Wordsworth was influenced by the French Revolution's ideals of equality and liberty but became disillusioned by the Reign of Terror. He sought to capture genuine human emotions and passions through a return to simpler, natural expressions in poetry. The Industrial Revolution further threatened nature and rural life, which Wordsworth believed was integral to authentic human experience. He advocated for protecting the natural landscape from the impacts of industry and modernization.

1. William Wordsworth
(7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)

2. Wordsworth wrote ―The Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads‖ as an introduction to a book of poems
written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.

3. In ―The Preface,‖
Wordsworth set out to
explain the theory behind
the poems to the reading
public.
It became an important
literary document which
helped to launch Romantic
theory.

4. Romanticism Involves:
• Strong emotions—including those generated by
horror and terror
• Value of nature and unaffected culture and
language—that is, devoid of the artificial influence
of education and superficiality
• Escape from the grim reality of the changing world
through looking to exotic places and the past

5. Key Words

6. Influences upon Wordsworth’s
Romanticism

7. The Rights of Man.
The French Revolution pushed forward the belief
in the Rights of Man.
In a world defined by class, rich/poor, well
born/lowly born, EQUALITY became important.
The idea that all men were good and noble, even
the roughest people just need the same
opportunities to be as refined as the upper classes.

8. The French Revolution
The French Revolution energized Europeans with
the alluring promise that fundamental social
change could be achieved, and the course of
humanity radically and permanently altered.

9. The Declaration of Independence and its assertion that all
men were created equal, had released a defiant energy into
the world, the ramifications of which were manifested in
the French Revolution, and evidenced in the new focus on
humanity, its origins, and the rights of the individual.

10. Wordsworth became an exuberant supporter of the
progressive ideals promulgated by the French
Revolution.
He adopted the idea that all people were essentially born
good.

11. Eventually, The Reign
of Terror contradicted
the notion that freedom
was the essential
ingredient needed to
configure a harmonious,
egalitarian society.

12. The Reign of Terror
French aristocrats were
slaughtered at the guillotine
as mob mentality took
hold.
Women and children were
not spared.

13. Hope in the goodness of man was lost when
political rivalry between the Girodins and
Jacobeans took hold.
Maximillien Robespierre
formed The Revolutionary
Tribunal with the aim of
putting ―the Enemies of
the People to death.‖

14. ―Terror is nothing else than justice,
prompt, severe, inflexible.―
--Robespierre, 1794

15. The guillotine became a
form of state control.
Anyone who opposed
important individuals or
political groups was
executed.
The terror was a dark and
dangerous time. People
settled old scores by
naming their enemies as
traitors.

16. The Terror left Wordsworth and other supporters
of the new movement disillusioned and
demoralized.
The lofty ideals and hope that flourished through
bold defiance of the Ancien Regime (old order) were
quickly replaced with disgust and fear (Abrams,
Natural Supernaturalism, 328)

17. “On visionary views would fancy feed /Till his
eye streamed with tears.”
–Wordsworth, (―Lines left upon a seat in Yew-tree which
stands near the Lake of Estwaite.‖)

18. In The Prelude, Wordsworth described the promise
of the regeneration of mankind:
―France standing on the top of the golden
hours/And human nature seeming born again‖ (X,
690-3), only to reveal his disenchantment later
when he wrote:
―Confusion of opinion, zeal decay’d/And lastly,
utter loss of hope itself/And things to hope for‖
(XI, 47-8, 5-8).

19. Return to the Natural
Romantics rejected artifical
language which had been
adopted by writers and
poets.
Wordsworth longed for a
return to simpler forms of
expression, where the true
passions and emotions of
man were captured.

20. Wordsworth wrote:
―humble and rustic life was generally chosen,
because in that condition, the essential passions of
the heart find a better soil in which they can attain
their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a
plainer and more emphatic language‖ .

21. Return to Natural Expression
The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and
logic, had influenced poetry which had become
disinterested in arousing ―essential passions‖ and
―unelaborated expressions.‖
By adopting stock descriptions of nature, poets were
moving away from fundamental passions, instead
becoming bound by convention.

22. In his essay ―Upon Epitaphs‖
published in 1880,
Wordsworth proclaims, „I
vindicate the rights and
dignity of Nature…” (111).
In ―Tintern Abbey‖ the poet
reveals the resplendent glory
of Nature and its power to
evoke strong emotion and
intensity of thought:

23. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh or grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
…
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

24. Industrial Revolution
• With machines and factories
came a new way of living.
People left their farms and
small community's to move
to the city.
• They became nameless and
faceless workers in grim
factories.
• The natural landscape was
obscured by black clouds of
smoke endlessly pumping out
of the chimneys.

25. Nature to Wordsworth was the well-spring of
human passion and life. The encroaching change
thrust upon the rural landscape threatened to
destroy not only the tranquility, but the
authenticity and hope that could only be derived
from the natural world.

26. Wordsworth exhorted:
―Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance/Of
nature; and, if human hearts be dead… protest
against the wrong.‖

27. Conclusion
Wordsworth’s sentiments had been formed by the
climate of upheaval in his life time.
In particular, the most defining elements were:
1. The French Revolution
2. The Industrial Revolution

28. Works Cited
Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature.
New York: Norton, 1973. Print.
---. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. London: Oxford
UP, 1971. Print.
Thompson, E. P. The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age. New York: New, 1997.
Print.
Wordsworth, William. "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads." The Norton Anthology of Theory
and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.