, it is necessity that it adopts “legitimate aims of poetic art” in order to maintain the attention of the reader. However, Wordsworth never utilized these aims to their full extent and that adds to the length of an already long poem. 11 Having said all of that, one would be led to believe that the article in its entirety would be predominately negative. However, the contrary exists with the remainder of the article. And how could it not! Despite the expected egotism that is involved with primarily all autobiographies, The Prelude wins over its readers with its charm and consolation. Indeed it succors the reader more than a plethora of other autobiographies. The most soothing part of the critical review came when the authors spoke about the wear and tear of every day work, and the anxieties which we all deal with in some form or another, and how it is in these phases of the mind that the reading of Wordsworth‟s The Prelude can be a remedy to such angst. Time and the Timeless: The Temporal Imagination in ‘The Prelude’ by J. Robert Barth Time is a crucial aspect of all literary works, both in setting as well as context, it is no different in William Wordsworth‟s The Prelude. In this critical essay J. Robert Barth examines the tool of time in this work, as well as evaluates the theme of time and observes that in his work Wordsworth contends with a variety of forms of time; both personal and eternal time, cyclical, and natural time. Furthermore, Barth proposes that the heart of The Prelude would be the theme of time and timelessness, he notes,” the poem is, after all, about „growth,‟ and so about the passage through time”. In addition to this theme concerning time, Barth contends that one of the central paradoxes of Wordsworth‟s poetry is while on one hand you have Wordsworth‟s need to be in touch with time, and on the other, his unremitting desire for timelessness. Truly you can‟t have both. Further throughout this critical essay, J. Robert Barth performs an analysis of—what he sees as a “brilliant poetic performance”—the ice skating scene in book 1. In this analysis he points out that Wordsworth uses his skill on variations of sound and sight to induce a scene of 12 with a vast physical detail that the reader is powerfully caught up in the pages of the event, Barth instructs, “The evocation of sounds is especially dazzling: the sound of the village clock in the distance, the skates „hissing‟ over the ice, the children's voices carried through the darkness and the cold--so that „the precipices rang aloud,‟ while „the leafless trees and every icy crag / Tinkled like iron‟”. It is this precise skill, Barth suggests, that makes Wordsworth‟s work so endearing and has charmed thousands of readers. To close his critical essay Barth invokes the metaphor of a spiral to Wordsworth‟s work. There is recurrence, as if one were traveling up a mountain road, constantly circling back on one's own path--journeying around a fixed (though unseen) center. But there is also progress, for each time one returns it is at a higher point on the mountain, with a wider angle of vision. And finally the poem finishes with a fitting vision of Mount Snowden and the poet at last reaches the top, and becomes one with the mountain. The paradoxes of nature in Wordsworth and Coleridge by John Beer Coleridge and Wordsworth, in particular in the late 1790s, are relatively loosely thought of as having been primarily "nature poets". This theme is the subject of John Beer‟s critical essay on Wordsworth and his poem The Prelude. In the beginning of his critical essay, John Beer addresses the fact that there is one question that arises when discussing Wordsworth, Coleridge, and nature; how far did their views of nature converge' In addition to poetry and literary works, Coleridge was known for at the time as a Unitarian preacher as well as a political and theological writer. Nevertheless, it was Wordsworth who thought of him as a devotee of nature, even addressing him in The Prelude as “one” 13 The most intense of Nature's worshippers, In many things my brother, chiefly here In this my deep devotion This shared love of nature is a driving force for their collaborative work, the Lyrical Ballads, and from their deep conversations concerning the matter were produced some of the most beautifully eloquent poetry that we have. Furthermore, Beer instructs us about the strange use of figurative language to change the character of nature to the point where it can in fact speak to human beings. The use of this method is done more so by Wordsworth in his work The Prelude than by any other Nineteenth-Century poet. Beer brings controversy and speculation to the table when he addresses the notion that over the years a certain amount of dispute has arisen as to how much his orthodox piety increased as he produced successive versions. Whatever the case may be the use of nature in Wordsworth‟s poems remains beautifully constant. Despite that this critical essay isn‟t on The Prelude specifically, because of their similar admirations towards nature and its impact on their respective works existed, I thought it would be apropos to include this essay as part of the research to gain a better understanding of the poet Wordsworth and how his thought process was affected in this work. Principal Critics Ernest de Sélincourt Throughout the literary community Ernest de Sélincourt is known as a reputable literary scholar and critic. He is most widely known for his works on William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth. His professional career was at Oxford University where he was a professor of poetry. What I found to be interesting was that his papers are held at the University of 14 Birmingham Special Collections, which is evidence to me of his effect in the literary world. Many of the essays which I found contained his works as sources for their own. John L. Mahoney Sr. John L. Mahoney Sr. is another well noted Wordsworth critic who has had a distinguished career that has been primarily focused on William Wordsworth. Mahoney, who received an honorary degree from the University at Commencement Exercises Monday, has researched, written and taught about poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) throughout his distinguished academic career. Mahoney is the author of Wordsworth and the Critics: The Development of a Critical Reputation and this work is often referenced by literary critics today. Keith Hanley Keith Hanley has written widely on Wordsworth from a historicist and psycholinguistic point of view, including a monograph, Wordsworth: A Poet's History, and articles and chapters concerning his impact of literature. Keith received his MA degree from Oxford University and PhD from Lancaster University in English Literature. While at Lancaster he founded the Wordsworth Centre, which he also directed from 1988-2000 Most recently in 2008, he co-edited with Greg Kucich the collection Nineteenth Century Worlds: Global Formations Past and Present. 15 The Excursion I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract of inland ground, applying to her ear the convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell To which, in silence hushed, her very soul Listened intensely; and her countenance soon Brightened with joy; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things; Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power; and central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation 16 Wordswor th Intelligent Lyricall Ballads Laureate, Poet Intimations of Imorrtality Annette Vallon memoir, The Prelude President Thomas S. Monson said, “William Wordsworth, the revered poet, captured in verse a glimpse of this glorious plan and entitled his classic „Ode to Immortality‟:” Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life‟s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 17 Annotated Works Cited Barth, J. Robert. "Time and the Timeless: The Temporal Imagination in The Prelude." Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Religious Imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. 41-55. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 206. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Apr. 2011. Critical essay that gave greater understanding regarding Wordsworth Beer, John. "The paradoxes of nature in Wordsworth and Coleridge." Wordsworth Circle 40.1 (2009): 4+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Apr. 2011. This is an essay in which John Beer discusses the relationship of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the paradoxes of nature in their works. Morgan, Monique R. Narrative. 16.3 (Oct. 2008) p298. Word Count: 16807. From Literature Resource Center. This is one of my critical essays on the work by William Wordsworth. "Review of 'The Prelude,'." Tait's Edinburgh Magazine 17.201 (Sept. 1850): 521-527. Rpt. in NineteenthCentury Literature Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Jay Parini. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986. Literature Resource Center. Web. 1 Apr. 2011. This is a critical review in which I used for a critical interpretation on The Prelude Wikiquote. 28 March 2011. 28 March 2011 . I used this source for a quote by President Hinckley. Zott, Lynn M. "William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge." 2006. Enotes. 27 March 2011 . Another source for a critical essay.