William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth ( Cockermouth , Great Britain , 1770- Rydal Mount , id., 1850). He was one of the most important English romantic poets. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge , he helped launch the Romantic era in English literature with their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 until his death in 1850 . This work had a decisive influence on the literary landscape of the 19th century . He was England ‘s poet laureate from 1843 . The strongly innovative character of his poetry, set in the suggestive landscape of the Lake District , in the north of Cumberland , lies in the choice of the protagonists, characters of humble extraction, of the theme, which is life. everyday, and language , simple and immediate.

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 Biographical Summary
• 2 Early years and education
• 3 France
• 4 First publication and Lyrical Ballads
• 5 Marriage
• 6 Critical judgments
  • 1 19th century
    • 1.1 The 20th century
  • 7 Main works
  • 8
  • 9 Source

Biographical Summary

He was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth in Cumberland , part of the picturesque Lake District .

Early years and education

The second of five brothers, when his mother died in 1778 , his father sent him to Hawkshead school . In 1783 his father died, who was a lawyer and advisor to James Lowther , 1st Earl of Lonsdale , a man much despised in the region. The inheritance consisted of about £5,000, much of it claimed from the earl, who frustrated these claims until his death in 1802 . The earl’s successor, however, paid what was claimed with interest. After the death of his father, the Wordsworth children were left under the guardianship of their uncles. Although many aspects of his childhood were positive, Wordsworth recalled bouts of loneliness and anxiety . It took him many years to recover from the death of his parents and the separation of his siblings.

He began studying at Saint John’s College , Cambridge in 1787 . In 1790 , with his friend Robert Jones , he undertook a walking trip across the continent, visiting revolutionary France . He arrived in Paris just as the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille was being celebrated , and supported the republican movement. Afterwards he was in Italy . He returned to England and, the following year, graduated from Cambridge without honors.

France

In November 1791 , Wordsworth returned to France , where he stayed for about a year. The Parisian environment led him to embrace the anarchist and libertarian ideals of so many rebellious and revolutionary thinkers of the time. His trip through Europe included the Alps and Italy . Carried away by revolutionary ideas, he repudiated not only the Christian faith but even the institution of the family and marriage. He was involved with various women, including the French woman, Annette Vallon , with whom he fell in love. In 1792 they had a daughter, Caroline . Due to lack of money and tensions between Britain and France , he returned to England that year. In 1793 , Wordsworth openly expressed his political beliefs in A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff , in which he defended atheism and the revolutionary cause, praising the execution of Louis XVI of France. Involved in the internal struggles of the Girondists, his life was in danger when Robespierre bloodily repressed his faction. The Reign of Terror separated him from the republican movement, and the war between France and Great Britain prevented him from seeing Annette and Caroline again for several years. It is possible that at this time he suffered from depression and emotional instability.

First publication and lyrical ballads

In 1793 , Wordsworth’s first poetry was published: the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches . In 1795 he received a legacy of £900, which enabled him to continue writing poetry. That same year he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge , which determined his approach to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German romanticism. The trauma caused by the separation of revolutionary France and Annette is expressed in the drama The Borderers ( 1795 ). Coleridge and Wordsworth quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797 , Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy , moved to Somerset , just a few miles from Coleridge ‘s house at Nether Stowey . Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads ( 1798 ). His poems include Tintern Abbey (Verses Written a Few Miles Beyond Tintern Abbey) and Michael , in which he shows “the tragic dignity that can be given to the story of a shepherd and his son.” (Ifor Evans). Coleridge participated in the collection with four poems, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ; These poems do not clash, either in their style or in their language, with the rest of the work. The Ballads showed a vibrant nature of a spirituality and a sensuality far removed from the cold goddess reason of the enlightened, although Wordsworth still had that democratic sensitivity and a spontaneous sympathy towards the most humble or disadvantaged classes, inspired by the revolution. Later editions of the Ballads included more poems and a Preface to the poems. This Preface is considered a central work of romantic literary theory. Wordsworth lays out what he considers the elements of a new kind of poetry, one based on the “true language of men.” He avoids the poetic diction of much 18th century poetry . He provides the famous definition of poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, of “emotions collected in calm.”

