II. William Wordsworth
1.一般识记：His life & career
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born at Cockermouth, Cambarland, in the family of an attorney. He received education at St. John's College, Cambridge. He developed a keen love of nature as a youth. Another important influence on his life was the French Revolution. In 1798 Wordsworth & Coleridge collaborated on a book of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Colerdge & William Wordsworth are known as the "Lake Poets." In 1842, Wordsworth received a government pension & in the following year he succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate. Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, April 23, 1850.
As a great Romantic poet, Wordsworth had a long poetic career. His Lyrical Ballads, written together with Coleridge, is generally regarded as the symbol of the beginning of the Romantic period in England. The Prelude is ranked by many critics as his greatest work. In 1807 Poems in Two Volumes was published. The Excursion was published in 1814.
2. 识记：His poetic outlook
Wordsworth is regarded as a " worshipper of nature." He can penetrate to the heart of things & give the reader the very life of nature. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is perhaps the most anthologized poem in English literature, & one that takes us to the core of Wordsworth's poetic beliefs. To Wordsworth, nature embodies, human beings in their diverse circumstances. It is nature that gives him "strength & knowledge full of peace."
Common life is Wordsworth's only subject of literary interest. The joys & sorrows of the common people are his themes. His sympathy always goes to the suffering poor.
Wordsworth is a poet in memory of the past. To him, life is a cyclical journey. Its beginning finally turns out to be its end. Wordsworth's deliberate simplicity & refusal to decorate the truth of experience produced a kind of pure & profound poetry which no other poets has ever equaled. Poetry, he believes originates from "emotion recollected in tranquility." Rejecting the contemporary emphasis on form & intellectual approach that drained poetic writing of strong emotion, he maintains that the scenes & events of everyday life & the speech of ordinary people are the raw material of which poetry can & should be made.
3. 领会His poetical works
1) Lyrics
Lyrical Ballads differs in marked ways from his early poetry, notably the uncompromising simplicity of much of the language, the strong sympathy not merely with the poor in general but with particular, dramatized examples of them, & the fusion of natural description with expressions of inward states of mind. The poems Wordsworth added to the 1800 edition of the Lyrical Ballads are among the best of his achievements.
"Tintern Abbey" remains a profoundly original & imaginative achievement; the valley of the Wye itself, the quiet center of the returning wanderer's thoughts is described with a detail that conveys a sense of natural order at once vivid & eternal. Beyond the pleasures of the picturesque with their emphasis on the eye & the external aspects of nature, however, lies a deeper moral awareness, a sense of completeness in multiplicity. But the poem progresses beyond such moral reflections. As he is aware of his own sublime communion with all things, nature becomes an inspiring force of rapture, a power that reveals the workings of the soul. To Wordsworth, nature acts as a substitute for imaginative & intellectual engagement with the development of embodied human beings in their diverse circumstances. It's nature that gives him "strength & knowledge full of peace."
2) The Prelude
Wordsworth is a poet in memory of the past. To him, life is a cyclical journey. Its beginning finally turns out to be its end. His philosophy of life is presented in his masterpiece The Prelude. It opens with a literal journey whose goal is to return to the vale of Grasmere. The journey goes through the poet's personal history, carrying the metaphorical meaning of his interior journey & questing for his lost early self & the proper spiritual home. The poem charts this growth from infancy to manhood. We are shown the development of human consciousness under the sway of an imagination united to the grandeur go nature. Later books of The Prelude describe Wordsworth's experiences in France, his republicanism, his affair with Annette Vallon, his "substantial dread" during the Terror & his continuing support of the ideals underlying the Revolution. The concluding description of the ascent of Snowdon becomes a symbol of the poet's climb to the height of his inspired powers & to that state of vision in which, dedicating himself to humanity, he becomes one of the " Prophets of Nature."
4.领会 Characteristics of Wordsworth Poems & His Achievements.
William Wordsworth is the leading figure of the English romantic poetry, the focal poetic voice of the period. His is a voice of searchingly comprehensive humanity & one that inspires his audience to see the world freshly, sympathetically & naturally. The most important contribution he has made is that he has not only started the modern poetry, the poetry of the growing inner self, but also changed the course of English poetry by using ordinary speech of the language & by advocating a return to nature.
