Anti Essays :: Free "On Wordsworth’S Conception Of Nature" Essay
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Submitted by zx8662 on July 14, 2008
In the 19th century, romanticism prevailed as the literary mainstream throughout the European continent. William Wordsworth was one of the pioneers in the romanticist movement. In his famous Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he expressed that the “humble and rustic life” was a fitter subject for poetry than what was chiefly being written at that time. Wordsworth was often described as a poet of nature, he wrote many famous poems to express his love for nature,.He held a great appreciation and respect for nature's power, beauty, and majesty.
Political history of his conception of nature
On July 14,1789, the Parisian people stormed the Bastille, which marked the outbreak of the French Revolution. Before long its great influence swept the whole European continent. In England all social contradictions sharpened in the meantime. Workers, peasants, and indeed all people of the lower classes as well as the progressive intellectuals hailed the French Revolution and its principle “ liberty, equality and fraternity”. In company with the political movement in progress, a new trend also arose in the literary world, namely, romanticism , marking a new era in English literature. Wordsworth holds that firstly the contents of a poem should focus on common country life and the beauty of nature, while the diction of a poem should be plain and vivid with the application of lower-class persons’ daily language. The two main principles posed a strong challenge to the “upper-class only” Neo-classicism and quickly went popular.
In the eighteenth century poems were supposed to serve the upper class, and the theme usually had something to do with the upper-class life. In contrast, romanticism gave much attention to the nature. As a great poet of nature, Wordsworth was the first to find words for the most elementary sensations of man face to face with natural phenomena. These sensations are universal and old, but once expressed in his poetry, become charmingly...
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