William Wordsworth

Life 1770 William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District, in the north-west of England. 1787 – He went to St. John’s College, Cambridge. 1790 – He went on a tour of France, the Alps and Italy. He returned to France and was a supporter of the French Revolution. 1794 – He was reunited with his sister Dorothy 1795 – He met the philosopher William Godwin and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was disillusioned with the Revolution because it had degenerated in the Terror (1793-4). 1799 – After following Coleridge in Germany, the Wordsworth settled in a cottage in the Lake District together with Coleridge. 1802 – He married Mary Hutchinson and had 5 children. 1803-1843 – He revised his works. 1805 He died in Grasmere.

Literary production In 1793 he published 2 long “travelogues” (works talking about his travels). In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published the Lyrical Ballads anonymously. In 1800, they published a second edition of them which included Wordsworth’s famous Preface. This Preface then became the manifesto of the Romantic movement. In 1802 a larger third edition was published. Wordsworth wrote about the charm of every day things, while Coleridge talked about the supernatural things. For Wordsworth, poetry had to deal with everyday world and the influence of memory on the present. In 1805 he published The Prelude, a long narrative poem in which he reflects about his youth and his early enthusiasm for the Revolution. He also published Poems in 2 Volumes (1807) and The Excursion (1814).

Wordsworth’s poetry Romantic vs. Neoclassic The features of Neoclassic poetry were completely overturned in Romantic poetry. What changed? The contents  No need to choose a content. The content was the POEM ITSELF. The form in which the contents are expressed The poet’s role. LYRICAL BALLADS

Why is he Romantic? Poems expressed the poet’s THOUGHTS, FEELINGS and EMOTIONS. The poet invited the reader to observe the nature and enjoy nature. THEMES: Natural landscape, lives of humble people and the CONTACT between people and nature. He appealed to the PURE FEELINGS of man, defined “the essential passions of the heart”.

Children and childhood Childhood is important because it is a LINK with the PAST. His works, in fact, are often a contrast between the past and the present: there are memories recollected at a later date.

Style Lyrical ballads: No difference between the language of prose and the language of poetry: BREAK of the rigid division. Wordsworth is INNOVATIVE: Simple things  simple language! The poet was a PROPHET, he had to communicate. This clarity helped express human emotions. Poetry had to be appreciated and read by a WIDE AUDIENCE, not just by an intellectual elite.

Poetry for Wordsworth and Coleridge (Lyrical Ballads 1798) Poetry is a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity”. Lyrical Ballads is the most important poem collection since Renaissance and include the Preface, which is considered the Manifesto of Romantic Movement because it expresses Wordsworth’s aims.

Lyrical Ballads The Lyrical Ballads were divided in two parts: Poems written by Wordsworth ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ written by S. T. Coleridge It contains Wordsworth’s aims in writing Lyrical Ballads. For this reason, it’s considered the manifesto to Romantic poetry: it broke with the neoclassical style and gave a new role to the poet.

“The principal object which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose INCIDENTS and SITUATIONS from COMMON LIFE and to relate and describe them (…) in a selection of LANGUAGE REALLY USED BY MEN and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of IMAGINATION, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way”.

I wandered lonely as a cloud (The daffodils) that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay: ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. Vagavo solitario come una nuvola
 che fluttua in alto sopra valli e colline,
 quando vidi all’improvviso una moltitudine,
 un mare, di narcisi dorati;
 accanto al lago, sotto gli alberi,
 tremolanti e danzanti nella brezza. Ininterrotti come le stelle che splendono e luccicano lungo la Via Lattea,
 si dispiegavano in una linea infinita
 lungo le rive di una baia:
 con uno sguardo ne vidi diecimila,
 che muovevano la testa danzando briosi.

Le onde accanto a loro danzavano; ma essi The waves beside them danced; but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee: a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company: I gazed - and gazed - but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought: for oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils. Le onde accanto a loro danzavano; ma essi superavano in gioia le luccicanti onde: un poeta non poteva che esser felice,
 in una compagnia così gaia.
 Osservavo - e osservavo - ma non pensavo
 a quanto bene un tale spettacolo mi avesse donato: poiché spesso, quando mi sdraio sul mio divano di umore assente o pensieroso,
 essi appaiono davanti a quell’occhio interiore che è la gioia della solitudine;
 e allora il mio cuore si riempie di piacere,
 e danza coi narcisi.