5. 应用：Selected Readings
1) I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (1)
Wordsworth is regarded as a "worshipper of nature." He can penetrate to the heart of things & give the reader the very life of nature. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is perhaps the most anthologized poem in English literature, & one that takes us to the core of Wordsworth's poetic beliefs. Wordsworth wrote this beautiful poem of nature after he came across a long belt of gold daffodils tossing & reeling & dancing along the waterside. There is a vivid picture of the daffodils here, mixed with the poet's philosophical & somewhat mystical thoughts.
The poem consists of four 6-lined stanzas of iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of ababcc in each stanza. The last stanza describes the poet's recollection in tranquility from which this poem arose. The poet thinks that it is a bliss to recollect the beauty of nature in his mind while he is in solitude
2) Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 (1)
This sonnet, written on the roof of a coach as Wordsworth was on his way to France, was published in Poems in Two Volumes, 1807. The poem presents the speaker's view of London in the early morning. The speaker is not only profoundly touched by its beauty & tranquility of the morning, but even surprised to realize that London is part of Nature just as much as is his own beloved Lake Country.
Wordsworth is regarded as a " worshipper of nature." Even in this poem, though he is looking at London, he is thinking of home where the sun steeps in his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill."
The poem is written after the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The octave recreates the experience of London at morning, and the sestet enlarges on his reaction to the scene. The rhyme scheme of the poem is abbaabba, cdcdcd.
3) She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways (1)
This is one of the "Lucy poems," written in 1799. The "Lucy Poems" describe with rare elusive beauty of simple lyricism & haunting rhythm a young country girl living a simple life in a remote village far from the civilized world. They are verses of love & loss which hold within their delicate simplicity a meditation on time & death which rises to universal stature.
4) The Solitary Reaper (1)
Wordsworth thinks that common life is the only subject of literary interest. The joys & sorrows of the common people are his themes.
"The Solitary Reaper" is an example of his literary views. It describes vividly a young peasant girl working alone in the fields & singing as she works. The plot of the little incident is told straightforwardly in stanzas 1, 3, & 4. Stanza 2, with its comparison of the girl's song to the cuckoo & the nightingale cannot be dismissed as vaguely ornamental comparisons. They are much more than that, & the impression of the girl's singing on the traveler is heightened through these comparisons.
This poem is an iambic verse. Most of the lines in the poem are octosyllabics. The rhyme-scheme for each stanza is ababccdd.
III Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1一般识记 His Life & Literary Career
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), poet & critic, was born in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, the son of a clergy man. He received education at Cambridge but left without a degree. Inspired by the radical thinkers with their idealism, Coleridge joined Robert Southey in a utopian plan of establishing an ideal democratic community in America, named "Pantisocracy." In the spring of 1797, Coleridge met & began his long friendship with William Wordsworth. The following year, they published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, which become a landmark in English poetry. Coleridge's poem, " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," was included in the volume. The years 1797 &1798 were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In addition to " The Ancient Mariner," he wrote " Kubla Khan," began writing " Christabel," & composed "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "Frost at Midnight," & " The Nightingale", which are considered to be his best "conversational" poems.
In 1798, he traveled with the Wordsworths to Germany. In 1810, Coleridge quarreled seriously with Wordsworth. Although they reconciled with each other later on, their friendship had never reached its former intimacy. In 1813, his tragic drama Remorse received popular welcome. In 1816, he wrote his major prose work, Biographia Literaria (1817), a series of autobiographical notes & dissertations on many subjects, including some brilliantly perceptive literary criticism.
2.识记 His Literary Outlook & Philosophy
Philosophically & critically, Coleridge opposed the limitedly rationalistic trends of the 18th-century thought. He courageously stemmed the tide of the prevailing doctrines derived from Hume & Hartley, advocating a more spiritual & religious interpretation of life, based on what he had learnt from Kant & Schelling. He believed that art is the only permanent revelation of the nature of reality. A poet should realize the vague intimations derived from his unconsciousness without sacrificing the vitality of the inspiration.
3.识记 His Major Works
(1)"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," told an adventurous story of a sailor. By neglecting the law of hospitality, the mariner cruelly shot an albatross which flew to the ship through thick fog. Then disaster fell onto the ship. The breeze died down; the ship stopped; the hot tropical sun shone all day long. The other sailors died of thirst one after another, while the mariner alone was alive, being tortured all the time with thirst & the horror of death. Only when the mariner finally repented & blessed for the water snake did the spell break & the ship was then able to go back home. The story moves on through a world of wonder, from mysterious preface to inevitable close. Each incident stands out clear & vivid; each corresponding change in the soul of the mariner is registered. The whole experience is an ordeal of oppressive weariness.
