INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I will try to demonstrate that the acceptation or rejection of a poet in his society is reflected in his poetry.

Although both of them have some events in common, these are insignificant because the differences are much more important for their poetries, given that they are where we can see the acceptation or not on both of them; in fact, even the similarities end in differences, as we will see now:

Both of them were good students, but Wordsworth looses his parents, and are his uncles who toke care of him, and gave him a good education (William Wordsworth (1770-1850)), in the case of Oscar Wilde, he was influenced by his mother, because she wrote revolutionary poems, and were his parents who gave him a good education- (biography)

Both of them loved so much their sisters, but Wordsworth took care of her one all her life (even when he was living with his wife), and she was an influence in his life, her thoughts and beliefs inspirated her brother (William Wordsworth (1770-1850)), and Wilde looses his sister “and for his lifetime he carried a lock of her sealed in a decorated envelop. (biography)

Both of them got married, but Wordsworth’s wife, Mary Hutchinson, took care of his William’s sister, (William Wordsworth (1770-1850))., and they remain married till their deads in 1850 and 1859 (William Wordsworth); and Wilde’s wife, Constance, rans away with their children to Switzerland and change their surname when Oscar Wilde was accused of homosexuality, after 4 years of relationship with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas; Oscar Wilde was “arrested and convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years of hard work” , before this experience he wrote the poem we are going to analyze. (biography)

Both of them studied, but Wordsworth studied at Cambridge University and St John’s College; he made his debut in 1787 when he published a sonnet in “The European Magazine” . (William Wordsworth (1770-1850)).

Oscar Wilde studied in Trinity College in Dublin and Magdalen College in Oxford, he excelled at studying the classics, wining some prices and schoolarchips. (biography)

Oscar Wilde was a socialist, libertarian, anarchist, pacifist and individualist.

Is an individualism that thinks men don’t show what they have inside, the society will be invalidate for all its vicious and bad consequences of frustation, inhibitions, repression and bitterness. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

Beauty, growing the spirit, solidarity, will be the vehicles through which humanity of new utopia will made possible to make up the individual. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

He was the prototype of the modern man: full of contradictions, but with a huge capacity to dream. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

Wordsworth was a radical, but he abbandoned this aspect and became a patriotic, conservative public man. In 1843, he was a poet laureate in England, (succeeding Robert Southgey).(William Wordsworth (1770-1850)).

He believed that humans are good by nature, and they become bad by contact with the civilization (as Locke, Rousseau and Leo Spitzer) (politics)

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

Romanticism

England and Germany were the big “allied” of Romanticism (instead of the countries of the romance languages) (Introduction to Romanticism).

The beginning of the Romanticism took place at the same time that the “age of revolutions”, a good time for politic, economy and social traditions, and the time for the first transformations of the Industrial Revolution; the revolution was the essence of Romanticism, which set out to change the theory and practice of poetry and the way we perceive the world. This was important because during the 20^th century and nowadays some of its major precepts are still alive. (Introduction to Romanticism).

During the Romanticism, religion was a subject for artistic treatment. (Romanticism).

During the Romanticism writers and artists were drawn to religious imaginery, but with the pass of the time they were each time less pious (Romanticism)

Writes had freedom to drawn on Biblical themes when religion was estheticized. An example of this freedom is “Faust”, which takes place in Heaven, God and the evil are the main characters, and angels and demons appear too. (Romanticism)

We can compare this attitude with the English Pre-Raphaelite painters who, in the context of Medievalism, in mid-century, began to treat Christian. Religion, disbelief and fascination showed a general principle of intellectual history. (Romanticism)

Some romantic reactions were against the rationalist Enlightement, but also gave more from the earlier movement. (Romanticism)

During Romanticism emerged most of the attitudes toward nature, which are common in the Western world today. (Romanticism)

Enlightement as the source of truth talked about “natural law”; nature was such important that was idealized in paintings, it had to be shown as beautiful (mountains were no dangerous, if the sea was violent, it was shown as an aesthetic object –example “Faust”) (Romanticism)

Romantics cultivated sensibility, especially sensibility to nature, and we can link this with religion, given that, during the 19^th century all the things that were about nature had a religious quality, which was absent in other periods, this change of attitude was to demonstrate power; this contrasts with the Industrial Revolution, that was destroying forests and fields and creating artificial environment in Europe. (Romanticism)

The people that was living in the cities was conscious of the difference between their lives and the people of the wild who romanticise nature, they were no more unconscious about the situation. (Romanticism)

For the Romantics, the individual was the centre; they created their own literary types, opposed to neoclassical drama. An example of that is “Faust”, that won the salvation fore some reasons wich before were shown as traits of his strange sin, (Introduction to Romanticism).

