william wordsworth

5/20/2018 William Wordsworth

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1 Pantheistic elements in wordswortian poetry

C h a n a k y a N a t i o n a l L a w U n i v e s i t y Page 1

Project Work of English

On

Pantheistic elements in wordsworthian poetry

Submitted To:-

Dr. Pratyush Kaushik

Faculty of Political Science

Submitted By: -

ANKIT ANAND

Roll No. 916

1st Year B.A. LL.B. (Hons)


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my guide

Dr. Pratyush Kaushikfor his exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement

throughout the course of this research. The blessing, help and guidance given by him time to

time shall carry me a long way in the journey of life on which I am about to embark.

I also take this opportunity to express a deep sense of gratitude to Dr. Pratyush Kaushikfor

providing me this research topic and for her cordial support, valuable information and

guidance, which helped me in completing this task through various stages.

Lastly, I thank almighty, my parents, brother and friends for their constant encouragement

without which this assignment would not be possible.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.........................................................................................................................4

Aims and Objectives...........................................................................................................6

Hypothesis...........................................................................................................................7

Research methodology........................................................................................................7

Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet....................................................................................8-11

Nature Worshipping......................................................................................................11-15

Wordsworthian Style.....................................................................................................15-18

Conclusion.....................................................................................................................19-20

Bibliography.......................................................................................................................21


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Introduction

The term pantheism is a modern one, possibly first appearing in the writing of the Irishfreethinker John Toland (1705) and constructed from the Greek rootspan(all)

and theos(God). Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an

expression of Gods nature. It comes from pan meaning all, and theism, which means

belief in God. So according to pantheism, God is everything and everything is God. A

doctrine which identifies God with the universe or regards the universe as a manifestation of

God.It involves a denial of God's personality and expresses a tendency to identify God

and nature. But if not the name, the ideas themselves are very ancient, and any survey of the

history of philosophy will uncover numerous pantheist or pantheistically inclined thinkers;

although it should also be noted that in many cases all that history has preserved for us are

second-hand reporting of attributed doctrines, any reconstruction of which is too conjectural

to provide much by way of philosophical illumination.

At its most general, pantheism may be understood positively as the view that God is identical

with the cosmos, the view that there exists nothing which is outside of God, or else negatively

as the rejection of any view that considers God as distinct from the universe.

However, given the complex and contested nature of the concepts involved, there is

insufficient consensus among philosophers to permit the construction of any more detailed

definition not open to serious objection from some quarter or other. Moreover, the label is a

controversial one, where strong desires either to appropriate or to reject it often serve only to

obscure the actual issues, and it would be a sad irony if pantheism revealed itself to be most

like a traditional religion in its sectarian disputes over just what counts as true pantheism.

Therefore pantheism should not be thought of as a single codifiable position. Rather it should

be understood as a diverse family of distinct doctrines; many of whom would be surprised

and, indeed, disconcertedto find themselves regarded as members of a single household.

Further, since the concept has porous and disputed boundaries there is no clear consensus on

just who qualifies, no definitive roll-call of past pantheists. Given this situation the range of

things that may be usefully said about allpantheisms is perhaps limited, but nonetheless a

variety of concepts may be clarified, the nature of contentious issues explored, and the range

of possible options more precisely mapped out.


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Pantheism in religion, literature, and philosophy1:-

There are several different ways to think about pantheism. (1) Many of the world's religious

traditions and spiritual writings are marked by pantheistic ideas and feelings. This isparticularly so for example, in Hinduism of the Advaita Vedanta school, in some varieties of

Kabbalistic Judaism, in Celtic spirituality, and in Sufi mysticism. (2) Thirdly, as it is in this

article, pantheism may be consideredphilosophically; that is, a critical examination may be

made of its central ideas with respect to their meaning, their coherence, and the case to be

made for or against their acceptance. (3) Another vital source of pantheistic ideas is to be

found in literature, for example, in such writers as Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Emerson,

Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, and Robinson Jeffers. Although it should be added that, far

from being limited to high culture, pantheistic themes are familiar, too, in popular media, for

example in such films as Star Wars, Avatar,and The Lion King.

