COMPARATIVE OF WORDSWORTH AND TENNYSON: LIFE, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EVENTS AND WORKS.

NATURE TRHOUGH ROMANTICISM AND VICTORIAN PERIOD

 

 

   In this paper, I’m going to compare the two great poets there is in each period that we have study: William Wordsworth as a Romantic poet and Lord Tennyson as a Victorian one. I’m going to compare their life, works and the political and social context in which they were involved because I want to demonstrate why they were the most important poets in their respective time.

 

 

   William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in Cumberland, it’s part of the scenic region in north-west England called “The Lake District”. (Victorian web) It is important because as a Romantic poet, the nature that was around him was the inspiration for lots of his poems, in other words, “the magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth’s imagination and gave him a love of nature” (Online-literature)

   One of his most important poems that show us the importance of nature in his own works is “Lines Composed a few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”(representative poetry online )  

   In the first twenty four lines we can appreciate the natural beauty and the description of the place.

   I would say this poem is one of the best that shows the nature as an important element, like a way of run away of the reality, one of the best poems that represents the naturalistic soul and the spirit of romanticism. But we see it deeply later.

 

   But not only the landscape surrounded Wordsworth had an influence in his works.

A very important person in his life was his sister. They were separated until their father’s death but in this moment they became totally inseparable. “Dorothy, his sister, became his companion, close friend, moral support, and housekeeper until her physical and mental decline in 1830’s” (Victorian web)

We can see her influence in Wordsworth poem “The Sparrow’s Nest”(Wordsworth.org)

In the second stanza, at the end when he says:

 

 

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;

And humble care, and delicate fears;

A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;

And love and thought and joy.

 

   We can understand there that her sister was who made him love the nature, because she gave him most of the important senses as the eyes and ears. It was like say that she taught him how to see and how to hear the nature.

   It is like she introduced him to the early ideas of Romanticism.

 

   Apart from nature and family, there were other events that affect Wordsworth’s life and poetry. One example was the French revolution that took place during the Romantic period.

   He was an enthusiast of the French Revolution because his ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. He described in his masterpiece “The Prelude” what a revolution is:

 

“[…] twas in truth an honour

Of universal ferment; mildest men

Were agitated; and commotions, strife

Of passion and opinion, filled the walls

Of peaceful horses with unique sounds.

The soil of Common life, was, at that time

Too hot to tread upon” (The Prelude, IX, 163-169) (Marxist.com)

 

 

   In one of his travels to France he met Annette Vallon and he had an illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. This affair was basis of the poem “Vandracour and Julia” (bartleby literature)

   Later, when he saw how many people died in the French Revolution, he became more conservative.

 

   One of his best known works was “Lyricall Ballads” written with Coleridge, another romantic poet who had a big influence on Wordsworth.

   This work is very important because the poems are some of the most influential in Western literature but what was really important was the preface to the second edition because it is one of the most important testaments to a poets’ view on both his craft and his place in the world. (poets.org) “This work use the language of ordinary people in poetry. It includes his poem “Tintern Abbey”. The work introduced romanticism into England and became a manifesto of romantic poets”. (bartleby.com)

   As I said before his masterpiece was “The Prelude”, it was an autobiographical poem. It was completed along his author’s life and was published after his death.

In this book we can see all his feelings about the events happened during his life.

The two big works of Wordsworth made him had the distinction of “Poet Laureate”.

   “A Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events”. (wikipedia)  

   After this brief description and analyzes of Wordsworth life I’m going to start with Lord Tennyson.

 

   Alfred Tennyson was born in a family with a lot of problems. His father and two of his brothers had mental disease. Furthermore, his father was an alcoholic. In 1827 he escaped from his house and these troubles and went to Trinity College in Cambridge.

   At the university he won some prizes for his poetry. In this time he was invited to join in the Apostles club where he met his best friend Arthur Hallam.

This friend had an enormous influenced on Tennyson.

   But fatally Hallam died very young and this affected Tennyson so much. This event and the strong critics received from his work Poems made him not publish another book for nine years.

   In 1842 he published a work called “Poems” and it made him very popular, and his most popular work “In Memoriam” (Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry) appear in 1850. It was dedicated to his friend Hallam.

   This enormous popularity gave him the honour of to be “Poet Laureate” after the death of William Wordsworth. Although he got a big fame he continued writing and gain in popularity.