In what refers to the style, they preferred boldness over the desire of repression that was important years after, over the neoclassical idea of clarity, free experimentation to compose (with no rules), genre and decorum; is theirs the idea of the artist as “inspired” creator over the artist as “maker”. (Introduction to Romanticism)

The majority of Romantics were alliated with the movements that neoclassicists had dimissed. (Introduction to Romanticism)

Romantics usually rejected absolute systems because they thought was that each one can self-governing to create a system to live by him-herself; although were prominent the interest in religion and in the power of faith. (Introduction to Romanticism)

The Romantics had an odd behaviour in relation to the society, because they were usually politically and socially involved but distanced from the public (Introduction to Romanticism)

High Romantic used their emotions, even social and political knowledge, to interpret things; by this they wrote works with social or political tone. (Introduction to Romanticism)

In private, they asserted their individuality and differences in a special way. This is important because the distance between artistic and public is still practicable nowadays. (Introduction to Romanticism)

Romanticism transformed Western culture strongly because the changes are still surviving nowadays. (Introduction to Romanticism)

One of the main Romantic perceptions is that the literary text is “self-governed”, and the artist is the independent genious who creates those pieces of art (Introduction to Romanticism)

The independent sovereignty of the artist had been demoted from a heroe toa collective “voice” that is controlled (is not the one who controls). (Introduction to Romanticism).

Is ironic, the strong appearance of these ideas, delivered like a radical manifesto, written by people who were linguistically powerful individuals, has recapituled the spirit of Romanticism (Introduction to Romanticism)

Victorianism

The Industrial Revolution caused to the literary Victorian critic a false feeling of infallibility of the bourgeise’s proyect of civilization, and, by this, the Victorian cannon was wet with the damp belief that all countries in the world deserve staunch devotion. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

The Victorian England was the one of industralization, growing of the worker class, fights, and conquests. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

In the imperialism time, when all social utopias were growing, given that the misery gave them the capitalist expansion to improve the huge enrichment of few people, didn’t pass unnoticed to those with enough sensibility to know about who take advantage. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

All the dictators persecuted and killed any sing of homosexuality in their societies. The dictator, surrounded of obedient and docile people, wants to control everything in his/her society; but the sexuality is very hard to control, is just passion, erotism, sexuality, nothing “logical”, it has no rules, no norms. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

The bourgeoise discovered the individual but bans his individuality, so his sexuality was a social event, is not a private one; the honosexual is marginal, sick, that should be isolate to protect the individuality of the other ones, although him should be killed, in order to protect the “mental health” of the group, wich, for the bourgeoise, is just the sum of all the individuals. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

The bourgeoise’s moral puts in a corner the individual; if his thoughts could be accepted by the society then the bourgeoise will make “her” the thoughts. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

The political economy shows us that beauty, talent and inventiveness are not owned, they owned us; the bourgeoise never thought in that, their mind was full of useless objects, a huge necesity of things. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

Victorianism wanted women to be the owner of their homes, so they wanted to depict that idea as attractive and beautiful to make it more tolerable to the view of everybody. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

In this time religion was important, as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation the “relations” between the believer and God were much direct, in fact, the figure of the priest was erased and the confessional too. In this situation, given that the clergy couldn’ absolve sins; they dedicated themselves to teach moral instruction. (God and the English Utilitarians IV)

The firsts books written in this time were “casuistries”, such as “The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience” (1600), and all the books talked about issues of conscience; the reason for this is that the Protestant belief was: the consicence was the direct link with the moral sentiments of God. (God and the English Utilitarians IV).

Wilde was the victim of the hypocresy of Victoria’s kingdom.