William Wordsworth is the Romantic poet most often described as a "nature" writer; what the

word "nature" meant to Wordsworth is, however, a complex issue. On the one hand,

Wordsworth was the quintessential poet as naturalist, always paying close attention to details

of the physical environment around him (plants, animals, geography, weather). At the same

time, Wordsworth was a self-consciously literary artist who described "the mind of man" as

the "main haunt and region of [his] song." This tension between objective describer of the

natural scene and subjective shaper of sensory experience is partly the result of Wordsworth's

view of the mind as "creator and receiver both." Wordsworth consistently describes his own

mind as the recipient of external sensations which are then rendered into its own mental

creations. (Shelley made a related claim in "Mont Blanc" when he said that his mind

"passively / Now renders and receives, fast influencings, / Holding an unremitting

interchange / With the clear universe of things around".) Such an alliance of the inner life

with the outer world is at the heart of Wordsworth's descriptions of nature. Wordsworth's

ideas about memory, the importance of childhood experiences, and the power of the mind to

bestow an "auxiliar" light on the objects it beholds all depend on this ability to record

experiences carefully at the moment of observation but then to shape those same experiences

in the mind over time. We should also recall, however, that he made widespread use of other

texts in the production of his Wordsworthian (Keats said "egotistical") sublime: drafts of1http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/ accessed on 14/04/2014 at 18:56 IST
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/


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poems by Coleridge, his sister Dorothy's Journals, the works of Milton, Shakespeare,

Thomson, and countless others. Wordsworthian "nature" emerges as much a product of his

widespead reading as of his wanderings amid the affecting landscapes of the Lake District.

His poems often present an instant when nature speaks tohim and he responds by

speakingfornature. The language of nature in such instances is, like the language

Wordsworth uses to record such events, often cryptic and enigmatic. The owls in the often-

quoted "Boy of Winander" passage of The Prelude hoot to a Wordsworthian child who

answers first in their owl-language and then with a poem that records only the mirroring

image of an "uncertain heaven," the dark sky reflected in a still silent lake. Wordsworth longs

for a version of nature that will redeem him from the vagaries of passing moments, but he

usually records those natural phenomena that promise only the passing of time and the

cyclical transience of natural process. "Nutting" holds us up painfully against the ravaging of

a pristine and naturally spiritualized bower. The Lucy poems tells us thatLucy is backinto

nature at her death, but that consolation seems small recompense for the humanized "nature"

of the loss.The Preludewants to keep us in touch with a childhood and subsequent adult

identity realized within the natural world; at the same time, however, this autobiographical

epic leaves adult readers feeling a long way from the "spots of time" of childhood. Nothing in

Wordsworth is simple or singular; like Milton, he is a poet who almost resists the possibility

of final or definitive interpretation. His view of nonhuman nature is likewise open-ended.

Wordsworth's "nature" points us away from the closed world of theocentric symbol-making

toward the unstable world of postmodern meaning.

Aims and Objective(1) Try to know what is pantheistic element?

(2) Try to know about William Wordsworth and his personal life.

(3) Try to know what is Nature worshipping?

(4) Try to know William Wordsworth Poetic style.
http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor6.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor7.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor10.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor10.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor10.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor10.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor7.htmlhttp://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/wordswor6.html


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Hypothesis

The researcher feels that William wordsworth was a romantic poet and he gave more

emphasis on pantheismthrough his poem.

Research Methodology

This project is based mainly and heavily on written text material. It is based on the doctrinal

method of research. The segments are structured and written actively. The writing style is

descriptive as well as analytical. This project has been done after a thorough research based

upon intrinsic and extrinsic aspect of the assigned topic. The doctrinal method in this research

paper refers to various books, articles, news paper, magazine, Dictionary and political review.

In this research paper, the researcher will only use Doctrinal method.

