William Wordsworth - Part 1 PDF

Wordsworth: Poet in a Landscape Ms. Sarah Ashkanani  The Dove Cottage This is because Dove Cottage chimes with modern sense of what ‘Wordsworth’ stands for today; itevokes the sense of connection between the place and the act of writing/poetry William Wordsworth,...

Wordsworth: Poet in a Landscape Ms. Sarah Ashkanani  The Dove Cottage This is because Dove Cottage chimes with modern sense of what ‘Wordsworth’ stands for today; itevokes the sense of connection between the place and the act of writing/poetry William Wordsworth, his wife and his sister lived in the Dove Cottage from 1799- 1808, which remains the most popular tourist destination (after Wordsworth’s death, Sir Stopford Augustus Brooke raised funds to establish it as a museum)  The Dove Cottage - Brooke describes the cottage and the Lake District as the place that generated and witnessed poetry: There is no place … which has so many thoughts and memories as this …; none at least in which they are so closely bound up with the poet and the poems; almost everything in this garden has been written of beautifully; almost every flower has been plated by his or his sister’s hands; in almost every tree some bird had built of which he has sung. In every part of this little place he has walked with his sister and his wide of talked with [his friend and fellow-poet] Coleridge. And it is almost untouched. Poem: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud I wandered lonely as a Cloud For oft, when on my couch I lie That floats on high o'er vales and hills, In vacant or in pensive mood, When all at once I saw a crowd, They flash upon that inward eye A host, of dancing Daffodils; Along the Lake, beneath the trees, Which is the bliss of solitude, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze. And then my heart with pleasure The waves beside them danced, but fills, they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: And dances with the Daffodils. A poet could not but be gay, In such a laughing company: Stanza Couplet I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the shew to me had brought: The Content - Organization The first stanza: describes the experience The second stanza: the poet’s immediate reaction to it Thethird stanza: the way in which the experience has continued to work in the poet’s imagination The Content - Organization - The organization of the stanzas does not tell us what the poem argues, but we can suggest that the poem offers the poet’s experience as a model for the reader. - It describes how experiences of natural beauty can enter, work within and are beneficial to individual minds. - The clarity and compactness of the language contribute to the poem’s claim that this experience has clarity and simplicity of outside as it has impressed itself within the poet’s memory and as it revives itself within his consciousness. How to read the poem? 1. Textual analysis (close reading – new criticism – practical criticism) 2. Contextual reading (biographical context) The Form of the Poem: Wandered Lonely as a Cloud Speaker Diction Rhyme Scheme Type: Lyrical Poem  Who is speaking in the poem? (voice) The‘I’ in the poem is eventually identified as the poet himself (HOWEVER, be cautious about such an assumption)  Diction? Appears to be simple and direct  The Rhyme Scheme? It is ababcc There are 4 sets of paired stressed and unstressed syllables (feet) and the type of paired syllables is called iambic Generally, the meter and rhyme are simple  The Rhyme Scheme? --the first stanza-- Alliteration (repeated constant sounds) Assonance (repeated vowel sounds) a- o – u – i –e  A “lyric” Poem This is a simple poem therefore, a lyric poem (ashort poem devoted to expressing a single mood or moment of consciousness, usually foregrounding the poet as a speaker)  Reading (with & without) Context - This close reading to the poem shows its stable meaning and affect = the poem will have the same meaning for whoever reads it, and whenever they read it - This idea, that the poem can be read without any contextual information (Practical Criticism/ New Criticism) is useful, but limited - In practice, there is no such thing as reading without context – as the reader automatically bring their own contexts to the experience of reading  Reading (with & without) Context - This poem has often been read biographically, as a transcript of the experience of ‘William Wordsworth’ (identifying ‘I’ as Wordsworth, and the lake is Ullswater, when this experience took place) - Based on Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal in 1802, we know when and where this experience took place, and when and where the poem was composed and published. This makes the experience more powerful culturally by ascribing it to an important poet.  Reading (with & without) Context - However, when a poet writes using the first person it does not mean that the speaker is closely identified with the poet. Biographical context: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal How are the two accounts (the journal and the poem) similar and/or different? Challenging the “author”  Similarities 1. Both refer to the same experience of seeing a pass of daffodils in flower growing along the margins of a lake under trees and being blown about by high wind 2. Both have same ways of describing the experience, especially in personification (flowers behaving like people) in describing them as ‘dancing’ and ‘gay’  Differences – Dorothy’s Account 1. Genre: Prose - function of a journal (recounting the events of the day chronologically). It is a personal record, or in Dorothy’s case, to please her brother 2. Publication: It is a private form of writing, was never designed to be published. 3. Importance: The journal is full of everyday details, information and observation which is not ranked by importance. 