New Explorations - Gill Books - Home

New Explorations

CRITICAL NOTES

Contributors: John G. Fahy, Louise O'Reilly, Carole Scully, Marie Dunne, Ann Hyland, Sean Scully and Martin Wallace

HIGHER LEVEL

HL 2019

HL 2020

HL 2021

HL 2022

ORDINARY LEVEL

OL 2019

OL 2020

OL 2021

OL 2022

HIGHER LEVEL

Poets prescribed for examination in 2019

Elizabeth Bishop Seamus Heaney Gerard Manley Hopkins Brendan Kennelly D. H. Lawrence Eil?an N? Chuillean?in Sylvia Plath W. B. Yeats

2019

2

HIGHER LEVEL

Poets prescribed for examination in 2020

Eavan Boland Emily Dickinson Paul Durcan Robert Frost D. H. Lawrence Eil?an N? Chuillean?in Adrienne Rich William Wordsworth

2020

3

HIGHER LEVEL

Poets prescribed for examination in 2021

Elizabeth Bishop Eavan Boland Paul Durcan Robert Frost Seamus Heaney Gerard Manley Hopkins John Keats Sylvia Plath

2021

4

HIGHER LEVEL

Poets prescribed for examination in 2022

Elizabeth Bishop Emily Dickinson John Keats Brendan Kennelly D. H. Lawrence Adrienne Rich William Wordsworth W. B. Yeats

2022

5

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Notes and Explorations: Carole Scully

HL 2020 HL 2022

OL 2020 OL 2022

POEMS PRESCRIBED FOR BOTH HL AND OL IN GREEN

Introduction To My Sister A slumber did my spirit seal She dwelt among the untrodden ways Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free The Solitary Reaper

from The Prelude: The Stolen Boat [II 357?400] Skating [II 425?463]

Tintern Abbey

Wordsworth's poems in chronological order

Developing a personal response to the poetry of William Wordsworth

Questions

Bibliography

6

NEW EXPLORATIONS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Early life

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland in the north-west of England, an area noted for its beautiful scenery. He was the second son born to John Wordsworth and his wife Anne. Wordsworth's family was comfortable both financially and socially. His father was an attorney-at-law and a land steward, while his mother came from a respectable merchant background. Less than two years later, his sister Dorothy was born and the two children developed a close relationship that was to continue into adult life. Sadly, this stable childhood world was rocked by the death of his mother when Wordsworth was eight years old, and his father's death five years later. Some critics have suggested that the loss of his parents at such a young age had a lasting effect on Wordsworth, in that much of his poetry is underpinned by a sense of searching for an absent quality that will somehow fill a gap in his life. In one of his earliest poems, composed when he was about sixteen years old, Wordsworth writes:

Now, in this blank of things, a harmony Home-felt, and home-created comes to heal That grief for which the senses still supply Fresh food; for only then, when memory Is hushed, am I at rest.

william wordsworth index

Two of their uncles became guardians to the five Wordsworth children and ensured that they were brought up in a manner suitable to their social station. Wordsworth attended Hawkshead Grammar School and, at the age of seventeen, entered St John's College, Cambridge.

Wordsworth's career at Cambridge was undistinguished, but the long holidays gave him the opportunity to indulge in a favourite pastime, walking in the countryside. The appreciation of Nature and the first-hand experiencing of the natural world became increasingly popular towards the end of the eighteenth century. In the summer of 1790, Wordsworth and a college friend went on a walking holiday through France and Switzerland, `staff in hand, without knapsacks, each his neediments tied up in a pockethandkerchief'. Wordsworth was impressed by the majesty of the Alps and wrote a series of `Descriptive Sketches' detailing the scenery:

The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch Far o'er the water, hung with groves of beech...

In later life, Wordsworth came to view these pieces as representing a time when he was enveloped by the visual aspect of Nature, when he revelled in seeing, with little or no understanding of the spiritual quality of the natural world. At this stage, his writing was very much in tune with the poetry of the time, where natural beauty was described in detailed word pictures without intellectual consideration.

After receiving his BA, Wordsworth returned to France with the intention of learning French. However, he was diverted by

7

NEW EXPLORATIONS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH INTRODUCTION

a growing interest in the revolutionary movement that was sweeping through France, and by his love affair with Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter. However, under pressure from his friends and relations who were anxious about the political instability in France, Wordsworth returned to England and was not to see his daughter until she was nine years old.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On his return from France, Wordsworth rather reluctantly published some of his work. The books were not particularly well received and sold slowly. However, another young writer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, did read them and was immensely impressed, commenting: `Seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced.' The pair met in 1795 and became great friends, travelling and writing together. At Coleridge's suggestion they began to write a series of poems that was to become The Lyrical Ballads, generally recognised as marking the beginning of the Romantic Movement in English poetry. This collaboration resulted in Wordsworth producing some of his most uniquely individual poetry, such as parts of The Prelude, the `Lucy' poems and `Tintern Abbey'. Coleridge regularly visited Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy at Grasmere, in the Lake District. Although she was a talented writer herself, Dorothy devoted most of her energies to caring for her brother until his death in 1850. Even when Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson in 1802, Dorothy continued to live with the couple and was very much a part of the literary group that developed around Wordsworth. In 1810 the friendship between Coleridge and Wordsworth ended. During one of his

william wordsworth index

visits to the Wordsworths, Coleridge's addiction to opium led him to behave in an extremely difficult manner and Wordsworth grew tired of trying to cope with it all. When Coleridge discovered that Wordsworth had spoken dismissively of him to a friend, he was deeply hurt and the two men were estranged for quite a while. Finally they did patch up their relationship, but it was never the same. Coleridge wrote, `A reconciliation has taken place ? but the feeling can never return.'

Wordsworth's poetic theory

It was a sad end to what had been a wonderfully creative friendship. Long discussions with Coleridge had led Wordsworth to formulate his theories on poetry, which he expressed in his famous `Prefaces'. He saw poetry as originating `from emotion recollected in tranquillity': that is, sensory memory is used to recreate a moment arising in `everyday life', made significant by `powerful feelings'. By revisiting the emotionally significant moment through sensory memory, a further quality is added to the original experience. The moment is uniquely personal to the poet, but because of the way in which he expresses it the moment takes on a more general relevance to all people. For Wordsworth, the poet has `a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels'. But he is, above all, `a man speaking to men'. For this reason, the poet should use `a selection of language really used by men' in such a way that `ordinary things are presented to the mind in an unusual aspect'. In this way, the poet creates a new moment that has significance not only for himself, but also for his reader. It encapsulates `truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon external testimony,

8

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download