Wednesday, May 22, 2013

William Wordsworth-Prelude Life And Works



Dust as we are,the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music;there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements,makes them closing together
In on society (Wordsworth:The Prelude)
Birth and Early Life:
Born: 7 April 1770.Cockermouth,Cumberland
Died:23 April 1850,Cumberland
Wordsworth was born in north-western England on the edge of the Lake District,educated at a local grammar school and at Cambridge University,He became active in politics and lived in France for a time at the height of the revolutionary period.He had a daughter out of a wedlock by a French Girl in Orleans,returning to England to devote himself to the profession of poetry.His early book-length poems such as descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk;both publish in 1793 and derivative but accomplished and "Descriptive Sketches",in particular.attracted the attention of Coleridge,his younger by two years,leading to a meeting,subsequent friendship and then creative partnership.Wordsworth returned to live in the Lake District,married Mary Huctchinson in 1802,and shared his various homes with his devoted sister and inspirational muse figure,Dorothy Wordsworth.
The Father's Death:
In December of 1783 John Wordsworth,returning home from a business trip,lost his way and was forced to spend a clod night in the open.Very ill when he reached home,he died 30 December.Though separated from their sister,all the boys eventually attended school together of Hawkshead,staying in the house of Ann Tyson..
At Cambridge:
In 1787,despite poor finances caused by ongoing litigation over Lord Lowther's debt to John Wordsworth estate,Wordsworth went up to the Cambridge in ST.John's College.As he himself noted,Wordsworth's undergraduate career was not distinguished by particular brilliance.In the third word book of "The Prelude Wordsworth recorded his reactions to life at Cambridge and his changing attitude toward his studies.During his last summer as an undergraduate,he and his college friend Robert Jones-much influenced by William Coxe's sketches of the Natural,Civil and the political State of Swisserland (1779)-decided to make a tour of the Alps,departing from Dover on 13 July 1790...
School Life:
The conditions of Wordsworth's school-life were very different from those,which prevail at the present time.The boys did not board at the school,but lodged in the cottages of village dames,who looked after their physical requirements.There was very little supervision,and they were free to roam about the hills.In spite of these adventures,a good deal of work was done.The boy became a good Latin scholar,and when he went to Cambridge,was so well advanced in mathematics that he was able to dispense with some of the instruction given there.He didn't just read books confined to what he learned at school;he read eagerly for his own amusement in Fielding,Swift,Cervantes,The Arabian Nights and many another storehouse of romance..
Wordsworth himself would have denied that he owed his education entirely or even principally to his school or his reading.From his earliest boyhood he lived close with the beautiful objects of nature,but at the time he did not realize that his character had been built up by these influences.His first perceptions of a moral law came grandeur and serenity of the landscape helped him to grow up calm' and magnanimous.Around this time in 1782 England acknowledges the independence of the United States.
On Rainy Days:
Wordsworth's father died in 1783.Following the father's death was the impeachment of Warren Hastings.Through his kindness of his uncles the future poet was enabled to proceed to Cambridge and in 1787 he become a member of St.John's College.Though he took his degree, he did not aim at academic distinction.and devoted most of his time to wide reading of English and classical authors.In 1789 he journeyed through Derby Shire with his sister,Dorothy,and their Kinswoman,Mary Hutchinson,who afterwards became his wife;and in 1790 he went his friend,Robert Jones,for a walking tour through France and Switzerland.It was then that the poet first came into contact with the revolutionary movement,which was to affect his so profoundly.Also in 1789 came the storm of Bastille..
Contact with Coleridge:
After leaving Cambridge,Wordsworth remained for a time in London,trying to decide a profession;but he could not decide.and language thoroughly.But as soon as he arrived in Orleans he was swept into the whirl of current politics.To him the demands of the French revolutionists seemed not extraordinary,but merely just;he entered him to them with enthusiasm,and fondly believed "that the time was at hand when all evils should be redressed and all men have equal opportunities for happiness."His feelings are recorded in the well-known lines in The Prelude.He even dreamt of becoming a leader of the Girondist party;but,unfortunately for himself and the future of English poetry,he was recalled home by his uncles,who stopped his supplies.In September 1792 came the Declaration of the French Republic...