Marriage

In 1802 he traveled with his sister Dorothy to France to visit Annette and Caroline. Thanks to the success of the Lyrical Ballads and the £4,500 received upon the death of the Earl of Lonsdale, he enjoyed some financial relief, sending part of that money to Annette. It is the same year that he married Mary Hutchinson , a childhood friend, with whom Dorothy, who continued to live with them, ended up becoming close friends. The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of her five children, John. In 1802 he wrote some of his most famous sonnets, a form he used to express moving moments of his own experience: Composed upon Westminster Bridge and (I griev’d for Buonaparte with a vain And an unthinking grief).

Critical judgments

XIX century

It is difficult to imagine the evolution of English Romanticism without the Lyrical Ballads . Thanks to the limitations of copyright at the time, which allowed the publication of part of a collection by other publishers without paying royalties, his Ballads ended up being published in thousands of copies in newspapers, giving him greater fame than he would otherwise have had. had with the sole publication of his book. The first edition sold five hundred copies, a good circulation for that time, while newspapers such as The Critical Review and Lady Magazine reached figures between four thousand and ten thousand copies. His success reached the United States , where he was published in magazines such as Literary Magazine . During the Victorian era Matthew Arnold defended Wordsworth’s poetic revolution against detractors who only paid attention to his solemn appearance as poet laureate.

The 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century , there was a rediscovery of the Lyrical Ballads by critics, with numerous studies, such as that of Herbert Read ( 1930 ). From those years was the work of Basil Willey, on the English culture of the 17th and 18th centuries , which shows the relationship between the poet and empiricism and the French Revolution. Masterful is The Mirror and the Lamp by MH Abraham. A dissenting voice is that of Robert Mayo ( 1954 ), who saw in many Wordsworth characters a lack of originality and an excessive debt to eighteenth-century ballads. Very interesting are more recent studies, such as those by PD Sheats ( 1973 ) and John J. Jordan ( 1970 and 1976 ). Ifor Evans warns that, although his vision of nature was an illusion, by recording it “he achieved many experiences in the secret corners of human nature, to the point that very few sensitive minds will fail to discover in his poems something that responds to their own intuitions.”

Main works

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (Lyrical Ballads, 1798 ).

Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (Lyrical Ballads, 1800 ).

Memorials of a Tour in Scotland ( 1803 ), featuring The Solitary Reaper .

Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont ( 1805 )

The Excursion ( 1814 )

The Recluse, with his Prospectus Ecclesiastical Sonnets. In Series ( 1821 ), featuring Mutability and Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge

The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind : Advertisement ( 1850 , posthumous).

Death.

He died at Rydal Mount on 23 April 1850 and was buried at St. Oswald’s Church in Grasmere .

Fountain

• Evans, Ifor. Brief history of English literature. Barcelona: Ariel, 1985.
• English romantic poets. Origen Publishing House, 1993.
• English Romantic Poets: Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth. Planeta Editorial, 1989.
• Bilingual anthology: Wordsworth, Colleridge, Shelley and Keats. Sevilla University. Publications Secretariat, 1978.
• Reul, Paul de. William Wordsworth. Study and anthology (bilingual). Translation by Santiago González Corugedo. Júcar Editions. Col. Los Poetas no. 32. Barcelona, ​​1982.
• Wordsworth, W.. The prelude in fourteen books, 1850. Dvd Ediciones, SL Poesía, no. 65. 2003.
• Prologue to “Lyrical ballads” = (Preface to “Lyrical ballads”, 1800, 1802): bilingual edition.
• “Ed. by Eduardo Sánchez Fernandez”. Ediciones Hiperión, SL Said and done. 1999
• and Coleridge, ST Lyrical Ballads. Altaya Editions, SA 1996.
• and Coleridge, ST Lyrical Ballads (bilingual). “Ed Santiago Corugedo”. Ediciones Cátedra, SA Letras universales, no. 135, 1990
• Translation and prologue by Jaime Siles and F. Toda. National Editor. Alfar poetry collection, no. 15. Madrid, 1976.
• Translations by Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo, Fernando Maristany and Gabriel de Zendegui. Editorial Cervantes, SA Barcelona, ​​around 1922.