(2) "Kubla Khan" was composed in a dream after Coleridge took the opium. The poet was reading about Kubla Khan when he fell asleep. The images of the river, of the magnificent palace & other marvelous scenes deposited in his unconsciousness were expressed into about two or three hundred lines. But when he was writing them down, a stranger interrupted him & the vision was never recaptured. Only 54 lines survived.
(3) "Christabel" uses a freer version of the ballad form to create an atmosphere of the Gothic horror at once delicate & sinister. The tale is an old one of a serpent disguised as a beautiful lady to victimize an innocent maiden. The standard trappings of Gothic horror----the remote castle & the wood, the virgin Christabel in peril & the subtly wicked Geraldine ---- dramatize a confrontation with evil through disturbing suggestions of the sexual, supernatural & fantastic elements of dream. The moaning of the owl & the crowing of the cock, together with the response of the dog to the regular strokes of the clock, produced the effect of mystery & horror in the dead night. Opposed to the nightmarish are images of religious grace & the spring of love that had gushed from the poet's heart. It has been said that the thing attempted in "Christabel" is the most difficult in the whole field of romance, & nothing could come nearer the mark. The miraculous element, which lies on the face of " The Ancient Marines," is here driven beneath the surface.
(4) Biographia Literaria, his major prose work is a series of autobiographical notes & dissertations on many subjects, including some brilliantly perceptive literary criticism. The sections in which he expresses his views on the nature of poetry & discusses the works of Wordsworth are especially notable.
4.领会 Characteristics of His Poems
Coleridge was esteemed by some of his contemporaries & is generally recognized today as a lyrical poet & literary critic of the first rank. His poetic themes range from the supernatural to the domestic. His treatises, lectures, & compelling conversational powers made him one of the most influential English literary critics & philosophers of the 19th century.
5.领会:His Achievements
His actual achievement as a poet can be divided into two remarkably diverse groups: the demonic & the conversational. The demonic group includes his three masterpieces: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Christabel" & "Kubla Khan." Mysticism & demonism with strong imagination are the distinctive features of this group. Generally, the conversational group speaks more directly of an allied theme: the desire to go home, not to the past, but to " an improved infancy." Each of these poems bears a kind of purgatorial atonement, in which Coleridge must fail or suffer so that someone he loves may succeed or experience joy.
Coleridge is one of the first critics to give close critical attention to language, maintaining that the aim of poetry is to give pleasure "through the medium of beauty." In analyzing Shakespeare, Coleridge emphasizes the philosophic implication, reading more into the subject than the text & going deeper into the inner reality than only caring for the outer form.
6. 应用Selected Reading
Kubla Khan (1)
"Kubla Khan" is one of the best-known poems written by Coloridge. It is a vision, a fragment painting, a gorgeous Oriental picture. When the poem was published in 1816, Coleridge prefaced it explaining that the poem came to him in 1797, as he lay asleep at the moment when he was reading a story from Maco polo in an old travel book named Purcha's Pilgrimage. Though the poet calls this poem a fragment, there is a wholeness in the poem & it is highly symbolic. The places symbolize conflicting forces --Xanadu, which represents a beautifully cultivated & ordered product of the rational will, is opposed to Alph's wild & savage chasm which represents an irrationally mysterious creative energy or inspiration. The speaker realizes that the opposites can be reconciled through the creative imagination. "Ancestral voices prophesying war" confirms that the conflict is always present; the "pleasure-dome," the product of human imaginative vision is the device (poetry) which will reconcile the opposites; & "a damsel with a dulcimer" is anything which releases the poetic vision.
Either ways, however, the description of Xanadu, the pleasure dome, the chasm the sacred river Alph bursts out of, along with the speaker's reaction to this revision of them is exotic & vivid. This poem can be a source of pleasure of verbal music or of freely associated & impressive images. Notice how the meter of the poem supports its shifting ideas: lines 1 through 11 are orderly Iambic tetrameter broken only in line 5; lines 12 through 30 are iambic pentameter which is poly-rhythmic in its diversity; lines 31 through 34 are in a lilting iambic tetrameter shifting to a couplet of iambic pentameter in lines 35 & 36. The poem ends with tetrameter iambic occasionally interrupted by trochaic. The rhymes are also arranged haphazardly to accommodate the idea.
IV George Gordon Byron
1. 一般识记 His Life
English poet, born George Gordon Byron, in London, England, Jan. 22, 1788, and died in Missolonghi, Greece, April 19, 1824.