War between England and France:
A time of great mental distress for the young man followed this recall.For on January 21,1793,the French convention sent Louis XVI to the scaffold,and a week later war was declared between England and France.This came as a terrible shock because Wordsworth believed so thoroughly in the principals for which the French were contending.Full of disappointment he stayed in the south of England,seeing with dismay the mobilization of the fleet off the Isle of Wight,and refusing to join in the prayers for his country's success that were offered up in the churches.All his moral standards seemed shaken;
"It was as if a friend on whom he had trusted had been convicted of some great crime".
Dorothy: The loving Sister
He was especially fortunate in having sister Dorothy.They were very close and was written in many passages in The Prelude and other poems.Wordsworth had published poems,An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches,composed while he was at Cambridge.
During the year at Racedown he attempted more work.Guilt and sorrow was finished,and The Borderers,Wordsworth's only attempt at drama,entirely composed...
Lyrical Ballads:
Wordsworth met S.T. Coleridge at the house of a friend in Bristol.The two poets became very much attached to one another,and in July 1797 the Wordsworth's moved to Alfoxden,about three miles from Nether Stowey,where Coleridge and his wife were living.Also in 1797 came the extinction of the Venetian Republic..
The friends met almost daily.and discussed the theory of their art,while each was stimulated to further production by the appreciation of the other.Together they resolved to settle the expenses of a walking tour to Linton by means of a poem to be published in The Month Review,and out of his came not only Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,but the whole of the Lyrical Ballads,which include some of the Wordsworth's best work best work.The little volume was published in 1798,and Coleridge and his two friends started for Germany.They separated and the Wordsworth's chose to stay at Goslar.Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg.He spent six months and did not like Germany,so he decided to make his way back to England, "for he had learned to know its value".After visiting the Hutchinsons,and their brother of John became their guests,"and he days passed in happily tranquillity".In 1801 came peace of Amiens.In 1802 the then Earl of Lonsdale repaid to the Wordsworth family the money which his predecessor had borrowed from their father,and the poet then married Mary Hutchhinson.His bride joined him and his sister at Dove Cottage.
Genius and the World:
Two years earlier in 1800,Wordsworth had published a second edition of Lyrical Ballads,containing the famous preface in which he stated at length his theory of poetic diction.This brought upon him storm of abuse from the professional critics,and blinded them to the beauty of many of the poems,which followed the essay.Charles Lamb valued the poet's genius at its true worth.He was among the few less prejudiced readers.The poet was not discouraged and he left quietly.This years from 1802 to 1807 are when his next volumes were published.Not only was most of The Prelude composed in those years,but also a visit to Scotland in 1803 provided suggestions for some of his most beautiful lyrics,while his intense interest in politics found expression in the Poems Dedicated to National Liberty and Independence.Also in 1803 war with France begins again and The French occupy Switzerland.In 1805 Wordsworth lost his brother by shipwreck and also came the Battle of Trafalgar.The lost of his brother Shipwreck influenced him which he heard in the Ode: Intimations and Immorality,and the Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a storm.The two volumes published in 1807 were attacked by the Edinburgh Review,and for the next few years,according to De Quincey,
"Wordsworth unpopularity was at its height.While this was going on the act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade passed.In 1808 the Wordsworth's move from Dove Cottage to Allan Bank and also came the beginning of the Peninsular War.In 1809 Wordsworth publishes his tract on the convention of Cintra and with his description of the scenery of the English Lakes in 1810,afterwards republished under the title of A Guide Through the district of the Lakes.In 1811 the two of their children made this house bearable to the stricken parents,and in 1813 they moved again,this time to Rydal Mount,where they lived for the rese of their lives.Wordsworth is appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland.The Excursion was published in 1814,and was not more cordially received than its predecessors.In six years only 500 copies were sold.Some of the lessons learned in these years if disappointment are embodied in the poems on classical subjects composed while he was preparing his eldest son for college.The Battle of Waterloo happened around this time in 1815".
In 1817 an appreciative article on Wordsworth appeared in Blackwood.The period of his greatest inspiration ended in 1820,with the sonnets on the River Duddon,but between 1820 and 1846 he produced at intervals much exquisite verse.In 1820 came to Death of George III.The work of these years is marked by an acknowledgement of orthodox religious dogma,and by a recognition (Beer 96).These quiet years were broken by several long holiday tours.Between 1820 and 1837 the poet visited Switzerland,France,Belgium and Holland,the Rhine, and Italy.The Catholic Emancipation Act came around in 1829,the introduction of the Reform Bill came around in 1831,the death of Sir Walter Scott cane around in 1832,the death of Coleridge happened in 1834,and in 1837 came to accession of Queen Victoria.He was now acknowledged as the first living English Poets,and when in 1839 Oxford conferred in him the honorary degree of D.C.L and Keble presented him to the Vice-Chancellor,he was received with acclamation.Four years later,in 1843,he accepted the vacant Laureateship..
The Poetic Career:
Though Wordsworth, encouraged by his headmaster William Taylor, had been composing verse since his days at Hawkshead Grammar School, his poetic career begins with this first trip to France and Switzerland.During this period he also formed his early political opinions-especially his hatred of tyranny.These opinions would be profoundly transformed over the coming years but never completely abandoned.Wordsworth was intoxicated by the combination of revolutionary fervor he found in France-he and Jones arrived on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and by the returning to England in October,Wordsworth was awarded a pass degree from Cambridge in January 1791,spent several months in London, and then traveled to Jones's parents home in North Wales.
During 1791 Wordsworth's interest in both poetry and politics gained in sphistication as natural sensitivity strengthened his perceptions of the natural and social scenes he encountered.In a letter to William Matthews,a Cambridge friend, he lamented his lack of Italian and weak Spanish,he would have liked to be reading modern poetry...
Passion for Democracy:
Wordsworth's passion for democracy, as is clear in his "Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff" (also called apology for the French Revolution),is the result of his two youthful trips to France.In November 1791 Wordsworth returned to France,where he attended sessions of the National Assembly and the Jacobin Club.In December he met and fell in love with Annette Vallon.and at the beginning of 1792 he became the close friend of an intellectual and philosophical army officer,Michael Beauty,with whom he discussed politics.Wordsworth had been an instinctive democrat since childhood,and his experiences in revolutionary France strengthened and developed his convictions.His sympathy for ordinary people would remain with Wordsworth ever after his revolutionary fervor had been replaced with the "Softened Feudalism"he endorsed in his two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland in 1818..
While still in France,Wordsworth began work on the first extended poetic efforts of his maturity,Descriptive Sketches,which was published in 1793,after the appearance of a poem written at Cambridge,An Evening Walk (1793).Having exhausted his money,he left France in early December 1792 before Annette Vallon gave birth to this child Caroline.Back in England,the young radical cast about for a suitable career.As a fervor democrat,he had serious reservations about "vegetating in a paltry curacy,"though he had written to William Mathews from France in May 1792 that he intended to be ordained the following winter or spring.Perhaps this plan was why he was reading sermons early in1793,when he came across a sermon by Richard Watson,Bishop of Lliandaff, on "'the Wisdom and Goodness of God"in making both rich and poor,with an appendix denouncing the French Revolution.His democratic sympathies aroused,he spent several weeks in February and March working on a reply...
Reading William Godwin:
By this time, his revolutionary with Annette Vallon had become known to his England relatives,and many further opportunity of entering the Church was foreclosed.In any case Wordsworth had been reading atheist William Godwin's recently published Political Justice (1793),and had come powerfully under its sway."A letter to The Bishop of Lliandaff"-not published until 1876,when it was included in Alexandere B.Grosart's edition of Wordsworth's prose-is the youthful poet and democrat's indignant reply to the forces of darkness,repression and monarchy.Its prose shares something of the revolutionary clarity of Thomas Paine's.Wordsworth,in fact,quoted Paine in his refutation of Bishop Watson's appendix:
"If you had looked in the articles of the rights of man,you would have found your efforts suspended.Equality without which liberty cannot exist,is to be met with i perfection in that state in which no distinctions are admitted but such as have evidently for their object the general good".Just how radical Wordsworth's political beliefs were during this period can be judged from other passages in this "Letter":
"At a period big with the fate of the human race.I am sorry that you attach so much importance to the personal sufferings of the late royal martyr.You wish it to be supposed that you are one of those who are un-persuaded of the guilt Loius XVI.If you had attended to the history if the French Revolution as minutely as its importance demands,so far from stopping to bewail his death,you would rather have regretted that the blind fondness of his people had placed a human being in that monstrous situation... "
Remarking upon the stripping of property from the French priesthood,Wordsworth asserted: "The assembly were the true to justice and refused to compromise the interests of the Nation by accepting as a satisfaction the insidious offerings of compulsive charity.The enforced their right:they took from the clergy a considerable portion of their wealth,and applied it to the alleviation of the national misery".
"A letter to the Bishop of Lliandaff"is remarkable partly because Wordsworth seems to have begun relinquishing its tenets almost as soon as he had composed them.Though he remained for the time being a strong supporter of the French Revolution,
Dust as we are,the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music;there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements,makes them closing together
In on society (Wordsworth:The Prelude)
Birth and Early Life:
Born: 7 April 1770.Cockermouth,Cumberland
Died:23 April 1850,Cumberland
Wordsworth was born in north-western England on the edge of the Lake District,educated at a local grammar school and at Cambridge University,He became active in politics and lived in France for a time at the height of the revolutionary period.He had a daughter out of a wedlock by a French Girl in Orleans,returning to England to devote himself to the profession of poetry.His early book-length poems such as descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk;both publish in 1793 and derivative but accomplished and "Descriptive Sketches",in particular.attracted the attention of Coleridge,his younger by two years,leading to a meeting,subsequent friendship and then creative partnership.Wordsworth returned to live in the Lake District,married Mary Huctchinson in 1802,and shared his various homes with his devoted sister and inspirational muse figure,Dorothy Wordsworth.
The Father's Death:
In December of 1783 John Wordsworth,returning home from a business trip,lost his way and was forced to spend a clod night in the open.Very ill when he reached home,he died 30 December.Though separated from their sister,all the boys eventually attended school together of Hawkshead,staying in the house of Ann Tyson..
At Cambridge:
In 1787,despite poor finances caused by ongoing litigation over Lord Lowther's debt to John Wordsworth estate,Wordsworth went up to the Cambridge in ST.John's College.As he himself noted,Wordsworth's undergraduate career was not distinguished by particular brilliance.In the third word book of "The Prelude Wordsworth recorded his reactions to life at Cambridge and his changing attitude toward his studies.During his last summer as an undergraduate,he and his college friend Robert Jones-much influenced by William Coxe's sketches of the Natural,Civil and the political State of Swisserland (1779)-decided to make a tour of the Alps,departing from Dover on 13 July 1790...
School Life:
The conditions of Wordsworth's school-life were very different from those,which prevail at the present time.The boys did not board at the school,but lodged in the cottages of village dames,who looked after their physical requirements.There was very little supervision,and they were free to roam about the hills.In spite of these adventures,a good deal of work was done.The boy became a good Latin scholar,and when he went to Cambridge,was so well advanced in mathematics that he was able to dispense with some of the instruction given there.He didn't just read books confined to what he learned at school;he read eagerly for his own amusement in Fielding,Swift,Cervantes,The Arabian Nights and many another storehouse of romance..
Wordsworth himself would have denied that he owed his education entirely or even principally to his school or his reading.From his earliest boyhood he lived close with the beautiful objects of nature,but at the time he did not realize that his character had been built up by these influences.His first perceptions of a moral law came grandeur and serenity of the landscape helped him to grow up calm' and magnanimous.Around this time in 1782 England acknowledges the independence of the United States.
On Rainy Days:
Wordsworth's father died in 1783.Following the father's death was the impeachment of Warren Hastings.Through his kindness of his uncles the future poet was enabled to proceed to Cambridge and in 1787 he become a member of St.John's College.Though he took his degree, he did not aim at academic distinction.and devoted most of his time to wide reading of English and classical authors.In 1789 he journeyed through Derby Shire with his sister,Dorothy,and their Kinswoman,Mary Hutchinson,who afterwards became his wife;and in 1790 he went his friend,Robert Jones,for a walking tour through France and Switzerland.It was then that the poet first came into contact with the revolutionary movement,which was to affect his so profoundly.Also in 1789 came the storm of Bastille..
Contact with Coleridge:
After leaving Cambridge,Wordsworth remained for a time in London,trying to decide a profession;but he could not decide.and language thoroughly.But as soon as he arrived in Orleans he was swept into the whirl of current politics.To him the demands of the French revolutionists seemed not extraordinary,but merely just;he entered him to them with enthusiasm,and fondly believed "that the time was at hand when all evils should be redressed and all men have equal opportunities for happiness."His feelings are recorded in the well-known lines in The Prelude.He even dreamt of becoming a leader of the Girondist party;but,unfortunately for himself and the future of English poetry,he was recalled home by his uncles,who stopped his supplies.In September 1792 came the Declaration of the French Republic...
War between England and France:
A time of great mental distress for the young man followed this recall.For on January 21,1793,the French convention sent Louis XVI to the scaffold,and a week later war was declared between England and France.This came as a terrible shock because Wordsworth believed so thoroughly in the principals for which the French were contending.Full of disappointment he stayed in the south of England,seeing with dismay the mobilization of the fleet off the Isle of Wight,and refusing to join in the prayers for his country's success that were offered up in the churches.All his moral standards seemed shaken;
"It was as if a friend on whom he had trusted had been convicted of some great crime".
Dorothy: The loving Sister
He was especially fortunate in having sister Dorothy.They were very close and was written in many passages in The Prelude and other poems.Wordsworth had published poems,An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches,composed while he was at Cambridge.
During the year at Racedown he attempted more work.Guilt and sorrow was finished,and The Borderers,Wordsworth's only attempt at drama,entirely composed...
Lyrical Ballads:
Wordsworth met S.T. Coleridge at the house of a friend in Bristol.The two poets became very much attached to one another,and in July 1797 the Wordsworth's moved to Alfoxden,about three miles from Nether Stowey,where Coleridge and his wife were living.Also in 1797 came the extinction of the Venetian Republic..
The friends met almost daily.and discussed the theory of their art,while each was stimulated to further production by the appreciation of the other.Together they resolved to settle the expenses of a walking tour to Linton by means of a poem to be published in The Month Review,and out of his came not only Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,but the whole of the Lyrical Ballads,which include some of the Wordsworth's best work best work.The little volume was published in 1798,and Coleridge and his two friends started for Germany.They separated and the Wordsworth's chose to stay at Goslar.Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg.He spent six months and did not like Germany,so he decided to make his way back to England, "for he had learned to know its value".After visiting the Hutchinsons,and their brother of John became their guests,"and he days passed in happily tranquillity".In 1801 came peace of Amiens.In 1802 the then Earl of Lonsdale repaid to the Wordsworth family the money which his predecessor had borrowed from their father,and the poet then married Mary Hutchhinson.His bride joined him and his sister at Dove Cottage.
