Wordsworth 4

What were the birth and death years of William Wordsworth?

Wordsworth lived from 1770 to 1850.

In which English region was Wordsworth raised and which would he later celebrate in his poetry?

He was raised in the Lake District in northwest England.

Which event on the Continent did Wordsworth experience in its idealistic phase after his graduation in 1791?

He experienced the French Revolution.

Who was the major poetical and intellectual influence on Wordsworth, with whom he co-authored Lyrical Ballads?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

What seminal volume of English Romanticism did Wordsworth and Coleridge publish in 1798?

Lyrical Ballads.

To which edition of Lyrical Ballads did Wordsworth add his famous preface, his single major piece of literary criticism?

The second edition, published in 1800.

The introductory essay identifies what decade as the period in which Wordsworth wrote most of his best poetry?

The decade from 1797 to 1807.

What title was bestowed upon Wordsworth by Queen Victoria in 1843?

He was appointed poet laureate.

The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is described as a transitional work between the rhetorical/mimetic theory of the 18th century and the _ theories of the 19th.

expressive

What were the two revolutionary aspects of Lyrical Ballads that Wordsworth sought to defend in his Preface?

Their use of a plain style and their rustic subject matter.

According to Wordsworth, why did he choose to write about "low and rustic life"?

Because there the "essential passions of the heart" are under less restraint and can attain maturity.

The 1802 additions to the Preface shifted the focus of poetry's creation from representing the outside world to attending to what?

The voice within the poet.

What is Wordsworth's famous definition of poetry, added in the 1802 version of the Preface?

Poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."

How did Wordsworth describe the poet's unique internal makeup?

As a person "endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness…than are supposed to be common among mankind."

What process allows a poet to internalize an experience and call it up later as if participating in it?

The poet can "let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with" those he describes.

Wordsworth's theory of poetic creation, involving "emotion recollected in _", suggests the feeling is purified but may "fall short" of reality.

tranquillity

In Wordsworth's expressive theory, how is the validity of the poet's feeling measured?

By a subjective, internal measure: the poet's faith that his words are emanations of reality and truth.

In the Preface, what was the stated purpose of publishing the first volume of Lyrical Ballads?

As an experiment to see how much pleasure could be imparted by fitting the real language of men to metrical arrangement.

Which four poems in the original Lyrical Ballads were contributed by Coleridge?

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the "Foster-Mother's Tale," "The Nightingale," and "Love."

What did Wordsworth identify as the "principal object" of his poems in Lyrical Ballads?

To choose incidents from common life and describe them in the language really used by men, while adding a coloring of imagination.

Besides being less restrained, what is another reason Wordsworth gives for choosing subjects from rural life?

The elementary feelings of rural people co-exist in a state of greater simplicity and are more durable.

Why does Wordsworth believe the language of rustic men is "more philosophical" than that of other poets?

Because it arises from repeated experience and regular feelings and is less influenced by social vanity.

Wordsworth states that all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, but it is only produced by a person who has also done what?

Thought long and deeply.

According to Wordsworth, what gives importance to the action and situation in his poems, distinguishing them from popular poetry?

The feeling developed therein.

What contemporary trend does Wordsworth criticize for blunting the mind and creating a "degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation"?

The vogue for frantic novels, German tragedies, and extravagant stories in verse.

What stylistic device, common in 18th-century poetry, does Wordsworth state he has utterly rejected as a mechanical device?

Personifications of abstract ideas.

Wordsworth argues that the language of a large portion of every good poem must necessarily, except for meter, in no respect differ from what?

The language of good prose.

What is Wordsworth's primary argument concerning the relationship between the language of poetry and prose?

That there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between them.

How does Wordsworth define a poet in his famous "What is a poet?" section?

He is a man speaking to men.

What special ability does Wordsworth attribute to the poet regarding absent things?

A disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present.

Wordsworth states that a poet must have a greater power in expressing thoughts and feelings that arise in him without what?

Immediate external excitement.

According to Wordsworth, the poet writes under only one restriction. What is it?

The necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human being.

How does Wordsworth contrast the knowledge of the poet with that of the man of science?

The poet's knowledge is a natural inheritance, while the scientist's is a personal acquisition.

What does Wordsworth call "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge"?

Poetry.

Wordsworth argues that the poet binds together the vast empire of human society by what two things?

By passion and knowledge.

How does Wordsworth believe the poet's language can differ from that of other men who feel vividly?

He argues that it cannot differ in any material degree.

Why, according to Wordsworth, do poets not write for poets alone?

Because they write for men, and must use the language of men to excite rational sympathy.

What is one of the main reasons Wordsworth gives for choosing to write in verse (meter)?

To superadd the charm which, by consent of all nations, is acknowledged to exist in metrical language.

What is the primary function of meter in pathetic or painful situations, according to Wordsworth?

It tempers and restrains the passion by divesting the language of some of its reality.

Wordsworth claims that more pathetic situations can be endured in _ composition than in prose.

metrical

What principle does Wordsworth identify as the great spring of the mind's activity and a chief cause of pleasure in meter?

The perception of similitude in dissimilitude.

Describe the first step in Wordsworth's poetic process, which follows the initial experience of a powerful feeling.

The emotion is contemplated until by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears.

In Wordsworth's process of composition, what kind of emotion is produced in the mind after contemplating the original one in tranquillity?

An emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation.

What state of mind does Wordsworth say the poet should ensure the reader experiences, even when describing deep passions?

The reader's mind should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure.

What is the key difference, according to Wordsworth, between Dr. Johnson's parody stanza and the stanza from "Babes in the Wood"?

The matter expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is contemptible and uninteresting.

What is the "one request" Wordsworth makes of his reader when judging his poems?

That the reader decide by their own feelings genuinely, not by reflecting on the probable judgment of others.

Wordsworth suggests that an accurate taste in poetry is not innate but is rather what?

An acquired talent, produced by thought and long intercourse with the best models of composition.

Wordsworth's defense of his poetic practice in terms of providing "just representations of general nature" recalls the values of which literary figure?

Samuel Johnson.

Wordsworth's theory is contrasted with the "celestial ascending rhetoric" of which other Romantic poet?

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

According to the introductory essay, who criticized Wordsworth's theories of poetic diction in Biographia Literaria?

His friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.