ENGL 3653: English Literature II

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Study Guide 2: William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth

Revised 1-17-12

 

Values of the Romantic Period

The following chart summarizes the contrasting values of the Neoclassical Period (1660-1785), also known in English literary history as the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and the Romantic Period (1785-1830).  Be prepared to discuss in class how the assigned poems by Blake, Burns, and Wordsworth illustrate the values of the Romantic Period as opposed to those of the Neoclassical Period.  

 

Neoclassical Period (1660-1785)             Romantic Period (1785-1830)

1.      Looked to ancient Greeks & Romans 1. Looked to Middle Ages

      (liked Classical architecture)               (liked Gothic architecture )                          

2.      Established, formal rules for writing  2. Freedom of verse forms and styles

3.      Emphasis on human nature                 3. Emphasis on nature (natural environment)

4.      Conformity, conventionality               4. Nonconformity, originality

5.      Precise, regular, symmetrical               5. Irregular

6.      Emphasis on reason, intellect              6. Emphasis on emotions and the supernatural

7.      Objective viewpoint                            7. Subjective viewpoint

      (commonly held beliefs)                     (personal beliefs)

8.      The group, society                               8. The individual

9.      Conservative                                       9. Liberal

10.  Urban life, the city                              10. Rural life, the country

11.  Middle- or upper-class characters       11. Lower-class, peasant characters                                               

“Poetic Theory and Practice,” 8-16(m)

This section is largely based on the philosophy of writing poetry that Wordsworth sets forth in his famous Preface to Lyrical Ballads.  

 

  1. The Concept of Poetry and the Poet
    1. According to Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, what is the source of poetry?  Take into account Wordsworth’s statements that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and that it “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
    2. What type of poem (such as narrative, dramatic, didactic, or lyric) is most typical of the Romantic Period?  In what person (first, second, or third) is it written?
    3. In Romantic poetry, what is the relationship between the poet and the speaker of the poem?
    4. What is the relevance of Wordsworth’s The Prelude to the Romantic concept of poetry and the poet?
    5. In what sense is the Romantic poet seen as a prophet?

 

  1. Poetic Spontaneity and Freedom
    1. What attitude did the Romantic poets take toward the neoclassical rules for composition of poetry?
    2. In what sense did Romantic poets see their work as the product of “unconscious creativity”?

 

  1. Romantic “Nature Poetry”
    1. In what sense is much Romantic poetry “nature poetry”?
    2. Rather than describing the natural scene or landscape for its own sake, what was the purpose of the Romantic poets in describing nature?  What is the role of meditation in Romantic “nature poetry”?

 

  1. The Glorification of the Ordinary and the Outcast
    1. According to Wordsworth, what are the appropriate subjects of poetry?  What is meant by “common life” and “humble and rustic life”?
    2. Over what does Wordsworth say the poet should “throw . . . a certain colouring of imagination”?  What does this mean?  What is an example of an assigned poem that does this?
    3. What is “poetic diction”?  What is “the language really used by men”?  According to Wordsworth, what is the appropriate language of poetry?  In a particular Wordsworth poem of your choice, how successful do you think Wordsworth is in writing in the kind of language he advocates? 

 

  1. The Supernatural and “Strangeness in Beauty”
    1. According to his agreement with Wordsworth, concerning what subjects was Samuel Taylor Coleridge supposed to write poems for Lyrical Ballads?
    2. What is meant by “the addition of strangeness to beauty”?  What kinds of altered states of consciousness were the subject of Romantic poems?  

 

“William Wordsworth,” 243-45, and “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” 262 ff.

  1. On the map in the front or back endpapers of your textbook, where is England=s Lake District?  In what county is the Lake District located?  What is Rydal Mount, the location of which is marked on the map?  What is the significance of the Lake District to Wordsworth’s life and work?
  2. On the map in the front or back endpapers of your textbook, where is Mount Snowden?  What is the significance of Mount Snowden to Wordsworth’s life and work?
  3. What is Wordsworth’s connection with the French Revolution?  Who are Annette and Caroline Vallon?
  4. Publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads
    1. When was the first edition of Lyrical Ballads published?  (This date is frequently used as the starting date for the Romantic Period in English literature.  What date does your textbook use for the start of the Romantic Period?)
    2. When was the second edition published?  What was added to the second edition?  Who wrote it?
    3. When was the third edition published?  What change was made in the third edition?
  5. Who is Dorothy Wordsworth?  What is her significance to the life and work of William Wordsworth?
  6. What is Dove Cottage?  In what village is it located?  When did William and Dorothy Wordsworth live in Dove Cottage?  How is this period of time significant in William Wordsworth’s life and work? Extra-credit research:  What information about Dove Cottage can you find? about Wordsworth’s life in Dove Cottage? about the village in which it is located?  What pictures of Dove Cottage can you find?
  7. What is a poet laureate?  During what years was Wordsworth the poet laureate of England? 
  8. What is The Prelude?  What is its significance in the life and work of Wordsworth?