The magnificience with which the totalitarism shows the dictatorialism of the major part of the imperialist monarchies of that time and is the reason to explain the First World War. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

Wilde’s homosexuality was also the victim of the huge rationality which is the characteristic of all the modern age. The bourgeoise’s. rationality will never accept homosexuality because is against his hugest principle: the family; and sexuality, in which women’s body is necessary, and the bourgeoise think’s women’s body is like a mould for their materialistic and spiritual vision of the world. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

With Wilde, and with other ones, the art could be a big social and political influence because of the strength and nature of compromise with which the artist was inserted in the society of his time. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

His intelligence and sensibility were higher than any other men or women in his time colud have, in fact unusually anybody expresses his sexual feelings with sincerity the that he had when he did it. (Dr Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

He said that to go to the subterranean world of the masculine prostitutiono of London during the Victorian age was like “have dinner with panthers”, because he exposed himself to be hitted and blackmailed (Dr Rodrigo Quesada Monge).

Finally he will loose the control of his body and the independence and calmness of the spirit to write. (Dr Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

In his conferences in USA he insinuated that socialism was an idea to fight against British ocupation in Ireland. (Dr Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

TRASCENDENCE

I will show that these two poets were important in their times, but they are still important nowadays:

William Wordsworth: there is a museum about him, next to Dove Cottage that contains lots of manuscripts, art and artefacts, and give lections about him to students.

He wrote 70000 lines in verse and 40000 lines in prose more than any other poet.

(William Wordsworth).

The poems that he wrote during the last years of his life were not accepted as the first one that he wrote. (William Wordsworth 1770-1850)

Oscar Wilde: as he was an influence for lots of people, the influence that Walter Pater (1939-1894) was decisive. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

Wilde’s estetic was based in binarism, such as: fair-unfair, good-bad, -beautiful-ugly, etc; this is logical because this was the vision of the world that the bourgeoise of his time had, and he was educated by them. (Dr Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

He had some “fans” like Gide, Auden, Nabokov, Beckett, Mann and others who, like him, fighted against the bourgeoise which wanted the esentialist legitimation of the object, in the sense that, this, before or after, will become merchandise. (Dr. Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

Wilde’s influence is still strong and captivating audiences nowadays, a hundred of years after his death we have lots of books and articles talking about his life and contributions. (Biography)

POEMS

William Wordsworth: “Stray pleasures”

"----Pleasure is spread through the earth

In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find."

BY their floating mill,

That lies dead and still,

Behold yon Prisoners three,

The Miller with two Dames, on the breast of the Thames!

The platform is small, but gives room for them all;

And they're dancing merrily.

From the shore come the notes

To their mill where it floats,

To their house and their mill tethered fast:

To the small wooden isle where, their work to beguile, 10

They from morning to even take whatever is given;--

And many a blithe day they have past.

In sight of the spires,

All alive with the fires

Of the sun going down to his rest,

In the broad open eye of the solitary sky,

They dance,--there are three, as jocund as free,

While they dance on the calm river's breast.

Man and Maidens wheel,

They themselves make the reel, 20

And their music's a prey which they seize;

It plays not for them,--what matter? 'tis theirs;

And if they had care, it has scattered their cares,

While they dance, crying, "Long as ye please!"

They dance not for me,

Yet mine is their glee!

Thus pleasure is spread through the earth

In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find;

Thus a rich loving-kindness, redundantly kind,

Moves all nature to gladness and mirth. 30

The showers of the spring

Rouse the birds, and they sing;

If the wind do but stir for his proper delight,

Each leaf, that and this, his neighbour will kiss;

Each wave, one and t' other, speeds after his brother:

They are happy, for that is their right!

1806.

William Wordsworth: “Stray pleasures”

In this poem, the author talks about pleasure in earth, in each element of nature, where –by the point of view of the poet- we can find happyness and pleasure: verse 1 “pleasure is spread through the earth”, and we have to find them “to be claimed by whoever shall find”.

We can find some nature elements, such as: v1 “earth”, v 3 “mill”, v 9 “shore”, v 13 “smallen wooden isle”, v 16 “fires”, v 17 “sky”, v 20 “river”, v 29 “earth”, v 32 “nature”, v 33 “spring”, v 34 “birds”, v 35 “wind”, v 36 “leaf”, v 37 “wave”.

