William Wordsworth – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Often known simply as ‘Daffodils’ or ‘The Daffodils’, William Wordsworth’s lyric poem that begins ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ is, in many ways, the quintessential English Romantic poem.

Its theme is the relationship between the individual and the natural world, though those daffodils are obviously the most memorable image from the poem. Here is the poem we should probably correctly call ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, along with a short analysis of its themes, meaning, and language.

A Short Analysis of William Wordsworth’s ‘Expostulation and Reply’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Expostulation and Reply’ is the ideal poem for a schoolchild to throw back at their teacher, when that teacher accuses them of being idle or not ‘doing anything’ simply because they’re not reading books at that moment.

The Meaning and Origin of ‘Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Feelings’?

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses Wordsworth’s famous line about poetry and ‘spontaneous overflow’

1798 was the key year for Romantic poetry in Britain, for it saw the publication of the Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by the two brightest new stars in English verse: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Romanticism had well and truly arrived on English shores, and Wordsworth and Coleridge became famous.

A Short Analysis of Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Lines Written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening’ is a poem by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) which appeared in his 1798 collection Lyrical Ballads, the book he co-authored with his fellow Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although not one of the more famous poems from that collection, it deserves close analysis because it contains a number of prominent themes of Romanticism and Wordsworth’s poetry in particular.

A Summary and Analysis of William Wordsworth’s ‘We Are Seven’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘We Are Seven’ is one of the most famous poems by William Wordsworth to appear in the 1798 collection Lyrical Ballads, the book which he co-authored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Indeed, after ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, ‘We Are Seven’ is probably Wordsworth’s most widely known and best-loved poem in the collection.