The Lake District. Marriage

In 1802 Wordsworth married a childhood friend. William, his wife and Dorothy lived in Gransmere, one of the loveliest villages in the Lake District, a region which Wordsworth immortalized in his poetry. During this period he produced Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), a collection which includes some of his finest verse and most famous sonnets. His reputation began to grow, and his poetry was increasingly popular. His life during this period, however, was not free from trouble: he suffered personal tragedy when two of his children died. He also became estranged from his friend Coleridge, who was experiencing serious health problems.

Maturity and conservatism

As his fame of a poet grew, Wordsworth became more conservative politically. He got a well-paid government job and campaigned for his conservative views openly. The younger generation poets criticized him for abandoning the ideals of his youth, while recognizing the debt they owed him for the great innovation of poetry. With years, however, his poetic vision grew weaker, and his poetic output was less inspired. He was recognized as a national poet, and in 1840 awarded a government pension and the title of Poet Laureate in recognition of his contribution to English poetry.

POETRY

Wordsworth’s contribution to English poetry cannot be overestimated. His work, together with Coleridge, on Lyrical Ballads established Romanticism as a literary movement in England, and his Preface to the second edition came to be considered as a Romantic manifesto.

Many critics consider his long poem The Prelude, published posthumously in 1850 to be his greatest achievement. The poem describes the crucial experiences and stages of the poet’s life and is an introspective account of his emotional and spiritual development.

Wordsworth was a great innovator. He inverted the existing system of genres and brought the humble into the domain of poetry..

He supplied a large number of poems descriptive of village life, common villages and unadorned nature. His poetry celebrates the lives of simple rural people, whom he sees as being more sincere that people living in cities. Wordsworth’s aim is to present simple, natural human feelings.

He asserts individual man versus society, religion versus rationalism, and nature versus civilization.

The sympathy with the natural, the interest in human beings resulted in the annexation to English literature of an almost unexplored continent – the continent of childhood. Childhood provided a new source of interest. Children were regarded as pure and innocent, uncorrupted by education and evils of society. A childlike view of the world didn't conform to standard forms of judgement. The knowledge was instinctive, vision – fresh and clear – the kind of vision the poet himself aspires to.

Wordsworth set the child in the midst of poetry of this Romantic age.

Wordsworth found his greatest inspiration in nature, which he believed could elevate a human soul and exert a positive moral influence on human thoughts and feelings. Wordsworth is one of the world’s most loving and thoughtful poets of nature. In his poems nature brings to human hearts a message of solace and companionship. “And ‘tis my faith that every flower // Enjoys the air it breathes”.

Wordsworth tried to write in a simple a direct language which is close to spoken English:

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears;

She seemed a thing that would not feel

The touch of earthly years.

Wordsworth is a recognized master of the sonnet. His poetic output includes more than 500 sonnets. In his sonnet Scorn Not the Sonnet, Critic; Critic you Have Frowned he names Shakespeare, Petrarch, Dante, Spenser, Milton and others as his predecessors. The scholars consider his sonnet closest to the type Milton cultivated.

The Sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 exemplifies Wordsworth’s aesthetic principles: it is a hymn to the all transforming force of nature – morning and silence. The poet does not like the city, but the morning made the city landscape beautiful. The poet praises the Maker who created the beauty.

Till the end of his life Wordsworth remained the poet of nature, and of human spirit living in harmony with nature. He became a radical reformer of the English language, created a new romantic theory of poetry.

Wordsworth renewed English poetry both in content and style. He started writing at a time, when poetry was constrained by literary conventions, affected diction and emphasis on form. By rejecting these restraints, Wordsworth permanently extended the range of English poetry. Until now Wordsworth is one of the most frequently quoted poets in English literature.

Поиск по сайту: