WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AS A

ROMANTIC POET
PROJECT
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of degree
OR BACHELOR OF ARTS IN

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

From University of Calicut
School of Distance Education

Submitted By

NIRANJANA T M
Reg No: SKARAEG004
DISTANCE EDUCATION
MARCH 2020
DECLARATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
CONTENTS
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
ROMANTICISM
Romanticism, an artistic and intellectual movement took place in Europe between the late 18th
and mid-19th centuries. It's broadly considered as a break from the guiding principles of the
Enlightenment – which established reason as the foundation of all knowledge – the Romantic
Movement emphasized the importance of emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity. For
the Romantics, imagination, rather than reason, was the most important creative faculty.

ROMANTICISM IN LITERATURE
Romanticism in English literature started in the late 18th century, by the poets like William Blake,
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It continued into the nineteenth century with
the second-generation Romantic poets, most notably Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Lord
Byron. In contrast to the reasoned detachment of the Enlightenment, the poetic works of Blake,
Wordsworth and Coleridge were characterized by their emotional sensitivity and reverence for
nature. Though the second generation of Romantic poets, especially Shelley and Byron, became
notorious for their subversive and salacious works, later Romantic poetry also retained many
characteristics established by Blake and Wordsworth. Keats’ odes, much like the poetry of
Wordsworth, took inspiration from nature, and Bryon’s poetry had a strong introspective
character. Shelley, Byron and Keats also acquired a posthumous reputation as ‘Romantic’
because many aspects of their lives – including their travels around Europe and the fact they died
young – conformed to the emerging nineteenth-century ideal-type of a Romantic hero.

ROMANTICISM IN ART
Nature was one of the major source of inspiration in the visual arts of the Romantic Movement.
Breaking with the longer tradition of historical and allegorical paintings, which took scenes from
history or the Bible as their principle subject matter, Romantic artists like J. M. W. Turner and
John Constable – as well as print-makers and engravers like Samuel Palmer and Thomas Bewick
– chose instead to depict the natural world, most notably landscapes and maritime scenes.
Romantic artists depicted nature to be not only beautiful but powerful, unpredictable and
destructive. This constituted a radical departure from Enlightenment representations of the
natural world as orderly and benign.
 ROMANTICISM IN MUSIC
The Romantic Movement in music originated in Beethoven, whose later works drew upon and
developed the classical styles of Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven’s later symphonies and piano
sonatas were made distinctive by their expressiveness and strong emotive quality. These
characteristics set the tone for successive generations of Romantic composers in Europe,
including Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. Romantic music was also
highly innovative and technically adventurous. While virtuoso soloist Franz Liszt dazzled
audiences in the great concert halls of Europe with his masterly performances and never-before-
seen techniques, Polish-born prodigy Frédéric Chopin amazed Parisian salons with his expressive
and emotionally complex piano pieces. The Romantic period was also the ‘golden age’ of opera
in Europe, with composers such as Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner combining music, lyrics
and visual imagery to construct dramatic narratives which continue to captivate audiences today.

ROMANTICISM AS A MIND SET

Romanticism may be best understood not as a movement, but as a mind-set. The artists, poets
and musicians of the Romantic period were united by their determination to use their art to
convey an emotion or provoke an emotional response from audiences. There was also something
pioneering – almost revolutionary – about Romanticism. It involved breaking with the past and
consciously moving away from the ideas and traditions of the Enlightenment. In so doing,
Romanticism fundamentally changed the prevailing attitudes toward nature, emotion, reason
and even the individual.
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Poet (1770–1850)

LIFELINE
Born in England in 1770, He's worked with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads (1798). The
collection, which contained Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," introduced Romanticism to English
poetry. Wordsworth also showed his affinity for nature with the famous poem "I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud." He became England's poet laureate in 1843, a role he held until his death in
1850.

HIS EARLY LIFE

Poet William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cocker mouth, Cumberland, England.
Wordsworth’s mother died when he was 7, and he was an orphan at 13. Despite these losses, he
did well at Hawks head Grammar School—where he wrote his first poetry—and went on to study
at Cambridge University. He did not excel there but managed to graduate in 1791.

Wordsworth had visited France in 1790—amid the French Revolution—and was a supporter of
the new government’s republican ideals. On a return trip to France the next year, he fell in love
with Annette Vallon, who became pregnant. However, the declaration of war between England
and France in 1793 separated the two. Left adrift and without income in England, Wordsworth
was influenced by radicals such as William Godwin.

AS A YOUNG POET
In 1795, Wordsworth received an inheritance that allowed him to live with his younger sister,
Dorothy. That same year, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The two became friends and
together worked on Lyrical Ballads (1798). The volume contained poems such as Coleridge's
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," and helped Romanticism take
hold in English poetry. The same year that Lyrical Ballads was published, Wordsworth began
writing The Prelude, an epic autobiographical poem that he would revise throughout his life (it
was published posthumously in 1850). While working on The Prelude, Wordsworth produced
other poetry, such as "Lucy." He also wrote a preface for the second edition of Lyrical Ballads; it
described his poetry as being inspired by powerful emotions and would come to be seen as a
declaration of Romantic principles.

In 1802, a temporary lull in fighting between England and France meant that Wordsworth was
able to see Vallon and their daughter, Caroline. After returning to England, he wed Mary
Hutchinson, who gave birth to the first of their five children in 1803. Wordsworth was also still
writing poetry, including the famous "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "Ode: Intimations of
Immortality." These pieces were published in another Wordsworth collection, Poems, in Two
Volumes (1807).