William Wordsworth's as a Romantic poet

William Wordsworth's poetry exhibits Romantic characteristics and for his treatment towards

romantic elements, he stands supreme and he can be termed a Romantic poet on a number of

reasons. The Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century was a revolt against the

classical tradition of the eighteenth century; but it was also marked by certain positive trends.

Wordsworth was, of course, a pioneer of the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century.

With the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the new trends become more or less established.

However, the reasons for why Wordsworth can be called a Romantic poet are given below:

Imagination: Where the eighteenth century poets used to put emphasis much on wit, the

romantic poets used to put emphasis on imagination. Wordsworth uses imagination so that

the common things could be made to look strange and beautiful through the play of

imagination. In his famous Intimation Ode", it seems to his as to the child "the earth, and

every common sight" seemed "apparelled in celestial light". Here he says,


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There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,

The earth and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light"2

Moreover, in this poem, we find a sequence of picture through his use of imagery. Through

his imagination he says,

The Rainbow come and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare"3

Similarly, in the poem, Tintern Abbey, the poet sees the river, the stream, steep and lofty

cliffs through his imaginative eyes. He was enthusiastically charmed at the joyful sound of

the rolling river. Here he says,

Once again

Do I behold those steep and lofty cliffs

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion and connect

The landscape with quiet of the sky".4

In this poem, the poet seems that the nature has a healing power. Even the recollection of

nature soothes the poet's troubled heart. The poet can feel the existance of nature through

imagination even when he is away from her. He says,

2INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD


4COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR. JULY 13,

1798


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In lonely rooms and mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensation sweet".5

Nature: Wordsworth is especially regarded as a poet of nature. In most of the poems of

Wordsworth nature is constructed as both a healing entity and a teacher or moral guardian.

Nature is considered in his poems as a living personality. He is a true worshiper of nature:

nature's devotee or high priest. The critic Cazamian says, "to Wordsworth, nature appears is a

formative influence superior to any other, the educator of senses or mind alike, the shower in

our hearts of the deep laden seeds of our feelings and beliefs". He dwells with great

satisfaction, on the prospects of spending his time in groves and valleys and on the banks of

streams that will lull him to rest with their soft murmur.

For Wordsworth, nature is a healer and he ascribes healing properties to Nature in Tintern

Abbey . This is a fairly obvious conclusion drawn from his reference to "tranquil restoration"

that his memory of the Wye offered him in lonely rooms and mid the din/Of towns and

cities"

It is also evident in his admonition to Dorothy that she let her

"Memory be as a dwelling-place

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh !then

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief.

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations!6

Wordsworth says nature "never did betray the heart that loved her".


1798


1798


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Subjectivity: Subjectivity is the key note of Romantic poetry. He expresses his personal

thoughts, feelings through his poems. In Ode: Intimation of Immortality the poet expresses

his own/personal feelings. Here he says that he can't see the celestial light anymore which he

used to see in his childhood. He says,

It is not now as it hath been of yore;-

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By might or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see on more."7

Nature becomes all in all to the poet. The sounding cataract haunted him like a passion.

Nature was his beloved. He loved only the sensuous beauty of nature. He has also a

philosophy of nature.

Pantheism and mysticism: Pantheism and mysticism are almost interrelated factors in the

Nature poetry of the Romantic period. Wordsworth conceives of a spiritual power running

through all natural objects- the " presence that disturbs me with the low of elevated thoughts"

whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, the rolling ocean. the living air, the blue sky, and

the mind of man (Tintern Abbey)

Humanism: The romantic poets had sincere love for man or rather the spirit of man.

Wordsworth had a superabundant enthusiasm for humanity. He was deeply interested in the

simple village folk and the peasant who live in contact with nature. Wordsworth showed

admiration for the ideals that inspired the French Revolution. Emphasis in individual freedom

is another semantic characteristic. Wordsworth laments for the loss of power, freedom and

virtue of human soul.

