WILLIAM WORDSWORTH:

1. Historical context:

Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution.

The name "romantic" itself comes from the term "romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature.

During the period of the Romanticism there was a broad shift of emphasis in the arts, away from the structured, intellectual, reasoned approach of the 18th century (which is often called the ‘Age of Reason’, or the ‘Enlightenment’) towards ways of looking at the world which recognised the importance of the emotions and the imagination.

The ideologies and events of the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (two of the most important poets in this time) were among the first British poets to explore the new theories and ideas that were sweeping through Europe. Their poems display many characteristics of Romanticism, including:

An emphasis on the emotions (a fashionable word at the beginning of the period was ‘sensibility’. This meant having, or cultivating, a sensitive, emotional and intuitive way of understanding the world).

Exploring the relationship between nature and human life. A stress on the importance of personal experiences and a desire to understand what influences the human mind. A belief in the power of the imagination. An interest in mythological, fantastical, gothic and supernatural themes. An emphasis on the sublime (this word was used to describe a spiritual awareness, which could be stimulated by a grand and awesome landscape). Social and political idealism. The term of Romanticism has been used to refer to certain artists, poets, writers, musicians and for political, philosophical and social thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries too.

A precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the twentieth century. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948). Furthermore, here there is a definition of the Romanticism that comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling."

Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

<http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/index.asp>

2. biography:

William Wordsworth is a British who is into the English Romantic Movement. He was born on 7 April in 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. Place and family were also important to Wordsworth. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later he lost his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.

With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered in a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge; here, in Cambridge, he was graduated in 1791. After his graduation he travelled to France and Europe.

During his time in France he fell in love with Annette Vallon and the couple had a daughter, Caroline, in 1792. The political situation in France at the time made it a dangerous place and Wordsworth was forced to leave his young family behind.

In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth's financial situation became better in this year when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy.

Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, and Wordsworth published his work with Coleridge.

About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published in 1850 under the title The Prelude. Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister, Dorothy, and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic 'Lucy' poems.

In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843). He was made Poet Laureate. Wordsworth died on 23 April in 1850.

http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/index.asp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/wordsworth.shtml

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

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wordswor.htm

3. Poem:

This poem belongs to “Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)”. The poem was composed in 1802 and published for the first time in “Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)”. In this second volume Wordsworth shows us new styles, forms, and subject matters found expression in the poems that dominate “Poems, in Two Volumes”. That is because he, after his first volume, he completed thirty lyrics; and because several other poems have their roots in 1802.

Press syndicate of the University of Cambridge, The Cambridge companion to Wordsworth. Cambridge, 2006 Edited by Stephen Gill. Ed. Cambridge University Press.

LONDON 1802

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour;
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_1802>

-comment:

Wordsworth reveals us with “London 1802” both Wordsworth's moralism and his growing conservatism. He urges morality and selflessness, criticizing the English for being stagnant and selfish. He also refers to "inward happiness"(line 6) as natural English right, or "dower," (line 5) and asks Milton to bestow "power" as well as virtue on the English.

The poem (the speaker) starts crying (The cry is “Milton!”) out to the soul of John Milton in anger and frustration. In the eight first lines (the octave) the author articulates his wish that Milton would return to earth, and lists the vices ruining the current era. Every venerable institution (the altar (representing religion), the sword (representing the military), the pen (representing literature), and the fireside (representing the home)) has lost touch with "inward happiness," (line 6) which the author identifies as a specifically English birthright, just as Milton is a specifically English poet.

In the last six lines (the sestet) Wordsworth explains why Milton could improve the English condition. Milton's soul, Wordsworth says, was as bright and noble as a star, and it "dwelt apart"(line 9) from the crowd, felt not the urge to conform. Milton's voice was "like the sea"(line 10), "pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free"(line 11). He never resented the ordinary nature of his life, but instead he "travel on life's common way"(line 12), remaining happy, pure, what is represented by "cheerful godliness"(line 13), and humble, represented by "lowliest duties"(line 14) on himself, always.

This poem is a sonnet, one of the many excellent poems of Wordsworth. A sonnet is composed about fourteen-line poetic inventions written in iambic pentameter. This sonnet is a petrarchan sonnet what means, in this case, that is divides in two parts: the first eight lines of the poem are an octave, and the final six lines are a sestet.

The rhyme scheme is the next:

Octave: ABBAABBA

Sestet: BCCDBD

http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/519/

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_1802>