 

“Lines Written in Early Spring,” 250

  1. To what extent does this poem exemplify what Wordsworth says in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads about how poetry should be written? 
  2. For additional points, answer the above question for other poems in this assignment.

 

“Expostulation and Reply,” 250

1.      What is an “expostulation”?

2.      Who are the two speakers in the poem?  What opposing positions do they express?

 

“The Tables Turned,” 251

1.      This poem is a continuation of the argument in “Expostulation and Reply.”  Which of the two speakers in “Expostulation and Reply” is the speaker of this poem?

 

2.      The following stanza states the main point of this poem:

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

    1. What is the definition of “vernal”?  What are “sages”?
    2. In your own words, what does this stanza say?

c.       For extra credit, MEMORIZE this stanza and recite it to me.

 

  1. This poem (see stanza above), like many others in today’s assignment, is written in ballad stanza, which has these characteristics:

·         4-line stanza (quatrain)

·         meter: 4 accented syllables in lines 1 & 3; 3 accented syllables in lines 2 & 4

·         rhyme scheme: abcb or abab

    1. Which other poems in today’s assignment use ballad stanza?

 

“Tintern Abbey,” 258

Because the full title of this poem is so long, it is usually known as “Tintern Abbey.”  It is the final poem in Lyrical Ballads.

1.      The verse form of this poem is blank verse.  What are the characteristics of blank verse, and how are they exemplified in this poem?  (See the definitions of poetic terms in the back of our textbook.)

  1. Who is the speaker of this poem?
  2. What is the situation or occasion of the poem?
  3. Where in the poem does the speaker directly address a listener?  Who is the listener?
  4. Beginning with line 65, page 259, the speaker of the poem identifies three different stages in the development of his personal response to (or relationship with) nature.   What are these three stages, and which lines describe each stage?  (See footnote on page 260[b].)
  5. The philosophy of this poem has been described as pantheism.  What is the definition of this term, and what lines of the poem especially seem to support this philosophy?

 

The Lucy Poems

The next five (5) poems, known as the Lucy Poems, concern the speaker’s feelings for an otherwise unknown English girl named Lucy.     

 

“Strange fits of passion have I known,” 274

1.      What is the poetic form of this poem?  That is, what is the metrical pattern of accented and unaccented syllables, and what is the rhyme scheme?

2.      What is the situation in this poem?

3.      What premonition does the speaker have at the end of the poem?

4.      A footnote in your textbook quotes an additional stanza that Wordsworth originally gave this poem. What additional information does that stanza contain?  Why do you think Wordsworth decided to omit it?

 

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” 275

  1. What does this poem tell us about Lucy? 
  2. In the second stanza, what two figurative comparisons describe the solitude of Lucy’s life?
  3. What does the poem tell us about the speaker’s feelings for Lucy?

 

“Three years she grew,” 275

1.      Who is the speaker of the lines that are NOT in quotation marks?  Who is the speaker of the lines that ARE in quotation marks?

2.      What different stages in the relationship between Nature and Lucy does the poem identify?  

 

“A slumber did my spirit seal,” 276

1.      In content, this poem seems to be a continuation of the previous one. According to the second and last stanza, what is Lucy’s relationship with nature now?

 

“I travelled among unknown men,” 277

1.      Upon his return to England, Wordsworth describes in this poem the homesickness he experienced while living in Germany.  What lines of the poem reveal this situation?

  1. What are the speaker’s feelings for Lucy?

 

“Lucy Gray,” 277

1.      Despite the title, this is NOT one of the Lucy Poems.  How is Lucy Gray different from the Lucy of the Lucy Poems (see footnote)? 

2.      Whereas most of Wordsworth’s works are lyric poems, this one is a narrative poem.  Where does this story come from?

3.      What happens in the plot of this story?

4.      Wordsworth’s purpose in writing this poem was to give “a certain coloring of imagination” to incidents from ordinary life. In what sense is this an incident from ordinary life? What in particular adds the element of “imagination” to the poem?