Lyricism: Wordsworth is famous for simple fiction, bereft of artificialities and falsity of

emotion. His "Lyrical Ballads" signifies his contention that poetry is the "history or science



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of feelings"

In the Ode: Intimation of Immortality, we see his lyricism. He writes,

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own:

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even, with something of a Mother's mind,

And, on unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her Innate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.8

In the concluding part, it can be said that Wordsworth was a protagonist in the Romantic

Movement which was at once a revolt and a revival. He shows the positive aspects of

Romanticism with its emphasis on imagination, feeling, emotion, human dignity and

significance of Nature.

Nature Worshipping

Nature worship,system of religion based on the veneration of natural phenomenafor

example, celestial objects such as the sun and moon and terrestrial objects such as water and

fire.9A nature deity can be in charge of nature, the biosphere, the cosmos or the universe.

Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can

be found in theism, panentheism, pantheism, deism, polytheism, animism, totemism,shamanism and paganism. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on

8Ode: Intimation of Immortality

9A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics edited by Shailer Mathews, Gerald Birney Smith, p 305


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the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural

world and reverence towards it.10

In the history of religions and cultures, nature worship as a definite and complex system of

belief or as a predominant form of religion has not been well documented. Among

the indigenous peoples of many countries, the concept of nature as a totality is unknown; only

individual natural phenomenae.g., stars, rain, and animalsare comprehended as natural

objects or forces that influence them and are thus in some way worthy of being venerated or

placated. Nature as an entity in itself, in contrast with human society and culture or even with

God, is a philosophical or poetic conception that has been developed among advanced

civilizations. This concept of nature worship, therefore, is limited primarily to scholars

involved in or influenced by the modern (especially Western) study of religion.

Forms and aspects of nature worship

Fire worship

Tree worship

Animal worship

Star worship

Sacred mountains

Sacred groves

Sacred herbs

Holy well

Megalith

10The New International Encyclopdia, Volume 14 edited by Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, Frank Moore Colby,

pp 288-289
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_mountainshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_groveshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_herbshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_wellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_wellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_herbshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_groveshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_mountainshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_worshiphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_worship


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Standing stone

Stone circle

Thunder god

Totem

Sky deity

Water deity

Naturalistic pantheism

Naturalistic spirituality

Gaia philosophy

Green Man

There are two very distinct belief systems which stem from the worship of nature; Druidism

and Shamanism. While different in their effectuation, both belief systems share with each

other their most basic concepts of animism, ancestor worship, and spirit guidance. Though

both druidism and shamanism seem to be separated by a very fine line, the means by which

they reach their ends can be classified in a fairly straightforward manner. Druids worship the

spirits through plants, animals, and the fundamental spirit of the wilds. Conversely, shamans

worship the spirits through the four fundamental elements of earth, fire, wind, and water.

This essential spark of life is looked upon as a divine force, one more fundamental than the

Holy Light worshiped by the Humans. The Orcs, Tauren, Night Elves, Trolls, and Draenei

commune with the spirit world in search of knowledge, guidance, and power. Though these

races do not discount the humans' study and worship of the Light, they maintain the Light is

merely the emergent characteristic of the interconnectivity of the spirit world, not a single

person's connection with the universe. The belief that the paladin is a direct agent of the Light

is a dismissal of the concept that each shaman is but a mere conduit through which the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_stonehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_circlehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_godhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_deityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_deityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_pantheismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_spiritualityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_philosophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Manhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Manhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_philosophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_spiritualityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_pantheismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_deityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_deityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totemhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_godhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_circlehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_stone


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powers of the spirits flow. Truly, in their rush to embrace the Light, the humans missed the

very point of its existence.