As we can see in the Romantic’s poets, for Wordsworth the nature is important too, that’s because “the magnifienct landscape deeply afected Wordsworth imagination and gave him a love if nature” (William Wordsworth 2)

And during his childhood, nature was important too, because in his house, there was a garden at the back, with the River Derwent flowing past, and there Wordsworth had lots of adventures when he was young. (William Wordsworth)

In the verses 7 (“the platform is small, but gives room for them all”) and 11 (“to their house and their mill tehtered fast”), I think here we can see the influence that all his travels had in him: he was born in Cockermouthm in the summer 1790 he travelled to France and Switzerland, in 1795 he stayed in a cottage in Dorset, in December 1799 William and Dorothy (his beloved sister) moved to Grasmere, in 1813 they moved to Rydal Mount, etc; I mean, the poet didn’t stay in the same place all his life, he moved several times, and each time he did this he had to “built” a new “home”, that is difficult for a person, to move from time to time; so, I think he is talking about a “psychological” house, he is talking about our beliefs, and the things we feel and consider as important for us. (William Wordsworth).

We can see that the sentence “pleasure is spread through the earth/ in stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find”, is repeated in the verses 29 and 30, this is because is like a separation in the poem, the last 8 verses of the poem is like a conclusion of the poem, a summary of what has been said before.

In this poem we can find some examples of caesura in the verses 6, 7, 31, 36, 37 and 38; there are a lot of alliterations and assonances, for example in the verses 3-4 (“mill”-“still”), 7 (“small”-“all”), 15-16 (“spired”-“fires”), 19 (“three”-“free”), 21-22 (wheel-reel), 25 (“care”-“cares”), 37 (“other”-“brother”); and there are some examples of antropomorphism too, like un the verses 3-4, 23 (“their music’s a prey”), 25 (“it has scattered their cares”), 28 (“yet mine s their glee”), 31-32, 33, 36-38.

We can find some examples of anaphora too, like in the verses 6-7 (“the”), 29-31 (“thus”) and 36-37 (“each”); by the same way we find parallelism in the verses 36-37.

In one hand, we can find that the verse 31 (“redundantly kind”) is a pleonasm, and the verse 24 (“what matter?”) is a rethorical question and an anacoenosis; in the verse 19 (“as jocund as fre”) we can find comparision,; and we can find and example of polyptoton in the verse 25 (“care”-“cares”).

In the other hand, there are some examples of aposition in this poem, such as the verses 19 (“there are three”), 24 (“what matter”), 26 (“crying”), 36 (“that and this”) and 37 (“one and t’other”).

In what refers to the rhyme, in this poem we can find mostly tail rhyme; and referring to the style we can find some examples of sight (or eye) like the verses 3-4 (“mill”-“still”), 9-10 (“notes”-“floats”), 15-16 (“spires”-“fires”), 21-22 (“wheel”-“reel”), 30-31 (“find”-“kind”), 33-34 (“spring”-“sing”); we can find that this poem has consonant rhyme in the verses 1-8, blank-verse pattern in the verses 9-12, and consonant rhyme again in the verses 15-38.

In the same way, there are some examples of consonance, like the verses 7 (“small”-“all”), 33 (“showers-spring”); and examples of half rhyme could be the verses 21-22 (“wheel”-“reel”), 36 (“his”-“kiss”), 37 (“other”-“brother”).

This poem is longer than Wilde’s one, in this one we can find different length, that is, there are 3 stanzas of 2 verses, 2 stanzas of 4 verses and 4 stanzas of 6 verses, which rymes are not equal (we don’t find the same rhyme in all of them)

I think is important to point up that in the verses 6, 7, 19 and 24, where we can see examples of caesura, both parts of the verse have consonant rhyme (except in the verse 24, where we find assonant rhyme)., but in the other verses with caeura, that is numbers 26, 31, 34 and 35.

This poem is composed of 38 verses, in which we have not the same length (verse 3 -6, v 9-13, v27-28 and 32; these are the most extreme examples of verses with different length).

As well as the verses have diferent length, the scheme for ryme is also different (we can find blank-verse patter, as I have said before).

Oscar Wilde: “The ballad of reading gaol”

"And all men kill the thing they love

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!"

When Love and Life are fair:

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes

Is delicate and rare:

But it is not sweet with nimble feet

To dance upon the air!"

“For he one who live more lives than one

More deathd than one must die”

Oscar Wilde: “The ballad of reading gaol”

In this poem we can see the influence that the jail had in him, his experience: verse 8 “when Love and Life are fair”, here the author talks about justice, usoing the metaphor of dancing, he says that “is not sweet with nimble feet, to dance upon the air!” from my point of view this means to be unsure of your life, the author is making reference to the gallows (the feet are “flying”), this happens when love and life are unfair.