Genius and the World:
Two years earlier in 1800,Wordsworth had published a second edition of Lyrical Ballads,containing the famous preface in which he stated at length his theory of poetic diction.This brought upon him storm of abuse from the professional critics,and blinded them to the beauty of many of the poems,which followed the essay.Charles Lamb valued the poet's genius at its true worth.He was among the few less prejudiced readers.The poet was not discouraged and he left quietly.This years from 1802 to 1807 are when his next volumes were published.Not only was most of The Prelude composed in those years,but also a visit to Scotland in 1803 provided suggestions for some of his most beautiful lyrics,while his intense interest in politics found expression in the Poems Dedicated to National Liberty and Independence.Also in 1803 war with France begins again and The French occupy Switzerland.In 1805 Wordsworth lost his brother by shipwreck and also came the Battle of Trafalgar.The lost of his brother Shipwreck influenced him which he heard in the Ode: Intimations and Immorality,and the Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a storm.The two volumes published in 1807 were attacked by the Edinburgh Review,and for the next few years,according to De Quincey,
"Wordsworth unpopularity was at its height.While this was going on the act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade passed.In 1808 the Wordsworth's move from Dove Cottage to Allan Bank and also came the beginning of the Peninsular War.In 1809 Wordsworth publishes his tract on the convention of Cintra and with his description of the scenery of the English Lakes in 1810,afterwards republished under the title of A Guide Through the district of the Lakes.In 1811 the two of their children made this house bearable to the stricken parents,and in 1813 they moved again,this time to Rydal Mount,where they lived for the rese of their lives.Wordsworth is appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland.The Excursion was published in 1814,and was not more cordially received than its predecessors.In six years only 500 copies were sold.Some of the lessons learned in these years if disappointment are embodied in the poems on classical subjects composed while he was preparing his eldest son for college.The Battle of Waterloo happened around this time in 1815".
In 1817 an appreciative article on Wordsworth appeared in Blackwood.The period of his greatest inspiration ended in 1820,with the sonnets on the River Duddon,but between 1820 and 1846 he produced at intervals much exquisite verse.In 1820 came to Death of George III.The work of these years is marked by an acknowledgement of orthodox religious dogma,and by a recognition (Beer 96).These quiet years were broken by several long holiday tours.Between 1820 and 1837 the poet visited Switzerland,France,Belgium and Holland,the Rhine, and Italy.The Catholic Emancipation Act came around in 1829,the introduction of the Reform Bill came around in 1831,the death of Sir Walter Scott cane around in 1832,the death of Coleridge happened in 1834,and in 1837 came to accession of Queen Victoria.He was now acknowledged as the first living English Poets,and when in 1839 Oxford conferred in him the honorary degree of D.C.L and Keble presented him to the Vice-Chancellor,he was received with acclamation.Four years later,in 1843,he accepted the vacant Laureateship..
The Poetic Career:
Though Wordsworth, encouraged by his headmaster William Taylor, had been composing verse since his days at Hawkshead Grammar School, his poetic career begins with this first trip to France and Switzerland.During this period he also formed his early political opinions-especially his hatred of tyranny.These opinions would be profoundly transformed over the coming years but never completely abandoned.Wordsworth was intoxicated by the combination of revolutionary fervor he found in France-he and Jones arrived on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and by the returning to England in October,Wordsworth was awarded a pass degree from Cambridge in January 1791,spent several months in London, and then traveled to Jones's parents home in North Wales.
During 1791 Wordsworth's interest in both poetry and politics gained in sphistication as natural sensitivity strengthened his perceptions of the natural and social scenes he encountered.In a letter to William Matthews,a Cambridge friend, he lamented his lack of Italian and weak Spanish,he would have liked to be reading modern poetry...
Passion for Democracy:
Wordsworth's passion for democracy, as is clear in his "Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff" (also called apology for the French Revolution),is the result of his two youthful trips to France.In November 1791 Wordsworth returned to France,where he attended sessions of the National Assembly and the Jacobin Club.In December he met and fell in love with Annette Vallon.and at the beginning of 1792 he became the close friend of an intellectual and philosophical army officer,Michael Beauty,with whom he discussed politics.Wordsworth had been an instinctive democrat since childhood,and his experiences in revolutionary France strengthened and developed his convictions.His sympathy for ordinary people would remain with Wordsworth ever after his revolutionary fervor had been replaced with the "Softened Feudalism"he endorsed in his two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland in 1818..