WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems written together with Coleridge; the preface is considered the manifesto of the Romantic movement in English literature; Coleridge's labour was to write about supernatural, Wordsworth one was to give novelty to everyday things. Wordsworth labour was to reconcile realism and poetry; in fact before him realism was confined to prose while poets still used artificial poetic diction; poetry was to deal with incidentds and situations from common life, specially humble rustic life because simple people living in the countryside can understand better the nature because is in contact with it. Wordsworth used a very simple language, near to the spoken one and far from poetic diction. Imagination played an important role; it was the capacity of modify the objects observed giving them an unusual aspect; the poet's eyes could see the reality deeper than the ordinary people ones. Poetry doesn't describe just natural and simple objects with cold and objective realism but sees all the things through the eyes of memory that recollects old emotions; in fact feelings in poetry are the result of the emotions recollected in tranquillity and so poetry isn't the representation of original emotions but past feelings contemplated and reorganized. Wordsworth had a higher degree of sensibility and imaginative capacity than the others, he's able to communicate the essence of things in a simple and unelaborated language; he's a moral teacher that has to purify men's emotions. The two main themes in the author's poetry are nature and childhood. Leopardi vs. Wordsworth: both believed that recollection was essential to poetry but with some differences: according to Wordsworth, before birth the soul already exists in heaven and the youth recollects the heavenly state of soul; the poet, as a child, can call back this heavenly state through imagination. Leopardi, on the contrary, always denied the possibility of consolation in heavenly hopes. Besides Leopardi had a very pessimistic idea of nature, it's beautiful but it appears indifferent to the human pains, nature can be just a source of consolation; also Wordsworth considered nature a source of consolation but he also it as a moral guide during all the life, an escape from the horrors of the industrial society. Blake vs. Wordsworth: according to Wordsworth in the childhood (the least corrupted age) we have the most complete knowledge that diminishes as we grow up and finally finishes even if we can recollect it through nature; instead Blake says that comes from experience and so as a child grows up, he takes the knowledge; furthermore Wordsworth doesn't concern with the social problems of the children, Blake takes into consideration the matters children have in social argument and with adults. The Rainbow (L'Arcobaleno) My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I