Druidism

The druids live a very spiritual life: firstly acknowledging and honouring each spirit as an

individual life; secondly honouring the goddess Elune (known to the Tauren as Mu'sha), the

only true deity on Azeroth. The druids seek guidance or interference from the spirits,

asking the small spirits for small tasks and entreating Elune or one of the other wise and

powerful spirits of the forests for more significant tasks. They see their forests as havens for

living spirits, and as such are bound to defend them. It has become the highest priority for the

Druid's Cenarion Circle to heal the corruption of their precious forests caused by the demonic

and undeadinvasion of the Third War. As the spirits have served them for thousands of years,

the druids seek to give back to the spirits by healing the very living woods.

This close proximity to nature imbues the druid directly with the power of the spirits,

allowing them to harness the power of nature, and assume the form of the animals they

worship. Because of this direct power infusion, the druids can be seen as the purer parent of

the humans' paladin. Unlike the traditional paladin, however, druids still view themselves as

servants of the divine, rather than agents.

Shamanism

The shaman however, do not worship plant life and nature as the druids do. Instead, they

honour the spirits of their own ancestors and the elemental forces. The shaman are not

themselves imbued with the ascendency of the spirits, rather they harness it through

ceremonial totems. They carve these totems to represent the spirits and animals from which

they draw power, and it is within these totems that the true potency of a shaman lies.

According to the Bible, all creatures, animate and inanimate, worship God. This is not, as

modern Biblical interpreters have sometimes supposed, merely a poetic fancy or some kind of

animism that endows the all creatures with consciousness. The creation worships God just by

being itself, as God made it, existing for Gods glory. Only humans desist from worshipping

God; other creatures, without having to think about it, do so all the time. A lily does not needto do anything. Simply by being and growing it praises God. It is distinctively human to


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bring praise to conscious expression in words, but the creatures remind us that this

distinctively human form of praise is worthless unless, like them, we also live our whole lives

to the glory of God. . . .

This idea of worshipping our Creator along with all the other creatures really has nothing in

common with nature worship, of which some modern Christians seem to be pathologically

afraid. It is true that in the biblical tradition nature has been de-divinized. It is not divine, but

Gods creation. But that does not make it nothing more than material for human use. Nature

has been reduced to stuff that we can do with as we wish, not by the Bible, but by the modern

age, with its rejection of God and its instrumental zing of nature.

The Bible has de-divinized nature, but it has not de-sacralized nature. Nature remains

sacred in the sense that it belongs to God, exists for the glory of God, even reflects the glory

of God, as humans also do. The respect, even the reverence, that other creatures inspire in us

is just as it should be. It leads us not to worship creation (something that is scarcely a serious

danger in the contemporary western world) but to worship with creation. According to

chapter 5 of the book of Revelation, the goal of Gods creative and redemptive work is

achieved when every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea joins in a

harmony of praise to God and the Lamb:

Wordsworths Poetic Style

Style is a debatable thing about Wordsworth. Many critics say that he has two styles. A few

argue that he has many styles and still some even go to the extent of saying that he has no

style at all.

Wordsworth had a belief that poetic style should be as simple and sincere as the language of

everyday life, and that the more the poet draws on elemental feelings and primal simplicities

the better for his art. He advocated the use of simple language in poetry. He said that poetry

should be written in a languagereally used by men in humble and rustic.He set himself to

the task of freeing poetry from all its conceitsand its inanephraseology.He made certain

very effective and striking experiments in the use of simple language.


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According to Lytton Strachey, Wordsworth was the first poet who fully recognised and

deliberately practised the beauties of extreme simplicity; and this achievement constitutes his

most obvious claim to fame. Hardly any interested reader misses the beauty of his simplicity.

One could quote numerous examples of the successful and effective manner in which

Wordsworth handled simple language. All Lucy poems offer striking examples. A poem like

the one on daffodils represents the successful simple style too.

Wordsworths use of the nobly-plain style has something unique and unmatchable.

Wordsworth feels his subjects with profound sincerity and, at the same time, his subject itself

has a profoundly sincere and natural character. His expression may often be called bald as,

for instance, in the poemResolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain

tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.

Wordsworth prefers generally to employ an unostentatious, ascetic style. It demands a mature

and thoughtful reader to appreciate the power and comprehensiveness.

