• Romantic Ideology in William Wordsworth’s Poetry

    ABSTRACT

    The present study focus on the Romantic elements in William Wordsworth’s poetry. Wordsworth was a pillar among all the poets of romantic era, whose poetry reveals his thought process of using natural things like rocks and trees, shepreds, birds, clouds, flowers, peasant girl like lucy and farmers, mothers .Nature and there surroundings are the key concept in romantic poetry. In the preface to the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth asserts about romantic poetry , “The principal object, then which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose incident and situations from life, and to relate or describe them throughout as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men[1] …

    KEY WORDS : Romantic , Nature, Worship, Humanity , Mystic, Reaper, Boyish, priest ,Imagination , Fancy, Emotion, Man .

    INTRODUCTION

    William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ,a British poet was born in Cockermouth, in the north of the lake country. His early poems published in1793and credited with ushering in the English Romantic Movement with the publication of lyrical ballads (1798) in collaboration with S.T.Coleridge. Wordsworth’s poetry is filled with the atmosphere of peace , harmony and man’s kinship with the natural element as a source of pleasure. He announces a return to nature , return to simplicity , to simple themes with ordinary language , and teaches that nature is the source of inspiration for the true poet. As prof. Morley asserts :
    Wordsworth effected a wholesome deliverance when he attacked the artificial diction, the personifications, the barren rhymes and mono- tonous metres, Which the reigning taste had approved.[2]

    Wordsworth poetry is endowed by Nature . Critic remarks about the Wordsworth’s interpretation of nature as: “ led him deeper into the heart of things” and “because the basis of a transcendent fait and philosophy of life” which embodies “the conception of Nature as healer and Revealer.”[3] Wordsworth’s great poems include lyrics , odes, songs like “The Solitary Reaper”, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “Ode To Duty”, “Ode on the Imitation of Immortality”, “Tintern Abbey”, “Daffodils”, “To The Cuckoo”, “Micheal”, “My heart Leaps Up”, “The Solitary Reaper”, “Lucy Gray”, “The Tables Turned” etc . The world Encyclopedia says;
    Wordsworth referred a reflective vacant and pensive mood to a rest-less research for scientific knowledge. He believed that we learn more by communicating with nature of talking to country people rather than reading books. He believed that harmony with nature is the source of all goodness and truth.[4]

    OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

    1. The study aims at finding out romantic perspectives in the William Wordsworth poetry and to introduce the readers about what romantic poetry is all about.
    2. The study aims to understand the interrelation between Nature and man.
    3. The study measures the thought process and imagination of a poet.

    LITERATURE REVIEW

    The romantic movement in English poetry is generally described as a “ Return to Nature”. The term romantic was first adopted by the German critic Friedrich Schlegel. It’s root’s can be found in the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Imma-nuel Kant, philosophers and writers associated with the Romantic movement include Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), and Friedrich Wilhelm, Josep Von Schelling (1775-1854), and George Wilhem Friedrich HegelinGermany, S.T.Coleridge(1772-1834) and William Wordsworth(1770-1850)in Britain. The romantic movement was officially inaugurated by the publication of Lyrical Ballads .

    Romanticism is a reaction against the literary principles of the eighteenth century -the age of Prose and Reason. The Romantics celebrate the natural goodness of man , primitivism, emotion , sense of wonder and mystery , idealism , beauty, ima – gination and fancy , spiritualized nature , melancholy , instinct for elemental simplicity , sharpened sensibilities and heightened imaginative feelings. The term romanticism has been defined by many writers. As Pater calls it the “addition of strangeness to beauty.” Evans considers that all Romantic poets, “had a deep interest in Nature, not as a centre of beautiful scenes but as a informing and spiritual influences on life”.[5] The romantic movement was marked by a strong reaction of 18th century poetry of rule and custom, it is a poetry of nature beauty . The poems often a spontaneous overflow of powerful passion, these poets gifted with a strong “organic sensibility”.

    WORDSWORTH’S POETRY

    William Wordsworth’s poetry is a keen observation of all the characteristic of romanticism, he asserts poetry as a history and science of feelings. Nature is an independent subject for Wordsworth’s poetry. The concept of the use of natural details points out in two directions : The emphasis can fall on the function of the detail in a given poetic context, or on the rhetorical device into which it is fashioned. It can be seen in terms of what it contributes to the “meaning” may be directed or liberated. Wordsworth asserts that Nature must be described and observed with truth and freshness. He asks why should poetry be :

    “A history of departed things
    Or a mere fiction of what – never was?
    For the discerning intellect of man,
    When wedded to this goodly universe.
    In Love and holy passion, shall find these
    A simple produce of the common day.”[6]

    Wordsworth announces a return to simplest sights of nature and man. He tells us in “Tintern Abbey” that as a child he bounded over hill and dale, like a roe:

    The sounding cataract
    Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
    Their colours and their forms, were then to me
    An apetite; a feeling and a love,(76-80)

    Further in same poem Wordsworth approach to Nature is that of a Mystic. It is based on his conviction that God pervades the entire universe. He felt immanent through the universe,

    A motion and a spirit that impels,
    All thinking things, all objects of al thought
    All rolls through all things therefore am I still
    A Lover of the meadows and the woods,(100-103)

    Wordsworth accepts Nature as a guide and teacher in “The Table Turned”,

    One impulse from the vernal wood
    Can teach you more of man,
    of moral evil and of good
    Than all the sages can.

    Wordsworth believes that, “ Nature never did betray , The heart that loved her.” He spiritualizes Nature. The ordinary sights and sounds of nature brings new thought and imagination to his poems. For instance, his heart is captivated by the sights of the flowers:

    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude;
    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
    And dances with the daffodils.

    The lines are worth quoting :

    Whenever on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood;
    They flash upon the inward eye
    Which is the bliss o solitude.

    Nature is a living entity for him, and he considered nature as the external manifestation of god. He observes nature communicating itself to him:

    In all things , in all natures, in the stars.
    This active principle abides from link to link
    It circulates the soul of all the worlds

    Further, “The Solitary Reaper” is a good illustration of Wordsworth’s poetry in both matter and manner as:

    I listened, motionless and still;
    And as I mounted up the hill,
    The music in my heart I bore,
    Long after it was heard no more.(29-32)

    CONCLUSION

    The above study noticed about the focus in Romantic Era from the upper aristocratic class to the common humble person. The major interest in Wordsworth poetry is the beauty and satisfactions derive from nature. A study makes the conclusion that harmony with nature is the source of all goodness. He is regarded as a greatest Nature poet in English Literature who chooses nature as an independent subject for his poetry.

    REFERENCES

    1. Wordsworth ,William. Lyricall Ballads (1800) 2. Vols,Vol.I,p.7.
    2. Morley, John. Introduction,The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth,(London,1924),p.ixi.
    3. Strong, Archibalad Thomas. Three Studies in Shelley and an Essay on Nature in Wordsworth and Meredith.(1921),p.32.
    4. The World Book Encyclopaedia-Vol.16,1990
    5. Evans, I for. A Short History of English Literature.3 ed.1974,p.65.
    6. Wordsworth, William.Recluse, ii.804-809
    7. Wordsworth, William. The Complete Works of William Wordsworth,Prefatory Essays and Notes, Vol.10(paper back), pub:Cambridge Scholars.Publishing , publishing,2009. All subsequent references of poems are from this volume.

    ******************************

    Sukhwinder Kaur
    Research Scholar