William Wordsworth. Textual Analysis- The Daffodils (1807) (Lect. 38)

William Wordsworth: Life and Works up to 1807

Early Life

  • Birth and Family Background: Born on April 7, 1770, in the Lake District, England, Wordsworth was the second of five children born to an estate manager, John Wordsworth.

  • Orphanhood: Wordsworth faced early tragedies; his mother passed away when he was just 7 years old, and his father died when he was 13, which profoundly affected his outlook on life.

  • Education: He and his siblings were sent to grammar school in Hawkshead, where he received a strong educational foundation in classics, literature, and mathematics. His education was instrumental in shaping his future literary pursuits.

  • Influence of Nature: The breathtaking natural beauty of the Lake District had a significant impact on Wordsworth's poetry, encapsulated in his reflection: "I grew up fostered alike by beauty and by fear."

University and Early Influences

  • Higher Education: In 1787, Wordsworth attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he became disillusioned by the competitive atmosphere, making him feel alienated from his peers.

  • Republican Sympathies: A transformative experience was his walking tour through revolutionary France in 1790, during which he developed significant republican sentiments that would influence his later works.

  • Romantic Relationship: While in France, he engaged in a romantic relationship with Annette Vallon. However, due to the political turmoil and subsequent war, they were separated before the birth of their child, Caroline.

Struggles

  • Dark Times in London: During his time in London, Wordsworth struggled with feelings of isolation among radical thinkers, which fostered empathy for the marginalized individuals affected by societal upheaval during the late 18th century.

  • Reunion with Sister: In 1795, Wordsworth rediscovered happiness upon reuniting with his beloved sister, Dorothy. They later settled at Alfoxden House in 1797, which became a critical environment for his creative output.

Works up to 1807

The Great Decade (1797-1808)

  • Productive Period: This period was marked by prolific creativity at Alfoxden House, including key collaborations with fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

  • Shift in Poetic Style: Wordsworth transitioned from composing lengthy descriptive poems to shorter, more lyrical pieces that emphasized emotional depth and individual experience.

Notable Works During This Period

  • "Lyrical Ballads" (1798): This groundbreaking collection was co-authored with Coleridge, featuring influential works such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth’s own "Tintern Abbey." The volume marked a significant turn towards Romanticism.

  • "The Prelude" (published 1850): He began composing this autobiographical poem, which would later be recognized as one of his major contributions to English literature.

Significant Poems

  • Short Poetic Works: His famous short poems include the "Lucy" and "Matthew" elegies, known for their emotional resonance and exploration of themes of loss and nature.

  • Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads" (1800): This edition saw the inclusion of new works, including "The Brothers" and "Michael," which further solidified his reputation.

“The Daffodils” Composition

Inspiration

  • Creation of the Poem: Written in 1804, the iconic poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" was inspired by a walk he took with his sister Dorothy near Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater, two years earlier.

  • Sister’s Influence: Dorothy herself wrote a detailed description of the daffodils in her journal. Wordsworth admitted his debt to her account, which he drew upon two years later in his poem:

  • Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal, Thursday, 15 April 1802

    • "When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park ... we saw that there was a long belt of [daffodils] along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.'

Original Structure

  • Initial Version: The first version consisted of three stanzas, revealing Wordsworth’s thoughts on nature and solitude.
    The original poem consisted on only three stanzas. In the manuscript that the poet sent to the printer (see below), the opening line has been corrected from "I wandered like a lonely cloud".

  • Revisions in 1815: The poem was later revised to include a fourth stanza and adjustments to certain phrases, enhancing its emotional depth and lyrical quality.
    Wordsworth revised the poem in 1815, adding a fourth stanza between the first and second. He also made some lexical changes: for example, "golden" for
    "dancing"; "ten thousand" for "fluttering and”.

Early and Later Reception

  • Initial CritiquesEarly reaction to the poem was not favourable. The poet Anna Seward said that the poem produced "astonishment and disgust", and that that Wordsworth had imposed "metaphysical importance upon trivial themes". The reviewer in The Satirist asked how anyone could think it worthwhile to write about his memories of some daffodils blowing about in the wind; similarly, the writer for the Annual Review criticized Wordsworth for attaching
    "exquisite emotions" to objects in which no one else had the least interest.

  • Later Appreciation: Despite the negative early reviews, the poem gradually gained recognition as one of Wordsworth's greatest shorter works. In 1806 the poet Samuel Rogers said that he had "dwelt particularly on the beautiful idea of the 'Dancing Daffodils'". Today it is among the most popular poems in the English language.

  • Relationship in later works: James A. Butler has called the poem "a miniature
    Prelude'" (51). Especially pertinent here is the notion Wordsworth introduces in Book XI of his great long poem The Prelude, namely "spots of time," impressive moments from our past that are colored in our memory by an awareness of the mind's sublime power and that 'retain / A renovating Virtue' (11.258-60). The vision of the daffodils can be seen as just such a 'spot', an event
    "recollected in tranquility" two years later, and that has a renovating power.

Textual Analysis

  • First Stanza: Focuses on perception with words like "saw" and "gaz’d" to evoke the speaker’s solitude, using communal language for the daffodils, thus illustrating a ‘pathetic fallacy’ that imbues nature with human-like joy.

  • Second Stanza: Offers a fresh perspective, likening the daffodils to stars in the Milky Way, suggesting notions of the infinite and sublime experience of nature.

  • Third Stanza: Explores the contrast between immediate experiences and future recollections, highlighting the significance of memory in shaping emotional bonds with nature.

  • Fourth Stanza: Marks a transition to introspection, where memories of the daffodils come to life in the poet’s mind, effectively capturing the transformation of ordinary experiences into profound emotional reflections that resonate with readers.

additional notes (PPT)

  • First stanza

    • The first two stanzas revolve around the action of the speaker seeing, as emphasized by the verbs 'saw' and 'gaz'd.' The opening stanza establishes the centrality of the point of view the poetic "I", described as solitary and looking down from on high at the flowers (the comparison of the poet with a cloud reverses the later description of nature in anthropomorphic terms).

    • The daffodils instead, are described in human terms ("crowd"; the noun "host", in apposition to "crowd", underlines their large number in human terms, since the word means literally "An armed company or multitude of men" (Oxford English Dictionary). Their "dancing" is likewise a human action. In this poem Wordsworth uses what John Ruskin termed the 'pathetic fallacy', the attribution of human behaviour and emotion to things found in nature.

  • Second stanza

    • This is the stanza that Wordsworth added in 1815. It opens up a new perspective by comparing the daffodils to stars in the Milky way. This may have to do with the title of the relevant section of the 1815 collection, namely "Poems of the Imagination". In his discussion of the imagination in the Preface to the volume, Wordsworth states that the imagination is nothing less than "a sublime consciousness of the soul in her own mighty and almost divine powers." Matthew C. Brennan has suggested that this stanza "imagines [the daffodils] as infinite" so that the poem as a whole can be read as "an experience of the sublime.'

    • The consciousness of the perceiving eye/l is suggested by the new dance simile in line 12, where the quality "sprightly" is evidently an attribution by the poet himself. The subjectivity of the lyric speaker is one of the primary concerns of the poem.

  • Third stanza

    • This stanza contraposes two different moments in time - the moment of the event, and that of the future recollection to come. At the time of the encounter with the daffodils, the poet does not realize the significance it will have for him in future.
      There is thus a temporal and cognitive contrast between the earlier act of visual perception ("I gazed--and gazed-") and the later act of recall and reflection.

    • At the same time, these verses dramatize the imagined emotional exchange between the poet's own happy state and the same feeling that he projects onto the flowers themselves ("glee" "jocund company"), in an apparently perfect symbiosis with nature.

  • Fourth stanza

    • The fourth stanza takes us out of nature, bringing us indoors with the poet 'in vacant or in pensive mood': here, it is the daffodils that seem to become the subjects of the action, activating the later visual image-'They flash upon that inward eye.' The mind's eye receives an image from the poet's memory, as if the daffodils themselves cause it to happen, and the poet is able to feel the same pleasure that he did when he saw them in person. This is the climax as well as the lesson of the poem. The value of the experience comes later as a purely subjective, internal process.

    • The poem is thus about the poet's ability to turn ordinary experiences into something delightful or

      transcendent, not just for his use but for the reader's.