 

 

 

   The Prince Albert had a big admiration for Tennyson’s poetry and it made him to be in the position of national poet. Tennyson dedicated “The Idylls of the King” to Prince Albert for this honour.

Later the Queen Victoria made him Baron. (wikipedia and Victorian web)

   Tennyson knew and liked the Royal family, he wrote a lot of poems dedicated to them.

   “Partly as a result of his position as a public and nationalist figure, he was by far the most popular poet of the Victorian era”. (Victorian web)

   “What made him so Victorian was his ready acceptance of the mores of his day, his willingness to conform to popular taste, to write a poetry that was easily understood and enjoyed”. (Victorian web)

   “Tennyson reflects the Victorian period of his maturity in his feelings for order and his tendency towards moralizing and self-indulgent melancholy. He also reflects a concern common among Victorian writers in being troubled by the apparent conflict between religious faith and scientific progress.” (wikipedia)

 

   After write about this two poets separately, now I wanted to talk about their similarities.

   Both poets always had an influence of someone, as we see in Wordsworth he had the influence of his sister that made him having more sensibility and later, the influence of Coleridge that gave him more support in his thoughts writing what we can consider the manifesto of the romantic poets.

   In Tennyson, we can appreciate the influence of his close friend Hallam whose early death made Tennyson write his masterpiece “In Memoriam”.

In these two cases we observed that both had the influence of colleagues of their time.

   From my point of view these two poets are great because they have not only their way to see the life but also the glance of those who helped them to be what they were.

Coleridge and Hallam were pieces of a puzzle that was need to complete them to become in what they were, two great poets.

   But they also had an influence of the social and political events of their time.

In Wordsworth we see, as I said before, the big impact of the French Revolution. This Revolution was the inspiration of many romantic poets. Wordsworth gave support to this Revolution but later when it became a chaos Wordsworth was totally disappointed with the results.

   In his country, at the same time, The Industrial revolution began. With this event the differences between social classes started to rise and poets were very sad with this. Moreover adults and children were forced to work long hours working under dangerous working conditions. (skoletorget)

   The Victorian era had an influence of the advance of the Industrial revolution. Now there were different social classes: aristocracy, bourgeois, working classes. These worked very hard but didn’t earn enough money.

   In this period women was very important, they started to study at the university and began to write, for example: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti.

   The Victorian era was a period of change, now the science appears and the religion has less importance and now the ideology, politics and society have innovations and changes.

   Related with the science is an important period because it had a big development and because appeared the modern idea of invention.

 

   After the comparison of their time I asked myself a question: was their period that marked their works or were their works that marked their period?

 

   From my point of view, they are a mix, what I meant is that we can’t understand one without the other. Works influence on period at the same time that period influences on works. And I think that this close relation is what made these two poets so important because they could take what other people and time contribute to them and express it in a way that they can contribute to society.

 

   After compare time, and life, now I want to demonstrate how the same theme can understand in a different way depending on the time and the society.

   I’ll do it comparing two poems; in these we see the differences about the same topic. How nature is treated in Wordsworth and in Lord Tennyson. But first of all I wanted to explain how nature is related to religion.

   During Romanticism the presence of God and religion were two topics that poets made a use of. God was present in all their life and uses figures to talk about Him.

In the poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” we see an interesting fragment:

 

“… and this prayer I make,

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead

From joy to joy: for she can so inform

The mind that is writing us, so impress

With quietness and beauty; and so feed

With lofty thoughts”  (Lines 122-128)

 

   Here, Wordsworth talks about nature as a woman, more than this, she is a benevolent woman, and she is beauty and has lofty thoughts. (Victorian web)

   But beyond this first reading, we can analyze this fragment with other point of view; we’ll see that probably this kind of Nature is very similar to God. Wordsworth says: “and this prayer I make, knowing that Nature never did betray” I think he uses the word Nature in capital letter to symbolize that he is talking about God. In this sentence Nature and God have the same quality, they “never betray the heart that loved her” because in religion if you belief in God and your behaviour is good when you die, you will be with God. It is for this reason that I think that Wordsworth is using that word Nature to Talk about God.

   In the same way, religion in Victorian era is presented but from another point of view.

As I said before, the Victorian era is a period of development of science, for this reason the religion is less important. There is a conflict between religion and science because now all is faith also proofs and obviousness.

