Wordsworth's "Daffodils"

1. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"

2. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
-metrics: iambic tetrameter (-/-/-/-/) with
variants in last line of each stanza
(except the last one)
-maybe also a variation in the first foot of
line 1, which might be read as a spondee,
in order to stress also the subjetive "I".

3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• rhyme: perfect rhyme (masculine/single
rhyme). For other types of rhyme, cf.
English Versification.
• stanzas: lines rhyming ababcc, dedeff,
ghghii, jkjkll, forming regular sestets.

4. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• Remember the beginning of TWL: "April is
the cruellest month": why? is it always like
that?
• Not in "Daffodils"
– BUT cf. the beginning of "Intimations...“
– Compare also images of sea/shore in
“Intimations”, “Break, break, break” and
“Dover beach”
– myth of a golden age: lost pure origin

5. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• 1st line: epitome of Romantic features
– "I": subject, the poet's self
– "wandered": not in the straight, man-made, streets of
a city
– "lonely": subjective, direct experience (not shared)
• notice "crowd/A host" in line 3. Fortunately it is only a
personification
– "as": comparison: the real seen in terms of something
else, mostly through personification
– (cf. pathetic fallacy: The attribution of human
emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to
nature)
– "cloud": element of Nature (frame of reference).

6. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• the first line can be summarised in a sort of
abstract:
– "I" = "cloud“
• Definition of identity. Cf other poems in which an identity is
also defined
• Cf. Shelley identifies himself with the West Wind
– "cloud": above the rest of the people, volatile,
changing, imaginative
• cf. also Shelley’s idea that “poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world”
• cf. Charles Baudelaire’s “The Albatros” as a symbol for the
neglect of modern poets

7. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• the following stanzas constitute a glorification of
the natural elements which make up the ecstatic
and fruitful experience of the poet,
– either those experienced directly (like the daffodils,
the waves, the trees, the breeze)
– or the frame of reference (that is, Nature) which
provides other points of comparison (as the stars in
the Milky Way)
• it is a sensual experience with little mental activity involved
• please NOTE: be careful with meanings: “gay” means happy,
not homosexual

8. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• Reverse personification:
 The speaker is metaphorically compared
to a natural object, a cloud—“I wandered
lonely as a cloud / That floats on high...”,
and the daffodils are continually
personified as human beings, dancing and
“tossing their heads” in “a crowd, a host.”
This technique implies an inherent unity
between man and nature: “my heart
dances with the daffodils”

9. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• the last stanza represents a sort of turning point
for it introduces the very important question of
the actual process of composition:
– the poem comes about, is created, not by the
inspiration of the Muses, but by means of an a
posteriori composition:
• it is the end result of emotion recollected in tranquility
– in this case the context of composition is not natural
but human, man-made ("couch")
– thus, the poem establishes a clear dichotomy
between the having of the experience (itself) and the
representation of that experience:
• they belong to completely different settings and realms, and
involve completely different (intellectual) operations

10. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• P. de Man: "Romantics actually deconstruct their
own writing by showing that the presence they
desire is always absent, always in the past or in
the future" (Selden and Widdowson, 150)
– in the case of this poem the future corresponds to the
textual existence of the experience while the past
corresponds to the actual experience evoked/invoked
in the poem
– thus, the real and the represented never coincide,
they exist in a different time and space, they are an
index of each other but never the same thing

11. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
• a lasting emotion: notice the subtle change
of tenses: from past (the experience) to
present (the recollection)
– cf. "Tintern Abbey" (2nd stanza)
The theme of the poem 'Daffodils' is a collection
of human emotions inspired by nature that we
may have neglected due to our busy lives but
we learn to appreciate retrospectively.

12. Tintern Abbey