4. Description of daffodils: it begins as botanical and seasonal observation before changing into a description of an intense personal experience. It is the first moment in the entry of that day that she uses ‘I’.  Differences – The Poem 1. Genre: lyrical poem 2. Publication: it’s a public form, was meant to be published 3. Importance: The immediacy of the experience in the journal is changed in the poem to become a stored-up ‘wealth’, an event that is worth remembering and that sticks to the poet’s memory 4. Description of scenery: Wordsworth writes out (removing) her presence, all people, buildings and animals which we knew existed through the journal. A Romantic ‘I’ who wanders alone and disconnected, more cloud than a human body, and who is identified as a poet What is the effect reading the journal contribute to your understanding of the poem? - The effect is ambiguous 1. It confirms the “trueness” of the poem/account. 2. It gets us closer to the poet; it reflects two ‘Wordsworthian’ aspects about the poem: its interest in dramatizing the figure of the poet, and its interest in a memory as a foundation of identity 3. However, it invalidates the claim to memorability. Wordsworth seems to have needed to be reminded of the experience when he drafted the poem two years after the journal entry was made. So, the poem was not as an immediate and spontaneous response 4. It shows that the figure of the poet-genius is fiction – the making of the poem was in fact a collaborative enterprise 5. It shows the position of Dorothy as a woman, and the genre of her writing that she does not have the same position as other famous poets and literary works (this has been changing recently) Problematizing the idea of the ‘Author’ - It is important to remember that both accounts are crafted writing - The journal could be a source material for Wordsworth’s poem, Dorothy consciously revised her writing for maximum effect (Woolf 1991-2). - Therefore, the difference between the two accounts is a difference between private writing by a woman living in the 19th century, and the public, conscious and ambitious self-inscription of a Romantic male poet - The idea of authorship in the period is conditioned by: 1. The genre 2. The gender position - As a gross generalisation, the male poet was (and is) more Romantic than the female prose writer - The way in which the Romantic poet describes the self as private explains why today’s culture has allows female privacies of Dorothy’s journal equal status as Romantic. In the Dove Cottage museum, a photograph of daffodils at Ullswater is glossed with Dorothy’s words Other Contexts of the Poem - Poemcan be contextualized in relation to other biographical material. 1. We know that the two lines ‘They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude’ are known to have been written not by Wordsworth but by his wife (Burton, 1958) 2. We might also go to an early notebook by Wordsworth and his brother, Christopher, in which Christopher writes an outline for a poem ‘descriptive of the lakes etc. Feb 1792’. This includes a mention of Gowbarrow Park and the daffodils 3. Other wider biographical contexts (contemporary guidebooks) show that this view was a famous sight at the time. This suggests that Wordsworth’s sight of daffodils by Ullswater was not, a one-off experience as the poem implies Romantic Imagination Understanding the poet’s imagination - Pamela Woolf explains how ‘where the same experience informs both journal and poem there is for us the fascination of coming closer to the imagination at work’ BUT is getting closer to the imagination of the poet a sensible way of reading the poem? - With Wordsworth, understanding poetry through the poet’s imagination is appropriate because: 1. Wordsworth thought that living in Lake District is an experiment of the imaginative life of a poet 2. In most of his poetry, imagination is a central poetic subject matter 3. His poems were in continual acts of revision and reorganisation. Resulting in many different versions  An example: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ - He added a stanza 8 years after publication, leads to making an aesthetic decision: deciding when Wordsworth was mostly Wordsworthian (the first less poetic) - Wordsworth’s practice of revision puts the fiction of the poem (spontaneous by a uniquely sensitive Romantic genius) under stress - Reading the poem biographically reminds the reader that ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ is not a simple act of autobiographical recollection as it might appear to be, nor even being the less simple act of recollecting multiple acts of the recollection.  Wordsworthian?? A text which emphasises: The poet’s solitude. Imaginatively intense experiences within natural landscapes Natural influence to spirit and the poet’s inner life Philosophical statement of the value of natural landscape in the modern and urban age.  Wordsworthian?? - Such elements led to the success of “I wandered lonely as a cloud”. - Wordsworth’s work seen as a way to dramatize the Romantic poet’s inner life, and this everyone’s inner lives. The urban modern self has learned from Wordsworth how to recollect natural beauties. - HOWEVER other less well known poems (e.g. “Point Rash- Judgments) does not follow the popular Wordsworthian imagination: disconnected, alone, slef-absorbed sense  REVIEW Whatis the importance of context in reading Wordsworth’s poems? Discuss (diction – content – organization – rhyme scheme – diction) in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. Whatis the importance od reading Dorothy Wordsworth’s account? Compare William and Dorothy Wordsworth’s accounts Can Wordsworth’s authoritarian stance be challenged? Contextualize “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” In what way is “I wandered…” a Wordsworthian poem?