But many are the occasions when Wordsworthssimplicity deteriorates into triviality. While

the daring simplicity is often highly successful, there is also the other kind of simplicity

which has been called the bleat, as of an old, half-witted sheep. This creates a strange

inequality in Wordsworthsverse, an inequality which has been noted and commented upon

by almost every critic.

His deficient sense of humour is responsible for many banalities, but the chief reason for this

mixture of puerility and grandeur is his poetic theory. According to this theory, Wordsworth

was to use aselection of the language really used by men in humble and rustic life,while at

the same time he was to throw a certain colouring of imagination over his subjects.

Wordsworths experiments in a simple style were intended to arouse the ordinary mans

sympathy for his fellow men. He sacrifices the idiomatic order of words to preserve

simplicity of diction and the demands of rhyme. He undermines his purpose with amazing

effects. Sometimes he offends merely by the use of such metre as

Poor Susan moans, poor Susan groans

Fortunately Wordsworthssplendid imagination was often too powerful for his theory; and in

his best work he unconsciously ignores it altogether.


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As Graham Hough points out, in Tintern Abbey Wordsworth is far more willing than his

theories would suggest to use the full resources of the English vocabulary. In the more

exalted passages of this, as of most of the reflective blank verse poems, the influence of

Milton is apparent. We sometimes find Wordsworth using a Latinised and abstract

vocabulary, commonly supposed to be most uncharacteristic of his work, and directly due to

Miltonic influence.

According to a critic, Wordsworth has not twovoices,but many; and even relatively short

poems such asResolution and Independence, Yew-Trees, and Fidelity show a considerable

range. To hold, as Arnold does, that Wordsworth has no style is a dangerous simplification.

The journals of Dorothy Wordsworth show what pains Wordsworth took to find the right

expression. Few poets spent more time searching for the right word or revising their poems.

The result of such strenuous application was often exhaustion leading to dull prosaic verse;

but the same labour produced the wonderful poetry of Tintern Abbey which was written in a

few hours and hardly altered, and great extempore works, even in his declining years, such as

the 1835 effusion on the death of James Hogg.

The famous dullness of Wordsworth which measures the grave in The Thorn and finds it

three feet long and two feet wide is all part of his fearless search for a diction which should

bypass; the pomposity of literature, and take a sort of photograph or recording of experience

itself, not just the scene but the emotion connected with the scene.

Wordsworth was right in his banalities, given the premises from which he started. Only the

metre and the inversions employed to contain ordinary conversation in short lines create an

unhappy effect in some of the ballad poems.

Wordsworth often used imagery which is more visual, especially in similes from Nature. But

generally, he demands more of the readers imagination than most poets do. His poems

frequently echo Milton, Shakespeare, Burns, the Elizabethan poet Daniel, Pope, Thomson,

and Gray; but not a single work had as lasting an influence on him as Paradise Lost. Instead

of being dazzled with words, he had looked steadily at his subject. The imagery he used is

derived from his own experience and thought.


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We can aptly sum up Wordsworthsstyle thus: Wordsworthslanguage is usually worthy of

his themes. At its best it has restraint, quietness and integrity, a refusal to be clever or fanciful

in order to attract the reader. But there are other times when it is not so much serious.

Wordsworth was practising his theory that poetry should be written in a selection of

language really used by men;but not paying enough attention to selection.Again, when his

powers failed, he fell back on bombast as a substitute.

According to Cazamian, Wordsworth never seriously believed that a poets means of ex-

pression should coincide altogether with those of the most familiar speech. He does not try to

identify entirely the language of poetry with that of conversation among men of the low or of

the middle class.

Poetry of the preceding period suffered from the artificiality of a language in which the

means of conveying intensity had been worn out by the deadening effect of custom and had

lost all their power of suggestion. To shake off these chains, to dare to employ the language

of pure passion, such a step meant a return to the practice of the old masters. Their style,

when compared with that of the eighteenth century at its close, was of a relatively simple

quality, just as it was ever racy, frank, and spontaneous.