In the last two verses “for he who live more lives than one/more more deaths thatn one must die”, he is making reference to his life, because although he marries Constance Lloyd, in fact he was homosexual and he had a relationship with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, anc Constance ran away to Switzerland with the children and reverted to and old family name “Holland”; because he was living a “double” life, pretending to be heterosexual but he wasn’t, and this caused huge problems to him, with the society of his time, because he was the contrary of what people wanted him to be like, as we have seen before.

We can see the sensibility of the author in the verses 3-4 “some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word”.

We can find some examples of antropomorphism, like in the first 6 verses, because the author taks about “how” to kill, and a look, a word and a kiss can’t do it, only a sword, and in fact, is not this one who kills, is who is taking it who is killing; and in the verse 9, because you can dance to a sound not to a musical instrument, and this is and example of caesura too, because the verse has two sentences in itself, separed each one with a coma; and in the same verse there is an alliteration “to dance to flutes-lutes”.

We have an example of anaphora in the verses 3-4 “some”, and also an example of antithesis in the last two verses “live, die”, and in the verses 5-6 “coward-brave”.

There is an example of parallelism in the verses 3-4 and 13-14; in the last one we can find polyptoton “live-lives”; in the verses 11-12 we have an example of antiphrasis.

In what refers to the ryme in this poem we can find mostly tail rhyme, with assonance rhyme (verses 1-6), blank-verse pattern (verses 7-14)

This poem is composed of 14 verses, which are more or less of the same length; we find two stanzas of 6 verses, with similar rhyme scheme; and the last stanza, composed by two verses.

In this poem we only find one example of caesura, that is, the verse 9, in which both parts of the verse have consonant rhyme.

CONCLUSION

In these pages I have tried to show that in a poem we can see the acceptation or rejection of the poet in his society.

We have seen that, in the two authors that I have analized, William Wordsworth and Oscar Wilde, they had differents lives (in fact, the small similarities that we can find, eng being differences, and I have shown in “introduction”)

I think the main point is to know that in Romanticism, authors thought that each on can self-governing and they reject absolute systems. This contrast with Victorianism, in which poets were living in an absolutary system, controlled by Queen Victoria.

This means that William Wordsworth had more freedom to write, by this, romantics in general cultivated sensibility, they gave importance to nature, they had freedom to write about “The Bible” (this freedom was subjective, because religion had power at that time). For romantics, individual was the centre, the poets were “inspired” and not “makers” of their creations.

But in Oscar Wilde’s time, the absolutary sistem controlled the individual, they have no freedom,(bourgeoise bans the individualty), not even for their feelings, because, as we have seen, Oscar Wilde was homosexual, and he had been condemned by this, because it was against the family and the society tried to kill homosexuality to keep the “mental health” of the society.

We can see the importance of freedom in culture too, I mean, when we have a peaceful time (Romanticism) every aspect in culture grows, and moreover, revolution was imporatant at that time (influence of the Industrial Revlution). But during an absolutist govern (Victorianism), culture doesn’t grow, the artists have no freedom to create, and if anybody creates anything, it is controlled and supervised by the government, because they have to keep their power.

In fact Wilde was required for an event; he had an important participation in the case Dreyfus of hunting witches. And with Emily Zola and other great writers of his time, he did lots of things to show to the world the racism and intolerance that was in the condemnation of Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) because he was condenmed because, supposedly, he betrayed the french army in favour of the germans. (Dr Rodrigo Quesada Monge)

And to demonstrate the importance of being in or out of the society I have analyzed “Stray pleasures” (William Wordsworth) and “Ballad of the reading gaol” (Oscar Wilde).

And we can see that “Stray pleasures” was written with more freedom, in the sense that, as we have seen not all the verses rhyme and they have very differents lenghts; even not all the stanzas have the same number of verses, we can find stanzasof two verses and other stanzas with six verses.

We can find exclamative and interrogative verses, (verses 6, 24 and 26) this is because he wants to show his feelings; as well as we can find expressions like “that and this” and “one and t’other” and sentences like “there are three” that shows that he is not worried about the length of the verses and the “beauty” of them, the importance is to show the way he feels, to understand his beliefs and his point of view, to “send” the message he wants to send with this poem.

William Wordsworth definition of poetry was: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from emotion recollected in tranquility”.

(-William Wordsworth (1770-1850) http://www.kirjastro.sci.fi/wordswor.htm)

In “Ballad of the reading gaol” all the verses have the same length more or less, and the majority of the verses rhymes, even the stanzas have the same number of verses (not the last one).