Unit-I Wordsworth, St Coleridge

UNIT-I WORDSWORTH, S.T. COLERIDGE NOTES Structure 1.0 Objectives 1.1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1.1.1 Works of Wordsworth 1.1.2 Wordsworth: Religion of Nature 1.1.3 Didactic Note in Wordsworth’s Poetry 1.1.4 Wordsworth’s poetic genius 1.1.5 Tintern Abbey 1.1.6 Ode on Intimations of Immortality 1.1.7 Ode To Duty 1.1.8 Some Important Explanations 1.2 S. T. COLERIDGE 1.2.1 Coleridge as a poet of the Supernatural 1.2.2 Coleridge as a poet 1.2.3 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1.2.4 Treatment of the Supernatural 1.2.5 Some Important Explanations 1.3 Comprehension Exercises 1.4 Let Us Sum Up 5 1.0 OBJECTIVES In Unit I our objective is to acquaint you with William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge. Besides discussing their life and works in general, we have chosen NOTES three poems of Wordsworth— Tintern Abbey, Ode to the Intimations of Immortality, and Ode to Duty—for our critical study, and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as well. You will be able to: Speak on the poets and their works in general. Offer summaries of the general poems. Critically analyze their worth. 1.1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Birth and Parentage William Wordsworth, the second of five children, was born on April 7th in 1770 at Cockermouth, in Cumberland. Hs father was the attorney to the Earl of Lonsdale, and his mother came from a family of good social standing of Penrith. He was unlucky enough to lose his mother when only eight years old, and father when only fourteen. At Hawkshead It was only by the generosity of his uncles that the poet could be educated. At eight years, he was sent to school at Hawkshead, where he was allowed to read whatever books he liked. The country-world was his real school and education. As he tells us in the Prelude, even his moral nature took shape due to his education in the school of Dame Nature. At Cambridge In 1787, he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate. He did not care much for the university curriculum; his education was mainly carried on by self-chosen reading and by communion with nature. His first summer vacations was passed among his boyish haunts at Hawkshead and the second at Penrith, where he met Dorothy again after a long separation. It was at this time, in the company of his sister Dorothy, that he met Mary Hutchinson and 6 thus was laid the foundations of that love which thirteen years later culminated in an ideally perfect marriage. In the third summer vacations, he went with a college friend on a walking tour of France and Switzerland. He landed at Calais, “on the very eve of that great federal day,” when the trees of liberty were planted all over France. He took his B. A. degree in 1791, and then settled in London, but without NOTES any definite plans for his future career. Wordsworth and the French Revolution In November 1791, Wordsworth paid a second visit to France. At Orleans, he formed an intimate friendship with the republican Beaupuis. He returned to Paris in October 1792, a month after the September massacres. It was also during this visit to France that he fell violently in love with Annette Vallon and had a daughter, Caroline, by her. His subsequent conduct towards the innocent girl he had seduced still remains a blot on his fair name. Moral Crisis in his Life The excesses of the revolutionaries and the declaration of war between England and France in 1793 badly shattered the poet’s dream of a newborn world through liberty. It was the healing influence of the society of his beloved sister, Dorothy, and of his friend Coleridge. Coleridge and the “Lyrical Ballads” About the year 1796, a young friend and admirer of the poet left him an annual legacy of £ 1900. He now settled with his sister Dorothy at Racedown, and from here shifted to Alfoxden near the Quantock Hills in 1797, thus became a close neighbour of S T Coleridge, his life-long friend, then residing at Nether Stoway. The close companionship between the two resulted in the publication of the epoch-making Lyrical Ballads in 1798. After the publication of this volume, the Wordsworth left on a tour of Germany. They passed the winter at Goslar, where the poet produced some of his best poems, including the exquisite group of love-poems on “Lucy”. Marriage –Peace and Happiness Towards the end of 1799, Wordsworth settled at Townsend in Grasmere, and in October 1802, he married Mary Hutchinson. Henceforward he lived an ideal poet’s life dedicated to the ideal of, “plain living and high thinking”. 7 Last Years—Bereavements: Death He had five children, of whom the death of two—Catherine and Thomas—about the year 1812, was a severe shock to him. He could no longer remain at the parsonage and moved to Rydal Mount, his favourite and last abode. NOTES His intensely loved and venerated brother, John, died in 1805, and his sister, Dorothy, fell seriously ill in 1832, and became a permanent invalid. The death of Coleridge in 1834, of Sara Hutchinson soon after, and of his daughter, Dora, in 1847, cast a dark shadow over the poet’s last years. He died of pleurisy in 1850, at the age of eighty. 1.1.1 WORKS OF WORDSWORTH Works of Wordsworth Wordsworth was a prolific writer, his poetic span covers a period of more than sixty years, and so far as the bulk of this poetry is concerned, few can challenge comparison with him. Herbert Read divides his period of creative activity into the following four parts: The Early Period (the period before 1791): The best-known poems of this period are the Descriptive Sketches and Evening Walk. Both these poems are in the orthodox heroic couplet, and in both there is much to remind us of the conventional 18th century poetic style. The poems are proof of the fact that he is in love with nature and renders her faithfully and accurately. The Period of Gloom It is the period of guilt and remorse, which is from 1792 to 1797. Wordsworth had already been to France, had already met Annette Vallon, and a sense of guilt haunted him. His feeling of remorse and his gloom find expression in the unsuccessful tragedy, the Borderers, Guilt and Sorrow, and Margaret, or The Ruined Cottage. 8 The Glorious Decade It is the decade in which the poet’s powers were at their zenith and in which he produced his best works. These were days of peace and contentment. The chief achievements of this remarkable decade are: NOTES The Lyrical Ballads (1798), containing along with many other admirable pieces, such works as Lines Written in Early Spring, Michael, Fountain, etc., and ending with the Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey. The Lyrical Ballads proved very popular. Peter Bell was published in 1819. The famous “Lucy” group of poems composed early in 1799, during a German tour, while staying at Goslar. To this period also belong Lucy Gray, Nutting, and Ruth. The spiritualising touch of Wordsworth is to be noted in these poems. The Prelude, or the account of the growth of a poet’s mind, commenced in 1799 and completed in 1805, though published only after the poet’s death in 1850. It is an autobiographical poem running into fourteen books. The Immortality Ode begun in 1802 on the eve of his happy marriage and completed in 1805. The great poems of the period from 1804 to 1807 include Ode to Duty, Highland Girl, Solitary Reaper, Affliction of Margaret, Happy Warrior, Resolution and Independence, Peele Castle, To the Cuckoo, My Heart Leaps Up, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, etc. All these poems were included in the two volumes of his poetry published in 1807. The Excursion begun about the year 1802 and published in 1814. It runs into nine books and was intended to form a part of The Recluse. It is a work of unequal merit. Wordsworth was inspired to write sonnets on hearing the sonnets of Milton read out to him in 1801. The best of his sonnets are: Sonnet on the Sonnet, Milton, Upon Westminster Bridge, The World is Too Much Us, and the series on The River Duddon. The Period of Decline The period of decline is from 1808 to 1850. After 1807, the poet’s powers began to decline. The process started in 1807, and reached its consummation in 1815. In lines composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty in 1818, we have, “our last glimpse of Wordsworth in the full and peculiar power of his genius.” Such is the poetic career of one of the greatest poets of England, 9 one to whom Matthew Arnold assigns a place next only to Shakespeare and Milton. 1.1.2 WORDSWORTH: RELIGION OF NATURE NOTES Wordsworth: Religion of Nature Or Wordsworth: Education of Nature: His Pantheism: Nature as a Teacher Or Wordsworth’s Treatment of Nature Or Stages in the Development of Wordsworth’s Nature-love Wordsworth’s Originality as a Nature Poet Wordsworth is called the “harbinger of Nature”, the ‘high-priest of nature’, and the ‘worshiper of nature,’ as he was the poet of nature par excellence and his chief originality is to be found in his poetry of nature. From his very boyhood the external world was the most important formative influence on him.

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