 

“Michael,” 292

  1. What is the poetic form of this poem?  What other assigned poem by Wordsworth uses the same form?
  2. According to the textbook, what was Wordsworth’s source for this narrative?
  3. Identify what happens or what is revealed in each of the following parts of the plot:
    1. Exposition: What are we told about the main characters and situation at the beginning?
    2. Complication: What is the moment when the major conflict is first introduced?
    3. Crisis: What is the turning point when the plot moves in a different direction?
    4. Dénouement: How is the conflict resolved?  What happens at the end of the story?
  4. What are Michael’s values?  What is his relationship with Nature? What are Isabel’s values?
  5. What is the definition of “covenant”?  What covenant do Michael and Luke make with each other before Luke leaves home?  To what extent does each man keep or break his covenant with the other?  What explanation is given for Luke’s failure?  At the end of the poem, what is left as a symbol of their broken covenant?
  6. What is the meaning of subtitle, “A Pastoral Poem”?  How is this subtitle appropriate to the poem and typical of the Romantic Period?  In what other ways is this a typically Romantic poem?
  7. What is sentimentality?  What passages or aspects of this poem reveal sentimentality?

 

“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” 305

  1. In the first few stanzas, the speaker of this poem describes an experience from the past. What happened on this occasion?
  2. According to the end of the poem, what happens whenever the speaker remembers this experience?
  3. Explain how this poem illustrates Wordsworth’s belief that poetry results from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that are “recollected in tranquility.”
  4. Find the assigned passage from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal that relates to this poem.  We know that her brother consulted her journal before writing the poem.  What aspects of the poem can be traced to her journal?
  5. Extra credit:  Memorize all or any part of this poem (or any other poem by Wordsworth).

 

“My heart leaps up,” 306

1.      According to the speaker, what has remained constant in his life from childhood to adulthood and, he hopes, will remain so until his death?

2.      AThe Child is father of the Man@ is a paradox, a contradictory statement that has truth behind it.  What is the contradiction?  In what sense is this statement true? 

 

“Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” 306(b)

An ode is an elaborate, dignified lyric poem.  Odes have their origins in the choral odes (songs of the chorus) of ancient Greek tragedy.  This is probably the most difficult poem in this week’s assignment because it is philosophical, based on the Platonic or Neoplatonic belief in the pre-existence of the soul and the reincarnation of the soul into different bodies.  (See explanation in textbook.) 

  1. Which lines especially relate to the pre-existence of the soul?

2.      According to the poem (and to Platonic philosophy) why do infants and children have a closeness to God and Nature that adults do not?

 

“The Solitary Reaper,” 314

This is one of the few poems by Wordsworth that is not based on personal experience.  

1.      According to the footnote in the textbook, what is the source of this poem?

  1. In subject, setting, language, emotion, etc., what typically Romantic traits does this poem exemplify?

 

Sonnets

Learn this definition of sonnet and the characteristics of Italian sonnets.

A sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter and following one of several possible rhyme schemes.  Wordsworth’s sonnets are Italian or Petrarchan sonnets:

  1. To what extent is a major shift in content found after line 8 in each of Wordsworth’s Italian sonnets?

                                                                                               

“Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” 317

1.      What assigned passage from the journal of Dorothy Wordsworth describes the situation her brother later wrote about in this poem?  What scene is the poet describing?  What situation brought them to this place?  

 

“It is a beauteous evening,” 317

  1. What assigned passage from the journal of Dorothy Wordsworth relates to this poem?  What is the situation described in the poem?  Besides William and Dorothy Wordsworth, who else is present and mentioned in the poem?
  2. What comparisons does the speaker use to describe the scene?

 

“The world is too much with us,” 319

1.      This is a good example of the structure of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.  What problem is presented in the octave (first 8 lines)?  What solution or response is suggested in the sestet (last 6 lines)?

2.      Despite what he says, the speaker probably does not want his readers to stop being Christians and become pagans.  What about the pagan worldview, however, does the speaker wish modern society would reclaim?

3.      The footnotes briefly explain the allusions to classical mythology.  For extra credit, do research to find more information about any of these allusions, and explain what they contribute to the poem.

 

“Surprised by joy,” 320

1.      According to the footnote in the textbook, what situation is described in the poem? 

2.      In what sense is the speaker “Surprised by joy”? 

3.      Why does the speaker express overwhelming grief at the end of the poem?