The cult of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare is part and parcel of the faith animating the

literary reform of which theLyrical Ballads are the symbol. To the pages of these writers,

Wordsworth and Coleridge go in quest of materials for the making of a permanentstyle.

Although unequal, and full of flaws, of lapses into the prosaic or into a tedious accuracy of

statement, Wordsworths shorter poems of the best period undoubtedly possess a unique

value, however mixed they may be. Among them are pure masterpieces, in which the tension

of the style is delightfully relaxed: an ecstatic or divinely childlike spontaneity replaces the

effort of concentration. These poems bring to a decisive realisation the revival towards which

the previous literary transition was tending.

Wordsworth broke the spell of an antiquated tradition, and his work inaugurated the reign of

liberty. England awoke to this fact, not indeed at once, but by degrees, and in the course of a

generation. All the English poets o f the nineteenth century are indirectly his heirs.


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Conclusion

Wordsworths monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of important poems,

varying in length and weight from the short, simple lyrics of the 1790s to the vast expanses

of The Prelude, thirteen books long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through

Wordsworths poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain

remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon, adhering largely to the tenets

Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads.Here, Wordsworth

argues that poetry should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in

the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered poetic. He argues that poetry

should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And he argues that the first

principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure

through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feelingfor all human sympathy, he claims,

is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is the naked and native dignity of man.

Recovering the naked and native dignity of man makes up a significant part of

Wordsworths poetic project, and he follows his own advice from the 1802 preface.

Wordsworths style remains plain-spoken and easy to understand even today, though the

rhythms and idioms of common English have changed from those of the early nineteenth

century. Many of Wordsworths poems (including masterpieces such as Tintern Abbey and

the Intimations of Immortality ode) deal with the subjects of childhood and the memory of

childhood in the mind of the adult in particular, childhoods lost connection with nature,

which can be preserved only in memory. Wordsworths images and metaphors mix natural

scenery, religious symbolism (as in the sonnet It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, in

which the evening is described as being quiet as a nun), and the relics of the poets rustic

childhoodcottages, hedgerows, orchards, and other places where humanity intersects gently

and easily with nature.

Wordsworths poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and

pleasure above formality and mannerism. More than any poet before him, Wordsworth gave

expression to inchoate human emotion; his lyric Strange fits of passion have I known, in

which the speaker describes an inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead,

could not have been written by any previous poet. Curiously for a poet whose work points so

directly toward the future, many of Wordsworths important works are preoccupied with the


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lost glory of the pastnot only of the lost dreams of childhood but also of the historical past,

as in the powerful sonnet London,1802 , in which the speaker exhorts the spirit of the

centuries-dead poet John Milton to teach the modern world a better way to live.


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Bibliography:-

Books:-

William Wordsworth, Selected by- Seamus Hea, Faber & Faber, Limited, 2011

Last Poems(1821-1850) By William Wordaworth, Cornell University Press, 1999

Fifteen Poets, The Clarendon Press, 1941,

The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (1876), By- William Wordsworth

Wordsworth's Poetry and ProseByWilliam Wordsworth

Websites:-

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wordsworth_william.shtml

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-wordsworth

http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296

http://www.poemhunter.com/william-wordsworth/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/64845.William_Wordsworth

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww138.html
http://www.homeshop18.com/william-wordsworth/author:William+Wordsworth/categoryid:10000/http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wordsworth_william.shtmlhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-wordsworthhttp://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296http://www.poemhunter.com/william-wordsworth/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworthhttp://www.goodreads.com/author/show/64845.William_Wordsworthhttp://www.goodreads.com/author/show/64845.William_Wordsworthhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworthhttp://www.poemhunter.com/william-wordsworth/http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-wordsworthhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wordsworth_william.shtmlhttp://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.htmlhttp://www.homeshop18.com/william-wordsworth/author:William+Wordsworth/categoryid:10000/

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