Wordsworth's "Daffodils": a deep analysis

Wordsworth's "Daffodils"

1. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"

2. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
-metrics: iambic tetrameter (-/-/-/-/) with
variants in last line of each stanza
(except the last one)
-maybe also a variation in the first foot of
line 1, which might be read as a spondee,
in order to stress also the subjetive "I".

3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•rhyme: perfect rhyme (masculine/single
rhyme). For other types of rhyme, cf.
English Versification.
•stanzas: lines rhyming ababcc, dedeff,
ghghii, jkjkll, forming regular sestets.

4. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•Remember the beginning of TWL: "April is
the cruellest month": why? is it always like
that?
•Not in "Daffodils"
–BUT cf. the beginning of "Intimations...“
–Compare also images of sea/shore in
“Intimations”, “Break, break, break” and
“Dover beach”
–myth of a golden age: lost pure origin

5. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•1st line: epitome of Romantic features
–"I": subject, the poet's self
–"wandered": not in the straight, man-made, streets of
a city
–"lonely": subjective, direct experience (not shared)
•notice "crowd/A host" in line 3. Fortunately it is only a
personification
–"as": comparison: the real seen in terms of something
else, mostly through personification
–(cf. pathetic fallacy: The attribution of human
emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to
nature)
–"cloud": element of Nature (frame of reference).

6. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•the first line can be summarised in a sort of
abstract:
–"I" = "cloud“
•Definition of identity. Cf other poems in which an identity is
also defined
•Cf. Shelley identifies himself with the West Wind
–"cloud": above the rest of the people, volatile,
changing, imaginative
•cf. also Shelley’s idea that “poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world”
•cf. Charles Baudelaire’s “The Albatros” as a symbol for the
neglect of modern poets

7. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•the following stanzas constitute a glorification of
the natural elements which make up the ecstatic
and fruitful experience of the poet,
–either those experienced directly (like the daffodils,
the waves, the trees, the breeze)
–or the frame of reference (that is, Nature) which
provides other points of comparison (as the stars in
the Milky Way)
•it is a sensual experience with little mental activity involved
•please NOTE: be careful with meanings: “gay” means happy,
not homosexual

8. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•Reverse personification:
The speaker is metaphorically compared
to a natural object, a cloud—“I wandered
lonely as a cloud / That floats on high...”,
and the daffodils are continually
personified as human beings, dancing and
“tossing their heads” in “a crowd, a host.”
This technique implies an inherent unity
between man and nature: “my heart
dances with the daffodils”

9. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•the last stanza represents a sort of turning point
for it introduces the very important question of
the actual process of composition:
–the poem comes about, is created, not by the
inspiration of the Muses, but by means of an a
posteriori composition:
•it is the end result of emotion recollected in tranquility
–in this case the context of composition is not natural
but human, man-made ("couch")
–thus, the poem establishes a clear dichotomy
between the having of the experience (itself) and the
representation of that experience:
•they belong to completely different settings and realms, and
involve completely different (intellectual) operations

10. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•P. de Man: "Romantics actually deconstruct their
own writing by showing that the presence they
desire is always absent, always in the past or in
the future" (Selden and Widdowson, 150)
–in the case of this poem the future corresponds to the
textual existence of the experience while the past
corresponds to the actual experience evoked/invoked
in the poem
–thus, the real and the represented never coincide,
they exist in a different time and space, they are an
index of each other but never the same thing

11. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
"Daffodils"
•a lasting emotion: notice the subtle change
of tenses: from past (the experience) to
present (the recollection)
–cf. "Tintern Abbey" (2nd stanza)
The theme of the poem 'Daffodils' is a collection
of human emotions inspired by nature that we
may have neglected due to our busy lives but
we learn to appreciate retrospectively.

12. Tintern Abbey