skip to main | skip to sidebar
Home » , , » William wordsworth as a romantic poet
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumberland Hills in England. He was the son of an attorney His mother died in 1778 and his father died in 1773 Before his father s death the family had suffered some financial hardship He was sent to the grammar school in Hawkshead in the Lake District After his father s death his uncle took care of young Wordsworth He was sent to St. John's College at the University of Cambridge in 1787 In 1791 he took his B.A degree.

In 1790 Wordsworth and his friend Robert Jones travelled to France and Switzerland on foot During this first tour he had his first hand experience of the chaotic political events of the French Revolution that started in 1789 He joined in the celebration to mark the anniversary  of the fall of the Bastille He returned to England but after only a few months he made his second tour to France  in 1791 During his second tour he their daughter Caroline Wordsworth left France later that year apparently intending to return and marry Annette However he could not return The reasons  are not certain perhaps there was an ideological difference because Annette was a royalist but by that time Wordsworth became a revolutionary It is also possible that the war between England and France  did not allow him to return  to Annette However Wordsworth bore a guilty feeling for this unwanted separation between them

In 1798 Wordsworth along with his sister Dorothy and Coleridge travelled to Germany any There he developed intimacy with Coleridge This was the period of intense creative activity for both Wordsworth and Coleridge In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson an old school friend Now he was seeking security and bliss of a settled life.

But the course of his life took an unexpected turn He had bitter experiences his favourite brother John died in 1805 his friendship with Coleridge had a bitter breach in 1810, and two of his five children died in 1812 In these years he also became aware of his own ageing and the loss of the poetic intensity that he felt when he had bed young He became disillusioned of the revolution because my time in France the expectation of the mass people was utterly frustrated Consequently he stared to become more conservative in political ideology.

Because his parents died in his childhood financial hardship haunted him till 1795 when one of his friends left some money for him. His condition improved further when he was appointed collector of revenues for Westmoreland in 1813 He now had recognition as a poet He was appointed the poet Laureate in 1843 He had been in that high position till his death in 1850.

By birth Wordsworth was a moody and violent child He loved to be alone and explore nature even in his childhood During his school days in the Lake District he had the exciting freedom to explore the countryside and roam by himself In these days he developed a close affinity with nature These childhood memories had been the inspiration for much of his poetry. especially The prelude Books I and II Writing poems on past memories became the basic principle for Wordsworth s creative faculty This is so dominant a fact in his poetry that he is often branded as a poet of the past.

Another fact that Had  much influence on Wordsworth s creative activities was the French Revolution in 1789 The Revolution  had deep impression on him It in fact moulded his concept of poetry So far English poetry had dealt with the upper class society ;common people had been neglected in art and literature The French Revolution led him to feel that the common people should be the subject of poetry and their language should be used in it A wave of democracy not only shook Wordsworth but also shook whole of Europe and North America Desire for freedom from all types  of restrictions   became the vogue of the day Like Wordsworth Coleridge to bring a radical change in the selection of subject language and form of of poetry Wordsworth com posed 19 poems and Coleridge composed 4 poems according to their new concept of poetry These poems were published in the radical volume Lyrical Ballads in 1798 The publication  of this volume turned out to be one of the most significant events of English poetry challenging previous views of poetry and indicating what was to come This volume marks the revival of romanticism Wordsworth   is known for his love of nature This does not mean that his poems present detailed  pictorial description of landscape very frequently worth is interested in the relationship between nature and human beings In his poetry there is a detailed account of the com plex interaction between man and nature rather than a simple observation of nature.

His poems reflect that in different phases of his life, he responds to nature differently In childhood nature is just a physical source of coarser pleasures As he grew up he started feeling the presence of a divine power that pervaded through all objects of nature Wordsworth s belie in the presence of divine power in nature is known as pantheism To Wordsworth nature has been a living it Many of his poems also reflect that nature is a moral teacher a guardian and a philosopher for those who can make spiritual communion with it In the last phase of life when he developed a philosophical mind he found nature as the mirror of human miseries.

However, William Wordsworth was a romantic poet. Wordsworth is not only a poet of nature he is a poet of man as well. His basic creed of nature centres on man He rejects secular values and emphasises that a child comes from heaven as an innocent and happy creature But as he grows up this world corrupts him The man-made social regulations and urban perversions spoil his nobility and innocence The remedy he suggests is returned to nature.

Wordsworth pushes importance on man's basic or spontaneous feelings which remain unadulterated or unchanged in rustic life To him man s nature is more important than man-made laws The French Revolution influenced him to look for the freedom of the fundamental feelings of man For this reason he propounded that poetry should be on common people Because in them original human feelings remain unchanged.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Back To Top