   In this time the evolutionary theory started and had an enormous influence on human minds.

In Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam” we find other important stanzas:

 

“So careful of the type? But no.

From scarped cliff and quarried stone

She cries, “A thousand types are gone:

I care for nothing, all shall go.

 

Thou thine appeal to me:

I bring to life, I bring to death:

The spirit does but mean the breath:

I know no more”” (LVI, 1-8)

 

   Here Tennyson also represents the nature as a woman but totally different to Wordsworth.

   Now she is crying and she cares for nothing. This nature is arbitrary because she brings to life and death. Contrary to Wordsworth where nature give us lofty thoughts, now in Tennyson the nature “Know no more”.

   Analyzing in religious terms, Tennyson is very sad because of his friend Hallam’s death, for this reason he isn’t happy with a world that causes pain and suffering, not all is wonderful and beauty but also cried and pain.

   I think that is because evolutionary theory that Tennyson made an unkind picture of this nature and in some way is like God.

Going on with this comparison, we find a most clearly presence of God in “Tintern Abbey”:

 

“…And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something fore more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”  (Lines 93-99)

 

   Here the poet feels a presence that give him joy, whose dwelling in the light, ocean, air, sky and in the mind of man. Once again we have a enumeration that could be only about natural elements but that we can understand them as a way to say that God is everywhere and believing in Him we feel joy.

Following this theme we find in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”:

 

“Our little systems have their day;

Thay have their day and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of thee;

And thou, O Lord, art more than they” (Orbit, Lines 17-20)

 

   It’s a pessimistic view of life where all is going to be death but what is really important in that sentence is that Tennyson uses the word “Systems” to talk about the human body. It’s a scientist point of view because in this time is when the scientists discover more about how our body works and it is not because God but for our organs,   for our system.

   We also have in Tennyson “In Memoriam” (poem nº LV) how he explains the conflicts to express evolution through God and religion; there we can see some kind of evolutionary theory. But where we can see clearly about the evolutionary theory is in the poem LVI, the sentence “tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw” It could be understand as the way of the natural selection, it means that the strongest live and the weakness die.

   It’s clearly one of the premises of the evolutionary theory.

 

 

   In conclusion, the society and the political events had an enormous influence on Wordsworth and Tennyson, but we can consider that their works also had an influence on their society and for this reason they were distinction with the honour of to be “Poet Laureates”. Also we could see how through analyzes of their works and its differences we can know more about their time.

   After doing this paper and study deeply these two poets, I’m agreeing to consider them the best representative poets of their respective time.

 

 

 

 

WEBGRAPHY

 

“William Wordsworth: Biography”. Victorian web.  Ed: Glenn Everett. July 2000. 20-12-2007.  http://victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.html

 

“William Wordsworth”. The Literature Network. 2000. 20-12-2007

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

 

“William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”. Representative poetry Online Ed: J.R. MacGillivray. 2002. 21-12-2007

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2343.html

 

“The Sparrow’s Nest by William Wordsworth” Dove Cottage, the Wordsworth museum an art gallery  21-12-2007

http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/history/index.asp?pageid=172

 

“British poets and the French Revolution. Part two: Wordsworth and Coleridge-the death of an Ideal.” In defence of Marxism Ed: Alan Woods. July 2003. 21-12-2007

http://www.marxist.com/british-poets-french-revolution-2-6.htm

 

“Vaudracour and Julia” Bartleby.com Great Books online. 2005. 27-12-2007

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww282.html

 

“William Wordsworth” Poets.org from the Academy of American poets 1997. 27-12-2007

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

 

“Poet Laureate” Wikipedia Encyclopedia. 2006. 27-12-2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poet_laureate

 

“In Memoriam” Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry. 27-12-2007

http://home.att.net/~tennysonpoetry/IMAHHS.htm

 

“Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1^st Baron Tennyson” Wikipedia Encyclopedia. 2006. 3-1-2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson

 

“Alfred Lord Tennyson: a brief Biography” Victorian web. Ed: Glenn Everett. 2004.    3-1-2008

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennybio.html

 

“Tennyson and Victorianism” Victorian web. Ed: Glenn Everett. 1988. 3-1-2008

http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/victor1.html

“Nature in Wordsworth and Tennyson.” Victorian web. Ed: David Stevenson. 2000.    3-1-2008

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/nature4.html