Romantic poetry

1. William Wordsworth
Benjamin Robert Haydon,
William Wordsworth,
1842, London,
National Portrait Gallery.

2. 1770 Cumberland, Lake district
1791 Journey to France Attracted by the new democratic
ideas
Love affair with Annette Vallon A daughter, Caroline
Compelled to return to England
War between England
and France
Ostracism by his family Lack of money
Sense of guilt and failure
Married Mary Hutchinson
Cockermouth,
His life

3. Friendship with Coleridge
1795 He met Samuel Taylor Coleridge
•Long and productive friendship
•Same love for nature and poetry
•It was through Coleridge’s influence that Wordsworth
passed from his fragmentary ideas upon impressions and
emotions to a philosophical theory
Appointed as England’s Poet Laureate1843
1850 death

4. Works
Lyrical ballads
The Prelude
Poems in Two Volumes
The Excursion
Autobiographical poem in 14 books -
An incomplete philosophical poem
in 9 books
1798
1800
1807
1814
1850
This edition contains the famous Preface
(posthumous)
published with Coleridge as anonymous
Lyrical ballads

5. Lyrical Ballads
•A collection of poems written in cooperation by
Wordsworth and Coleridge
•Unlike anything that had come before,
and paved the way for everything that has come after
•The publication was not received well
Coleridge - would try through poetic
means to make the uncommon
(supernatural) credible
Wordsworth - would
attempt to make the
common uncommon

6. Why Lyrical Ballads?
A ballad is a poem or song which usually tells a
story in the popular language of the day, and has associations
with traditional folk culture.
In ancient Greece, a lyric was a song to
accompany music from a lyre . Later the word was used for
any short poem in which personal moods and emotions were
expressed. Today, the words of popular songs are called
lyrics.
Lyric
Ballad

7. •The belief that Nature is far from being a decorative
background (Augustans)
•Nature is Endowed with a spirit and a life of
her own
•Wordsworth celebrates the idea of fusion between man and his
natural element
pantheism
•Nature is a kind of religion in which Wordsworth has the
utmost faith
•People become selfish and immoral when they distance
themselves from nature by living in cities
•Wordsworth believed in the apprehension of reality through the
senses
Romantic view of Nature
expressed in poetry

8. •Upon being born, human beings move from a perfect, idealized
realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth.
•As children, some memory of the former purity and
glory in which they lived remains
•But as children grow older, the memory
fades, and the magic of nature dies.
•Still, the memory of childhood can offer an important
consolation, which brings with it almost a kind of re-
access to the lost purities of the past.
Romantic view of Childhood

9. The power of memory
•Memory allows Wordsworth’s speakers to
overcome the harshness of the contemporary world
•Recollecting childhood gives adults a chance to
reconnect with the intense relationship they had with
nature as children and they are happy again.
•The act of remembering also allows the poet to write
•Considering his own mortality, memory is again a huge comfort.

10. A physical sense of Universe
•Wordsworth exploited the sensibility of his eye
and ear
•Through his ear he could perceive the sounds of the woods, of
the birds, of the waters, but also the silence of solitary places.
Through his eyes he could see the loveliness of the natural world
penetrating the ideal truth that lay behind it.
•Influence of associationist philosopher David Hartley

11. Romantic poetry
•Poetry is a form of knowledge which is based on concrete experience; it has
its origins in sensations and spontaneous feelings which are transformed into
emotions.
•Poetry is not the masterly use of imagery and ornament
and it does not depend on rhetorical devices
•poetry represents “emotions recollected
in tranquillity”and should have same effect on the reader
Romantics believed

12. What is a poet?
“What is a poet? […] He is a man speaking to men: a man
[…] endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm
and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human
nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed
to be common among mankind”.
From the Preface to Lyrical ballads

13. The poet’s task
•He must teach men to improve their feelings and their
moral life by drawing attention to the ordinary things of life
where the deepest emotion are to be found.
•This can be achieved not through the language of
reason but through the language of imagination

14. “The principal object […] was to choose incidents and
situations from common life […] and at the same time, to
throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby
ordinary thing should be presented to the mind in an usual
aspect”
From the Preface to Lyrical ballads
•Poetry should deal with everyday situations or incidents
and with ordinary people, especially humble, rural people.
•In low and rustic life man is more direct, since he is in close
contact with nature and nearer to his own pre-passions.
•Imagination is to play a very important role
“ A certain colouring of imagination”

15. A new language
•style had to be simple so that poetry could be read
and understood by everyone easily.
18th century poetry •dominated by admiration for the
correctness of phrase and urbanity of
the Latin poets Virgil and Horace
•imitation of an elegant and polished
language codified in stereotyped
formulas
Poetic
diction
•The language of poetry for Wordsworth had to be that of the people
actually concerned with the experiences of life
•the simple prose-like language of peasants

16. Was Wordsworth a
revolutionary poet?
Here are some ideas that made him revolutionary:
 The origin of poetry derives from emotion and not from reason;
 Poetry must deal with common people and common events ;
 The language of poetry must be the one spoken by peasants, even if
purified from its defects;
 A more democratic concept of poetry , addressed to a larger audience;
 A new conception of nature, with which a closer contact is necessary;
 Revaluation of children ;
Importance given to personal memories and experiences ;
 Imagination is superior to reason.
 The poet as a teacher of everlasting truths

17. nature child
Rustic
life
Simple
language
Recollection in
tranquillity
Main ideas of Wordsworth
poetry

18. The End