Wordsworth and Romanticism

Wordsworths Lifeborn in 1770 Lake Districtwhen he was 8, his mother died. his father died, when William was 13

Cockermouth, Cumbria

Wordsworths Earliest House

Home Lifefather was an estate managerThe family lived wellView of the kitchen and fine china

Williams Schoolinglocal Grammar school poetry

Undergraduate YearsSt Johns College, Cambridge In the summer of 1790landscape & Revolution

The Savoie region of the Alps, through which Wordsworth and Jones traveLled in the summer of 1791The French Alps

Dove Cottage, Wordsworths home from 1799-1809DorothyMary HutchinsonHome

Wordsworths Mature Yearsthe Lake District Poet Laureate Died in 1850

Society and Influencesa reaction to the world the Industrial Revolution and Nature Lyrical Ballads, with Coleridge, in 1798. a break with the Renaissance

His Own Poetryfocus = the simple miracle of perception and experience.thought long and deeply.vivid, direct images and descriptions.lyrical blank verse

London, 1802Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,Have forfeited their ancient English dower5Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;Oh! raise us up, return to us again;And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: 10Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,So didst thou travel on life's common way,In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heartThe lowliest duties on herself did lay.

I Wandered Lonely as a CloudI wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; 5Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line 10Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: 15A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed---and gazed---but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie 20In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

Wordsworths Legacythe start of the Romantic movement.rural life is considered to be a haven celebrated the immediate, the emotional and the personal a valuing of personal experience and reaction His contemporaries: Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley