William Wordsworth and the Romantic Imagination

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30 June 2008

William Wordsworth and the Romantic Imagination

William Wordsworth is one of the most influential Romantic poets who created a unique style of writing based on ideals of nature and imagination . His poetry was based on Romantic ideas opposed to Realism Snatches of realism remain very welcome to Romantic sensationalists especially as an escape from the starched dignities of Classicism . The Romantic reaction was healthy but , like most reactions , it became extravagant and so unhealthy in its turn . As a

Romantic writer Wordsworth 's style grows more eloquent , more magical in the music of phrase and imagery , more impressive in the frank intensity of his feeling an imagination , in the atmosphere that passion can create Thesis Wordsworth applies romantic imagination to theme and stylistic devices which help him to unveil unique feelings and settings of his poems

In Hart-Leap Well nature herself is explicitly present in the poem there are numerous comments on what she can , cannot , will , will not do And there is the assurance , in the last stanza of the poem , that she is the primary teacher here , not the poem nor the poet nor the storyteller Characters in the poem , like its readers , are taught by Nature-- "Taught both by what she shows , and what conceals (Wordsworth 178 . Wordsworth uses Romantic imagination when uses a telling phrase and a crucial idea that Nature 's teaching is done both by revealing and concealing . A poem that teaches in Nature 's way must be a mixture of revealing and concealing also . What is actually revealed in the poem is , as usual with Wordsworth , quite straightforward , as long as we stick with only the overt revelations . The poem is actually two short stories . One is the almost casual tale of a traveler who narrates his own adventure and who like every poetic persona , both is and is not the poet himself (Abrams Meyer 54 . The traveler on horseback tells of coming alone and by chance upon a sight which arrests his attention and his movement . The sight is not particularly impressive and could easily be passed without notice

It chanced that I saw standing in a dell

Three aspens as three corners of a square

And one , not four yards distant , near a well (Wordsworth 102

Wordsworth as poet achieved exactly what he wanted to do : he conveyed not so much his own thoughts or judgments but , he conveyed the inspiration to the process of thought . In The Prelude where he denounces miseducation and specifically denounces "how books mislead us " he expresses his hopes for his own writings , his own books , his determination to make "verse / Deal boldly with substantial things (Wordsworth 35 . In these stirring words , which remain substantially the same from their composition in 1804 to their publication in 1850 , he writes

haply shall I teach

Inspire through unadulterated ears

Pour rapture , tenderness , and hope ,--my theme (Wordsworth 132

This approach , based on Romantic imagination , is one that requires...