Notes 7 William Wordsworth
The Age of Romanticism—William Wordsworth
Historical background --Three Revolutions
1.American Revolution (1775-1783):
The formation of the independent U.S.A.
2.French Revolution (1789)
* The start: the storming of the Bastille, July 14th, 1789.
Q: What’s the motto of the French Revolution?
Liberté, égalité, fraternité (”Liberty, equality,and fraternity”)
3. The Industrial Revolution (1760s to mid-19th cent.)
Rapid capitalist development→
1) Wealth to the Rich and sufferings for the Poor
2) Exploitation of women and children (child labor)
3) The Luddite movement: a machine-breaking anti-industrialization movement (1811-1818, named after Ned Ludd) Intellectual Background –Reason→ Instinct & Emotion
Jean Jacques Rousseau 卢梭(1712-1778)
●French philosopher, the father of romanticism
●Reject the worship of reason →Follow our instincts and emotions to solve vital problems of life;
●Return to nature: science, art, and social institutions corrupted humankind; the natural, or primitive state is morally
superior to the civilized state.
Major works:
●Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind《论人类不平等的起源和基础》(1755; trans.
1761)
●The New Heloise《新爱洛伊丝》(1761)
●The Social Contract《社会契约论》(1762; trans. 1797)
●émile 《爱弥尔》(1762; trans. 1763)
●Confessions 《忏悔录》(1782; trans. 1783, 1790)
The Age of Romanticism
A movement in the literature from 1798 to 1832;
Start: the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798;
End: the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832.
Lyrical Ballads (1798) 《抒情歌谣集》
●Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge
●Marked the break with the conventional poetic tradition of 18th century classicism, and the beginning of romanticism
in English poetry;
●The preface serves as the manifesto of the English romantic movement in poetry.
●The principle of poetry: “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.”
●The function of poetry: pleasure, novelty and originality
●The language in poetry: near to the real language of men/everyday language about everyday life
Romanticism --General Features
● A dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society
●Worship of nature:
1) Especially the sublime aspect of a natural scene
2)Nature as a living entity or even the revelation of God
●Subjectivism 主观性
Poetry expresses the poet’s mind
Interest in the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of the poets themselves (NOT in the objective world or in the action of men) .
Description of natural and human objects is modified by the poets’ own feelings.
The poetry of the Romantic Age in England is distinctive for its high degree of imagination.
●Spontaneity 自发性
Poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”
Stressed instinct, intuition, and the feelings of “the heart” (NOT neo-classicists’ emphasis on “the head”: regularity, uniformity, decorum, and imitation of the classical writers).
●Singularity 独特性
Strong love for the remote, the exotic, the unusual, the strange, the supernatural, the mysterious, the splendid, the picturesque, and the illogical.
●Simplicity 简单质朴
Everyday language spoken by the rustic people (NOT the poetic diction)
Interest in the life of common people and a sense of universal brotherhood and sympathy for the suffering of the people
* Humanitarian idealism: a brotherhood of mankind, universal sharing, and the ultimate freedom of human spirits
●Other features:
Melancholy: the themes of exile, isolation, a longing for the infinite, for an indefinable and inaccessible goal
Freer verse form (NOT “heroic couplets” )
Romantic Poetry—different schools
Passive or escapist romanticists消极浪漫主义诗人:
Representatives: Lake poets 湖畔诗人(William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey)
1) Detesting the real world: protested against capitalist development and turned to the feudal past—Merry Old England and nature for protection frightened by the coming of industrialism.
2) Escaped from the reality through an introspection into his inner world and into thoughts of life’s insoluble problems (love, life, death, etc.)
Active or Radical Romanticists 积极/激进浪漫主义诗人
Representatives: George Gordon Byron拜伦, Percy Bysshe Shelley 雪莱, and John Keats 济慈
1) Holding out an ideal society free from oppression and exploitation.
2) Strengthening man’s will to live and raise one up against the darkness in the world and against any fetters it would impose.
* Partly quoted from Gorky’s How I Learnt to Write
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Life
●Born and grew up near the Lake district, →a profound love for nature.
●The change of his political attitudes: In 1791 went to France and became a supporter of the French Revolution. Later
on as he was shocked at the massacre during the Reign of Terror under the rule of Robespierre, he became politically conservative till his death.
●Retired in the Lake district with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth and his friend Coleridge.
●Literary position: Poet laureate after the death of Southey in 1843. One of the best and the most famous Romantic
poets
Literary Career
Major works:
●Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge. Its preface →a declaration of romanticism, in which Wordsworth openly expresses his
theory of poetry;
●The Prelude (1850) 《序曲》: his autobiographical poem
Features of His Poetry
1. Boundless love for nature: Nature is the embodiment of the Divine Spirit.
2. Searching and revealing the feelings of the common people.
3. Simplicity and purity of language.
Lake District
The Solitary Reaper
● A ballad and one of his best-known works in English literature
●Each of its four stanzas is eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d,
though in the first and last stanzas the "A" rhyme is off.
Stanza 1
1. Who is talking in this stanza?
2. What does the speaker see and hear?
Stanza 2
1. What is this stanza about?
2. How is it connected with stanza I? --Negative comparison
Stanza 3
1. Does the speaker understand what the girl is singing?
2. What’s his imagination?
Stanza 4
1. What’s the speaker doing while the girl is singing?
2. Is the speaker greatly impressed by the singing? How?
Q: What’s the theme of the poem?
To praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty, the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” that Wordsworth identified at the heart of poetry.
To draw a pathetic picture of the laboring people
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
Questions
1. What’s the poetic form of this poem?
2. What kind of pictures do first three lines prepare the reader to see?
3. At what time of the day does the city appear so beautiful?
4. Will it continue to be so beautiful later in the day?
5. What are the main features of this scene of London?
Calm, silent, motionless, beautiful
写于威斯敏斯特桥上
大地没有比这儿更美丽的风貌：
若有谁，对如此壮丽动人的景物
竟无动于衷，那才是灵魂麻木；
瞧这座城市，像披上一领新袍，
披上了明艳的晨光；环顾周遭；
船舶，尖塔，剧院，教堂，华屋，
都寂然、坦然，向郊野、向天穹赤露，
在烟尘未染的大气里粲然闪耀，
旭日金辉洒布于峡谷山陵，
也不比这片晨光更为奇丽；
我何尝见过、感受过这深沉的宁静！
河水徐流，由着自己的心意；
上帝啊！千门万户都沉睡未醒，
这整个宏大的心脏仍然在歇息！
Discussion
Compare the poem with Blake’s London (1793). They were written at about the same time, yet they portray totally different pictures of London. How do you account for the sharp contrast? Which poem do you prefer? Why?