William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)

Wordsworth wrote “The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” as an introduction to a book of poems written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In “The Preface,” Wordsworth set out to explain the theory behind the poems to the reading public.

It became an important literary document which helped to launch Romantic theory.

Romanticism Involves:

• Strong emotions—including those generated by horror and terror

• Value of nature and unaffected culture and language—that is, devoid of the artificial influence of education and superficiality

• Escape from the grim reality of the changing world through looking to exotic places and the past

Key Words

Emotion

horror

Exoticism

Escapism

imagination

TERRORIndustrialization

NATURE

medievalism

Influences upon Wordsworth’s Romanticism

The Rights of Man.

The French Revolution pushed forward the belief in the Rights of Man.

In a world defined by class, rich/poor, well born/lowly born, EQUALITY became important.

The idea that all men were good and noble, even the roughest people just need the same opportunities to be as refined as the upper classes.

The French Revolution

The French Revolution energized Europeans with the alluring promise that fundamental social change could be achieved, and the course of humanity radically and permanently altered.

The Declaration of Independence and its assertion that all men were created equal, had released a defiant energy into the world, the ramifications of which were manifested in the French Revolution, and evidenced in the new focus on humanity, its origins, and the rights of the individual.

Wordsworth became an exuberant supporter of the progressive ideals promulgated by the French Revolution.

He adopted the idea that all people were essentially born good.

Eventually, The Reign of Terror contradicted the notion that freedom was the essential ingredient needed to configure a harmonious, egalitarian society.

The Reign of Terror

French aristocrats were slaughtered at the guillotine as mob mentality took hold.

Women and children were not spared.

Hope in the goodness of man was lost when political rivalry between the Girodins and Jacobeans took hold.

Maximillien Robespierre formed The Revolutionary Tribunal with the aim of putting “the Enemies of the People to death.”

“Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe,

inflexible.“--Robespierre, 1794

The guillotine became a form of state control. Anyone who opposed important individuals or political groups was executed.

The terror was a dark and dangerous time. People settled old scores by naming their enemies as traitors.

The Terror left Wordsworth and other supporters of the new movement disillusioned and demoralized.

The lofty ideals and hope that flourished through bold defiance of the Ancien Regime (old order) were quickly replaced with disgust and fear (Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 328)

“On visionary views would fancy feed /Till his eye streamed with tears.”

–Wordsworth, (“Lines left upon a seat in Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Estwaite.”)

In The Prelude, Wordsworth described the promise of the regeneration of mankind:

“France standing on the top of the golden hours/And human nature seeming born again” (X, 690-3), only to reveal his disenchantment later when he wrote:

“Confusion of opinion, zeal decay’d/And lastly, utter loss of hope itself/And things to hope for” (XI, 47-8, 5-8).

Return to the Natural

Romantics rejected artifical language which had been adopted by writers and poets.

Wordsworth longed for a return to simpler forms of expression, where the true passions and emotions of man were captured.

Wordsworth wrote:

“humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language” .

Return to Natural Expression

The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and logic, had influenced poetry which had become disinterested in arousing “essential passions” and “unelaborated expressions.”

By adopting stock descriptions of nature, poets were moving away from fundamental passions, instead becoming bound by convention.

In his essay “Upon Epitaphs” published in 1880, Wordsworth proclaims, ‘I vindicate the rights and dignity of Nature…” (111).

In “Tintern Abbey” the poet reveals the resplendent glory of Nature and its power to evoke strong emotion and intensity of thought:

For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh or grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, …A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. 

Industrial Revolution• With machines and factories

came a new way of living. People left their farms and small community's to move to the city.

• They became nameless and faceless workers in grim factories.

• The natural landscape was obscured by black clouds of smoke endlessly pumping out of the chimneys.

Nature to Wordsworth was the well-spring of human passion and life. The encroaching change thrust upon the rural landscape threatened to destroy not only the tranquility, but the authenticity and hope that could only be derived from the natural world.

Wordsworth exhorted:

“Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance/Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead… protest against the wrong.”

Conclusion

Wordsworth’s sentiments had been formed by the climate of upheaval in his life time. In particular, the most defining elements were: 1. The French Revolution2. The Industrial Revolution

Works CitedAbrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: Norton, 1973. Print. ---. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1971. Print.

Thompson, E. P. The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age. New York: New, 1997. Print. Wordsworth, William. "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.