William Wordsworth: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 20:22, 4 January 2024

1770-1850, English poet of the early Romantic movement. Poet Laureate.

Life:

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth (England). He was the second of five children. William's sister Dorothy was born a year after him and was a poet and diarist. The two were very close and Dorothy plays an important role in some of William's works. As William's father travelled a lot, he was not very close to him. His relationship with his mother was better.

Wordsworth first went to a school in Cockermouth, after which he attended a school in Penrith. After his mother died, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire. His sister Dorothy was sent elsewhere [where precisely?], which is why William and Dorothy did not see each other for nine years. In 1787, Wordsworth attended St John's College in Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791.

In 1792 he met [where? in France or Britain? If in France: what did Wordsworth do there?] a French woman called Annette Vallon, with whom he also fell in love. Their daughter Caroline was born in 1792. Due to the strained relations between Great Britain and France [this is too nicely put. Please be more precise], Annette and William did not marry. He later married Mary Hutchinson.

William Wordsworth collaborated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the famous collection of poems Lyrical Ballads (1798). His poetry is characterised by a deep connection with nature. Themes such as memory, childhood and the influences of the natural environment are often dealt with in his works. He believed in the transformative power of nature and sought to capture the emotional and spiritual impact of the natural world on the human soul.

Works [please adapt to MLA style]:

- I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

- The Solitary Reaper

- Expostulation and Reply

- The Tables Turned

- To the Cuckoo

- To a Butterfly

- There was a Boy

- Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

- The World Is Too Much With Us

- It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

- The Simplon Pass

- Goody Blake and Harry Gill

- London, 1802

- England! The Time Is Come

Sources [please adapt to MLA style]:

Borgmeier, R. (2004). Wordsworth, William. In: Engler, B., Kreutzer, E., Müller, K., Nünning, A. (eds) Englischsprachige Autoren. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-02951-5_112

Kohl, S. (2015). William Wordsworth. In: Kindler Kompakt: Englische Literatur, 19. Jahrhundert. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05527-9_6

