William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth
(1770-1850)
Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth © Arturo Cattaneo
The father of English
Romanticism and the
poetry of the self.

He lived in the Lake District, in the north-west of England, and drew
inspiration from the beautiful landscape around him.
He lived in France at the time of the Revolution (1791).
He is considered to be the father of English Romanticism.
With Coleridge, he wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798).
In his late years he became a national figure and was appointed Poet
Laureate (1843).
Life and works

He was born in the Lake District, an area of
supreme natural beauty in north-west
England.
As a child, he wandered freely in the
countryside, ‘drinking in’ its sights, sounds
and smells.
He would also get to know the shepherds,
the cottagers who lived in the countryside.
The impact of Nature on young Wordsworth
Both the people and the natural scenery would provide the inspiration for his later poetry.

Young Wordsworth’s dissatisfaction with
the establishment began in Cambridge:
he didn’t like the kind of studies offered,
though he graduated in 1791.
The French Revolution had a
tremendous impact on Wordsworth: for
him, they heralded a ‘glorious renovation’
of society.
He also fell in love with a French girl,
Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter,
Caroline.
Young Wordsworth’s reaction against the establishment

The meeting with Coleridge
The friendship between Wordsworth and
Coleridge was crucial to the development of
Romantic poetry.
In 1797, in Somerset, they met almost every
day and spent a lot of time together, writing,
talking, and editing each other’s poems.
The result of this remarkable friendship was a
collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, which
first appeared in 1798.

Lyrical Ballads
(1798)

Lyrical Ballads (1798)
Lyrical Ballads is the central
work of English
Romanticism.
It was written jointly by
Wordsworth and
Coleridge, though it first
appeared anonymously in
1798.
Wordsworth contributed
poems about everyday events
written in ordinary language.
Coleridge wrote poems
of an exotic or fantastic
nature.

Lyrical Ballads: a revolution in poetry
The poems were presented as “experiments” to see “how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the
purpose of poetic pleasure”.

Lyrical Ballads: a revolution in poetry
In two years, however, the book sold out and the new edition of 1800 contained
Wordsworth’s famous Preface which is considered the English Romantic
manifesto.
No major poet had ever used the events and the language of the ordinary
person as subjects fit for serious poetry.
It was a revolutionary idea and many critics condemned the poems for their
‘vulgarity’ and lack of importance.

Wordsworth’s idea of poetry
fully stated in the Preface
to Lyrical Ballads.
Ordinary subjects and
ordinary language as a way
of creating a ‘democratic’
kind of poetry accessible
to all men.
Poetry as the
“spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings”
originating from “emotion
recollected in tranquility”.

What does nature mean for Wordsworth?
Nature as the
countryside
Mountains, rivers, lakes, woods, opposed to the noise and confusion of the
town.
The rural scene is usually silent and solitary but by no means desolate.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (1798) reflects these ideas even in its title.
Nature as
a source of
inspiration
Our best feelings are inspired by nature, and in nature we can discover
moral and spiritual values.
This is best seen in Tintern Abbey (1798).
Nature as
a life force
The natural world of Tintern Abbey, or the fields and the lake in
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, seem to have a life of their own.
In these poems, man seems to communicate with nature in a literal
sense.

Poems representative of Wordsworth’s idea of nature
Lines Written in Early Spring, Lyrical Ballads (1798)
“I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.”

Lines gives us Wordsworth’s account of the
link that joins man to nature.
He concludes that human society perverts
and distorts the natural goodness that is
in men and women.
Wordsworth’s process of composition:
the description of nature leads to
philosophical and ethical reflections.

Poems representative of Wordsworth’s idea of nature
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Lyrical Ballads (1798)
The poet is wandering alone through the countryside:
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

Description of a beautiful natural scene: flowers described
metaphorically as people (‘dancing’, ‘tossing their heads’, ‘in such
jocund company’).
The poet sees himself in them.

The last stanza contains the recollection or memory of a precise event (seeing
the daffodils), in which he finds his own emotions confirmed in nature.
“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

The ordinary person
Why is the ordinary person a fit subject of poetry for Wordsworth?
The country person
can teach lessons that
the wisest philosopher
cannot.
Wordsworth substitutes
the great epics of the
past with shorter epic
tales of simple country
folk.
A traveller in a rural setting
meets a rustic character and
talks to him or her, and by
this casual meeting gains a
clearer insight into life.

Poems representative of Wordsworth’s treatment
of the ordinary person
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, Lyrical Ballads (1798)
The poem describes the poet’s love for a country girl, a ‘natural creature’:
“She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love”
The gulf separating the poet from Lucy becomes a metaphor for the gulf separating
man from nature.

In three short ballad stanzas the poet sings an
epitaph to Lucy.
“She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me.”
Her death is as important to the poet as a
princess’s death.

Memory
Why is memory so important for Wordsworth as a poet?
The remembrance of
things past brings about
“emotions recollected
in tranquility” (Preface
to Lyrical Ballads).
The mind moves in two directions:
• back into its past;
• outwards into nature - where
it finds either memories of itself
or reflections of itself.
Memory enables us
to find continuity
in ourselves and
the external
world.

The archetypal memory poem: Tintern Abbey (1798)
“Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. – Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs”
An event in the present (revisiting the Wye Valley) starts a sudden renewal of
feelings experienced in his youth.

The poem shows the difference between
what Wordsworth called ‘two
consciousnesses’:
• himself as he is now;
• himself as he once was.

In a first stage (Lyrical Ballads), several poems centered on children’s feelings:
• fear of darkness,
• love of one’s parents and siblings,
• ecstatic sense of communion with nature.
The child, in his/her simplicity and goodness, is closer than the adult to the
original state of harmony with nature.
The child
Wordsworth was, together with Blake, the first English poet to make the
child the subject of his poems.

In a second stage, this idea took on a more philosophical turn.
Wordsworth began to believe in the pre-existence of the soul and that the soul
after birth gradually loses its perfect knowledge.
This means that as the child grows up he/she gradually loses his/her memory of
a perfect union with the universe.
The child
Wordsworth was, together with Blake, the first English poet to make the
child the subject of his poems.

Poems representative of Wordsworth’s poetry of the child
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1807)
The poem opens with the statement that “The Child is father of the Man”:
“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

This is only an apparent paradox.
Wordsworth believes that:
• our past is not cut off from the
present,
• our childhood experiences have made
us what we are.
The poem is a philosophical and
passionate reflection on the gains and
losses implied in the process of growing up
(not growing old, as is sometimes said).

It is an autobiography
in blank verse dealing
with the poet’s growth:
• from a country boy
running wild among
the unspoiled nature of
the English Lakes
• to his school and
university days
• and on to his travels
and experiences in
France.
A ‘poem of the self’: The Prelude (1850)
The Prelude, now
regarded as
Wordsworth’s
masterpiece, is the
work of a lifetime:
• he started it in 1799,
• expanded it in 1805,
• kept revising it through
the years.
Novelty of The Prelude:
the self and its
biographical details at
the centre of a poem.
The Prelude and Lyrical
Ballads mark the
appearance of modern
poetry, the subjective
poetry of the self.

THE ROMANTICS
Wordsworth
Lines Written in Early Spring
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Kubla Khan
P.B. Shelley
Ode to the West Wind
Byron
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
D.G. Rossetti
The Woodspurge
THE VICTORIANS
Emily Dickinson
The Saddest Noise
THE MODERN AGE
Yeats
Down by the Salley Gardens
THEMES
NATURE

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