William Wordsworth Outline Paper

William Wordsworth

Through the use of different elements of poetry like imagery and tone, Wordsworth created inspirational works depictry humanity and nature as dependant one another.

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cumberland, England, As a child he wandered happily through the lovely natural scenery of Cumberland. In grammar school, Wordsworth showed a keen interest in poetry. From 1787 to 1790 Wordsworth attended St. John's College at Cambridge University. Before graduating from Cambridge, he took a walking tour through France, Switzerland, and Italy in 1790 ("William Wordsworth Biography par 1"). He wanted to improve his knowledge of the French language. His experience in France just after the French Revolution reinforced his sympathy for common people and his belief in political freedom Wordsworth fell passionately in love with a French girl, Annette Vallon. She gave birth to their daughter in December 1792 ("William Wordsworth Biography par 2"). However, Wordsworth had spent his limited funds and was forced to return home.

The separation left him with a sense of guilt that deepened his poetic inspiration and resulted in an important theme in his work of abandoned women.

Wordsworth's first poems, Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, were printed in 1793. He wrote several pieces over the next several years. The year 1797 marked the beginning of Wordsworth's long friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Together they published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Most of his poems in this collection centered on the simple yet deeply human feelings of ordinary people, phrased in their own language ("William Wordsworth Biography par 3"). The crucial event of Wordsworth's Changes in philosophy loss of the sense of mystical oneness, which had lasted throughout his highest imaginative flights. A mood of depression descended over Wordsworth, who was then thirty-two years old. In the summer of 1802 Wordsworth spent a few weeks in Calais, and France with his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth's renewed contact with France only and confirmed his disappointment with the French Revolution and its aftermath. His Poems about England and Scotland began pouring forth from Wordsworth's pen, while France and Napoleon soon became Wordsworth's favorite symbols of cruelty and oppression. His nationalistic intense pride in one's own country inspiration led him to produce the two "Memorials of a Tour in Scotland" and the group entitled "Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."

The best poems of 1802, however, deal with a deeper level of inner change. In Wordsworth's poem "Intimations of Immortality", he plainly recognized that "The things which I have seen I now can see no more" ("William Wordsworth Biography par 4"). Had fled, the memory remained, and although the "celestial light" had vanished, the "common sight" of "meadow, grove and stream" was still a strong source of delight and comfort. Wordsworth shed his earlier tendency to idealize nature and turned to a more calm based set of beliefs of orthodox Christianity. Younger poets and critics soon blamed him for this "recantation" which they equated with his change of mind about the French Revolution. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are clear evidence of the way in which love of freedom, nature, and the Church came together at the same time in his mind.

Nevertheless, it was the direction suggested in "Intimations of Immortality" that, in the view of later criticism, enabled Wordsworth to produce perhaps the most outstanding achievement of English romanticism The Prelude. He worked on it, on and off, for several years and completed the first version in May 1805. The Prelude can claim to be the only true romantic epic long, often heroic work because it deals in narrative terms with the spiritual growth of the only true romantic hero, the poet. The inward odyssey journey of the poet was described not for its own sake but as a sample and as an image ("William Wordsworth Biography par 5"). Most important and,

perhaps, most to be regretted, the poet also tried to give a more orthodox amount to his early mystical faith in nature.

Wordsworth's estrangement growing apart from Coleridge in 1810 deprived him of a powerful incentive to imaginative and intellectual alertness. Wordsworth's appointment to a government position in 1813 relieved him of financial care. Wordsworth's undiminished love for nature made him view the emergent just appearing industrial society with undisguised reserve. He opposed the Reform Bill of 1832, which merely