https://internetpoem.com/william-wordsworth/biography/

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
--1850, English poet of the early Romantic movement.
+-1850, English poet of the early Romantic movement. [[Poet Laureate]].
+Life:
-== Life ==
+William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth (England). He was the second of five children. William's sister Dorothy was born a year after him and was a poet and diarist. The two were very close and Dorothy plays an important role in some of William's works. As William's father travelled a lot, he was not very close to him. His relationship with his mother was better.
-William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770. His parents John and Ann Wordsworth lived in Cockermouth back then, a small town in Cumberland, England. Working as an attorney and later appointed law agent and land stewart (Masson 5), William's father had good connections in society despite his very young age (Gill 1). William, his three brothers and his sister Dorothy lost their mother in March 1778. John Wordsworth died six years later at the age of 42. Together with his older brother Richard, William was sent to Hawkshead boarding-school in Lancashire in 1778. He left school at the age of seventeen.
+Wordsworth first went to a school in Cockermouth, after which he attended a school in Penrith. After his mother died, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire. His sister Dorothy was sent elsewhere [where precisely?], which is why William and Dorothy did not see each other for nine years. In 1787, Wordsworth attended St John's College in Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791.
-From 1787 on William Wordsworth attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he also started writing. However, the young man could not quite adapt to the old college. "He found himself imprisoned within ancient walls, and required to submit to the diginified authority that is based on old systems and older traditions" (Masson 15). As Wordsworth eventually lost any serious academic interest, he decided to go to France in 1790 where he got into contact with the enthusiasm of the French Revolution and republican ideas. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth]
+In 1792 he met [where? in France or Britain? If in France: what did Wordsworth do there?] a French woman called Annette Vallon, with whom he also fell in love. Their daughter Caroline was born in 1792. Due to the strained relations between Great Britain and France [this is too nicely put. Please be more precise], Annette and William did not marry. He later married Mary Hutchinson.
-In France he met Annette Vallon, who gave birth to their daughter Caroline in 1792. They did not marry for the outbreak of the war between France and Britain disrupted their relationship. William did not meet his daughter until she was nine years old. Back in Cambridge, William did not follow any career options - except for writing - rather he developed a resistance "to having his life shaped for him by those he did not like and in ways he could not approve" (Gill 40).
-"Unprepared for any profession, rootless, virtually penniless, bitterly hostile to his own country’s opposition to the French, he lived in London in the company of radicals like William Godwin and learned to feel a profound sympathy for the abandoned mothers, beggars, children, vagrants, and victims of England’s wars who began to march through the sombre poems he began writing at this time." [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth]
-His reunion with his sister [[Dorothy Wordsworth]] in 1795 ended this dark period. The siblings moved to Alfoxden House, near Bristol, and did not part for life. In 1798, Wordsworth's friendship with poet [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] developed, which "would change both poets’ lives and alter the course of English poetry"[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth].
+William Wordsworth collaborated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the famous collection of poems ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). His poetry is characterised by a deep connection with nature. Themes such as memory, childhood and the influences of the natural environment are often dealt with in his works. He believed in the transformative power of nature and sought to capture the emotional and spiritual impact of the natural world on the human soul.
-William married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend in 1802. They had three sons and two daughters.
-Criticised by fellow poets and contemporaries at first William Wordsworth could eventually gain a high reputation, especially after he published ''The River Duddon'' in 1820.[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth]
-During his last years he undertook major reworks of his poems. From 1843 until his death in 1850 Wordsworth held the title of poet laureate.
+Works [please adapt to MLA style]:
+- I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
-== Works ==
+- The Solitary Reaper
-Together with his friend [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] William Wordsworth published ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798) which is seen as the beginning of Romanticism in English literature. "Most of the poems were dramatic in form, designed to reveal the character of the speaker. The manifesto and the accompanying poems thus set forth a new style, a new vocabulary, and new subjects for poetry, all of them foreshadowing 20th-century developments."[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth]
+- Expostulation and Reply
-The poet's works comprises numerous poems, sonnets, odes and ballads. Nature imagese and spirit were key elements in his writings (Riasanovsky 22). Another important contribution to the Romantic Age is the concept of emotional permanence emphasising human emotions and human rights (Wordsworth et al. 38).
+- The Tables Turned
-Another major work is ''The Prelude'' (1850), an (semi-)autobiographical poem, which he reworked his whole life and was not published until his death.
+- To the Cuckoo
-His life as a poet can be roughly divided into two phases: "the young Romantic revolutionary and the aging Tory humanist"[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth].
+- To a Butterfly
+- There was a Boy
-== Reflection ==
+- Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower
-"William Wordsworth's life spans a transformation in almost every sphere of human existence: political, social, economic, and cultural. He was born [...] into a world on the threshold of dramatic, sometimes violent, change." (Wordsworth et al. 1)
+- The World Is Too Much With Us
-[He] was the central figure in the English Romantic revolution in poetry."[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth]
+- It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free
-"One of the great poets of England and the world, Wordsworth has been especially acclaimed as a poet of nature" (Riasanovsky 14).
+- The Simplon Pass
+- Goody Blake and Harry Gill
-== Sources ==
+- London, 1802
-Gill, Stephen. ''William Wordsworth. A Life''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
+- England! The Time Is Come
-Masson, Rosaline. ''Wordsworth''. London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1912.
-Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. ''The Emergence of Romanticism.'' New York/ Oxford: OUP, 1992, 7-39.
+Sources [please adapt to MLA style]:
-"William Wordsworth." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Jan. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth>.
+Borgmeier, R. (2004). Wordsworth, William. In: Engler, B., Kreutzer, E., Müller, K., Nünning, A. (eds) Englischsprachige Autoren. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-02951-5_112
-Wordsworth, Jonathan, Michael C. Jaye, and Robert Woof eds. ''William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism''. 2nd ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
+Kohl, S. (2015). William Wordsworth. In: Kindler Kompakt: Englische Literatur, 19. Jahrhundert. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05527-9_6
+https://internetpoem.com/william-wordsworth/biography/