Appunti su Wordsworth

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Categoria:	Lingue
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Data:	14.07.2000
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Life and works Borned 1770 in Cockermouth. Attendend grammar school and Cambridge university. He travelled to france in 1791 and sympathysed for revolutinary movement. When the revolution turned to tyranny his political views became increasingly conservative. In 1797 he started an important literary friendship with Coleridge. They wrote together the LIRICAL BALLADS (1st edition published in 1798, 2ndedition in 1800 with a preface of wordsworth)that had a great success. He spent most of his life in the LAKE DISTRICT his dear native region. During the last 30 years of his life he continued to write and revise his works(The Prelude, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion). His reputation increased throughout his life and he was made POET LAUREATE in 1843. He died in 1850.
Themes He was the major figure in 1st generation of English Romantic poets. NATURE: it is the most important subject, the 1st meaning is that of the COUNTRYSIDE as opposite to the town. The landscape is mainly rural; even the urban landscape of london("Composed upon Westminster Bridge")becomes a sort of rural landscape because of the beauty of the morning sun and the proximity of the countryside.The 2nd meaning is that of nature as A SOURCE OF FEELINGS; his poems are packed with words that emphasize joy,and many of them are essentially a record of man's response to nature(Man becomes a part of nature,of the surroundings he looks at, as a result of the emotional response they produce in him(often is a joyful one))
The 3rd meaning is that of nature as an ACTIVE FORCE; it is the evidence of a mysterious and wonderful power in the universe which deserves piety, devotion, love and loyalty or religious reverence and love. The 4th meaning implies a PANTHEISTIC VIEW OF THE WORLD wich is seen as an expression of God.
CHILD AND CHILDHOOD:According to Wordsworth the previous age had generally valued children not for what they are but for the adults they might become.In the latter part of the century('700) ROUSSEAU reversed the status of child hood. He saw it as the most important period in man's life because it is closer to the 'ideal state of nature' and therefore the least corrupt. W.thought that as a child grows into a man, his relation to the world of nature changes:the world remains the same but the grown-up man cannot feel its splendour.Nature has then a great influence on human value: emotion, for example, are caused by and associated with beautiful scenery.
Poetry and the poet W. rejected much eighteenth-century verse since it was produced according to rules which restricted THE POET'S FREEDOM,than the poet was mainly a gifted craftsman observing and copying nature. He used a selection of LANGUAGE REALLY USED BY MEN instead of the artificial poetic diction of the previous age; he felt that the poet was "a man speaking to men", yet set apart from the rest by his ability to feel deeply, to respond to nature and to articulate his thoughts and feelings. His task was to teach the men to enter into communion with nature.
Blake and Wordsworth W. has much in common with Blake(youthful radicalism, visionary philosophising,reverence for the power of imagination,sympathy for ordinary people and preference for simple language).
• “Low and rustic life,was generally chosen,because in that condition,the essential passion of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity..”
• poetry is insite in rural life so the language and the themes have to be simple and directed to rural people and child, (they are closer to nature, they can better understand the message of nature) ;
• “poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” ( the poet’s mind is like a camera that reproduces it);
• the poet is a man speaking to man, not a common one (he just has a different sensibility that makes him better understand human feelings);
• “I Wanderd Lonely as a Cloud”: poetic devices daffodils compared to a crowd that dances,common flowers=common people; effects on him :he feels joy,pleasure, identification(personofication both of the nature and poet); he feels a strong feeling when he has this view it’s the key that makes starting a process of identification and reproducing the context and write the poem.