Life amd work of William Wordsworth

His life, career, works and

1. Paper no : 5 The Romantic Literature Name : Makwana Vijay K. Email : [email protected] Roll no. : 34 Enrollment no. : 2069108420180035 Study : M.A PART 1, SEM 2 Submitted to : Department of English (MKBU)

2. Topic : Life and Works of William Wordsworth.

3. William Wordsworth (1770-1870) British poet Born April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. In 1778 his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar school in Lancashire. He made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine.

4. Same year he entered John College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791 In 1795 he meet Coleridge. Wordsworth composed his master work, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge‘s "Ancient Mariner”. In 1798, he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem. He wrote several poems, including the enigmatic ‘Lucy‘ poems. 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He spent the rest of his life in Rydal mount, Ambleside.

5. Preface to Lyrical Ballads : The lyrical Ballads were first published in 1798. The preface to lyrical Ballads is regarded as a Romantic manifesto wherein Wordsworth sets out the rules for a new kind of poetry and poetic theory. It declares the dawn of the English Romantic Movement. The preface to Lyrical Ballads was written to explain the theory of poetry guiding Wordsworth’s composition of the poems. Wordsworth defends the unusual style and subjects of the poems as experiments to see how far popular poetry could be used to convey profound feeling.

6. He describes good poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling’ and the ‘end of poetry' to ‘produce excitement in coexistence with an overbalance of pleasure’. He also describes poet as ‘a man speaking to men‘ : a man “endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and more comprehensive soul, than one supposed to be common among mankind”.

7. Major Works : Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798) : "Simon Lee“ "We Are Seven“ "Lines Written in Early Spring“ "Expostulation and Reply“ "The Tables Turned“ "The Thorn“ "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey“ "The Daffodils"

8. The Daffodils : The Daffodils poem focusing on the beauty of nature. The poem recapture a moment of his childhood memorie showas by that poem. In this poem talk about hills, valley, lake, breeze, dancing flowers and beauty of nature.

9. Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800) Preface to the Lyrical Ballads : "Strange fits of passion have I known“ "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways“ "Three years she grew“ "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal“ "I travelled among unknown men“ "Lucy Gray“ "The Two April Mornings“ "Nutting“ "The Ruined Cottage“ "Michael"

10. Lucy Gray : Lucy Gray poem based on the death of little girl narrated to him by his sister Dorothy. The poem shows the innocence and loneliness. In this poem is that Wordsworth has not stressed upon death of Lucy but after her death her fusion with nature. He has tried to associate boundaries of birth and death by this beautiful and calamitous ballad.

11. Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) - "Resolution and Independence“ "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud“ "My Heart Leaps Up“ "Ode: Intimations of Immortality“ "Ode to Duty“ "The Solitary Reaper“ "Elegiac Stanzas“ "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802“ "London, 1802“ "The world is too much with us“ The Excursion (1814) "Prospectus toThe Recluse “ Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822) "Mutability“ The Prelude (1850, posthumous) The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind

12. The Solitary Reaper : “The Solitary Reaper” is about the power of the imagination to transform common, everyday events into representations of a larger reality. In the poem, the speaker of the poem listens to the song of a woman working in the fields. Moved by the simple goodness of this solitary reaper, the speaker feels a connection with nature and the eternal, to feels her song speaks to some truth about nature and human existence to some pain or history of sorrow that has been passed down through the generations.

13. Quotes : “ The Child is father of the Man. ” “ The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket. ” “ Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity. ”

14. Thank You…..