Essays on Medieval Europe

419

Back to The Future: Wordsworth’s "Ode to Duty" and "Elegiac Stanzas"

4 pages / 1612 words

A past attitude is reverted to and revised in Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" and "Elegiac Stanzas." Employing geographic metaphors, both celestial and earth-bound, the poems climb over rocky Wordsworthian terrain that details his reconciliation between past and present and implications of the future. Though vastly...

Poetry Romanticism

420

Two Interpretations of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"

2 pages / 1079 words

William Wordsworth’s poem “A slumber did my spirit seal” compels different interpretations with different readers. In this case, two critics, Cleanth Brooks and F.W. Bateson, analyze the poem and produce two contrasting interpretations. For the most part both critics focus on examining the same facts...

Poetry Romanticism

421

Primary and Secondary Nature in Wordsworth’s "The Thorn"

2 pages / 739 words

It is not often that one would consider gossip, rumor, fear, and slander to be a part of nature, and yet it is; at least, of human nature. And as William Wordsworth is a poet of nature, one might ask of which form of nature?...

Poetry Romanticism

422

"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"

3 pages / 1343 words

Wordsworth’s pastoral poem “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey” eloquently expresses the poet’s feelings of ambivalence regarding maturation, nature, and modern society. The poem is formatted in a distinct approach that serves to highlight the poet’s own conflicting emotions. Wordsworth initiates the composition...

Poetry Romanticism

423

Wordsworth: The Young and The Wise

3 pages / 1143 words

“Resolution and Independence” and “Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey” respectively illustrate the difference between a young and nave poet-wanderer to a traveler who has found wisdom through time and nature. Furthermore, the two poems are also able to elucidate dissimilar types of acquired wisdom through...

Poetry Romanticism William Wordsworth

424

The Wordsworthian Child: a Symbol for Romantic Idealism in "We Are Seven" and "Intimations of Immortality"

6 pages / 2856 words

The turn of the 19th century was a morbid, dark time period: death was a common visitor, as plagues and diseases diminished the children, and the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars diminished the overall population. In response to such loss, humans became relegated to a...

Poetry Romanticism

425

The Romantic Era: Imagination as a Rebellion Against Rationalism

2 pages / 1124 words

In an era driven by rationalism and logic, the poets and authors of the Romantic era sought to defend what they understood as a more natural system of values. Among the themes prevalent throughout the era, the theme of the imagination’s power is definitely central,...

Poetry Rebellion Romanticism

426

Victorian, Romantic and Modernist Literature: Style as Cultural Commentary

3 pages / 1150 words

Tony Harrison’s “A Cold Coming,” William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and George Orwell’s 1984 each display distinct sensibilities that reflect the time from which they emerged. Modernist manifestos differentiate the Modernist movement from previous ones through...

Poetry Romanticism

427

Sublimity in Wordsworth and Smith

3 pages / 1492 words

Romantic literature is deeply concerned with manifestations and attainment of the sublime. The notion itself asserts gender upon both subject and object, and pervades any attempt to gain historical knowledge. This fetishization of the sublime, however does not prevent the concept from being subverted consciously...

Poetry Romanticism

428

Naturalism in Tintern Abbey

3 pages / 1233 words

William Wordsworth was a Romatic English poet with a vast body of work, and Naturalism abounds in nearly all of his poetry. Nature is a major theme in Wordsworth’s famous works such as, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and “It is a Beauteous Evening,...

Poetry Romanticism

429

Comparison of William Blake and William Wordsworth's Writing Styles

3 pages / 1376 words

Although scholars classify both William Wordsworth and William Blake as “romantic poets”, their writing styles and individual perspectives differ tremendously. Wordsworth, though he is not so blind as to ignore the strife that is prevalent in everyday society, tends to focus on more positive aspects...

Poetry Romanticism William Blake

430

Wordsworth’s References to Nature in Resolution and Independence

2 pages / 896 words

A Romantic poet, Wordsworth often draws from nature to describe his subjects or his narrator’s outlook on the world. In his poem “Resolution and Independence,” which employs twenty septets with an ababcc rhyme scheme, Wordsworth expresses his concerns and anxiety with a topic that can...

Poetry Romanticism

431

The Act of Travel in Wordsworth’s "I Travelled Among Unknown Men"

2 pages / 917 words

Wordsworth’s “I travelled among unknown men” appears at first to be a tribute to a woman he loved and a poem of patriotism. It is initially unclear how Lucy and England are similar beyond being things that are ultimately important to him. Through further interpretations,...

Poetry Romanticism

432

How Learning Leads to The Sublime in The Works of William Wordsworth

3 pages / 1476 words

For Wordsworth, it is the human imagination and potential to not just observe, but comprehend, nature that ascribes the sublime meaning. Without human cognizance, the objects and elements of the sublime are just physical tokens. Man’s finite existence and the sublime’s apparent totality appear in...

Poetry Romanticism William Wordsworth

433

Comparison of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's and William Wordsworth's Literary Style

3 pages / 1222 words

In their Lyrical Ballads, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth experimented with traditional forms by interpreting them in a fresh manner. Although they garnered little attention upon their publication, the Ballads stepped outside of the established boundaries concerning not only meter and form but subject...

Poetry Romanticism

434

Analysis of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"

3 pages / 1160 words

Wordsworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” is a short and powerful poem that centers around the loss of someone close to the speaker. The poem is composed of two four line stanzas, which both follow a simple ABAB rhyme scheme and are based on...

Poetry Romanticism

435

William Wordsworth’s Expostulation and Reply: a Neoclassical and Romantic Analysis

5 pages / 2229 words

The first volume of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) was published, as Wordsworth states in Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), “…as an experiment.” (482). The introduction to Lyrical Ballads by William Richey and Daniel Robinson suggests that the experiment contested the valued literature of the...

Poetry Romanticism

436

Compassionate Colonialism in Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life

5 pages / 2081 words

Herman Melville’s Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life is both a compelling illusory story and a concerted effort to moderate the imperialist mindset of its readers. In fact, Typee is a narrative that doubles as a manifesto, a collection of Melville’s own autobiographical observations that...

Book Review Imperialism

437

Analysis of a Passage in The Prelude

5 pages / 2152 words

In the stichic passage from William Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude, the speaker, who represents Wordsworth himself, encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. The passage is a bildungsroman in verse, a coming-of-age poem that chronicles the psychological growth of the speaker. In the passage,...

Romantic Era Romanticism