Dc Eng12 the Life of William Wordsworth and How It Reflected His Poetry

Jordan Hill        

Mrs. Aastrup-Reynolds

DC English 12

30 April 2016        

The Life of William Wordsworth and How it Reflected His Poetry

English poetry and literature is one of the most influential and highly praised forms of writing all over the world to this day. There are many English poets who make this statement true. Great poets like William Shakespeare to Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy and many more have made English literature something that people worldwide study, romanticise, and will cherish for millenniums to come. However, this essay isn’t about those great poets listed above. We will be analyzing an English poet whose work lived in the shadows of English poets, but will still go down as one of the greats to ever use a pen and paper.

William Wordsworth is the name of the English poet that will be analyzed for this essay. His life and work has been a great representation of a legendary English poet. William Wordsworth’s work has been studied for many years, but isn’t as widely recognized like other major poets like Shakespeare or Austen. However, his works are a major part of English literature and used to analyze many different topics in poetry. This essay will be clear representation of what William Wordsworth was able to achieve in his life as a poet and how his life was a reflection of his works.

This analytical essay will also show a detail analysis on the life and work of this legendary poet in detailed explanation. In addition, the essay will analyze William Wordsworth’s childhood from where he was born to life as a child in 18th Century Britain. Furthermore, his essay will also analyze William Wordsworth’s adolescence years and his transition to manhood. How William Wordsworth began his pursuit and love for writing while at St. John’s College, and how his relationships affected his style of writing will also be examined.

I will analyze the rise of this legendary poet and how his works allowed him to become one of the most influential poets in English and worldwide history. After expanding upon the life of this great poet, the essay will show the last few stages of his marvelous career as a writer with the ending of his life, and the legacy he withheld with his art in poetry. Then I will take a deeper look at William Wordsworth’s poetry and literature and how they became an influence in future literature and why it is an excellent topic that English majors and many other students abroad research.

Last I will conclude my research paper on my views of the life and works of this great poet and expand more on why his poetry was a reflection of his life from when he was a child to old age. This analysis will help other English students understand and comprehend literature that is based off of someone else’s opinion. William Wordsworth was decided as my research paper because he wasn’t like the other choices presented upon my fellow students. Even though William Wordsworth is highly researched among other English majors, his works lack publicity to the main audience of readers worldwide. Everyone knows about the great poets and writers like William Shakespeare who is marveled and highly praised for his excellent screenplays, Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet and another great writer in Jane Austen for her well-written romantics, Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility.  Not only English literature lovers, but audiences everywhere love these books and movies so these works will go down as fan favorites for ages to come and their writers will forever be remembered. However, William Wordsworth’s works will unlikely receive the amount of attention that other great English poets and writers have received, but in this essay I will show how William Wordsworth’s works are underrated in comparison to other greats in the English literature world.

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England (Kettler). During this time England was beginning to have conflict with the colonies across the Atlantic that they had control over. William was born into a society that once was a kingdom that had rule over most the entire world.  But England was slowly starting to lose its reign of supremacy across the globe because of rebellion from countries like, the 13 colonies, they had control over and which subsequently led to a second British empire due to the conflict (Lambert). William was born to John and Ann Cookson. John Wordsworth, William’s father, was a legal agent to Sir James Lowther who was a political magnate and property owner in England. Ann Cookson Wordsworth, William’s mother, occupation is unknown but it is very likely she was the family’s caretaker and was a stay-at-home mother/wife. William had 4 siblings. One older brother named Richard and a younger sister named Dorothy and two younger brother named John and Christopher (Poetry Foundation Editorial). Growing up in this period of time presented lots of changes in William’s life. Because of the time period he grew up in, this required William to study hard in his education later on in life and work hard to become someone who was very successful and this contributed to why his life was a reflection to his work.

From a young age, William began his deep love and observation towards the “beauteous forms” of the natural world (Poetry Foundation Editorial). Because of this young love and passion, William eventually began the foundation towards his future and career as a poet. Starting your passion and love from a young age is a huge factor towards you becoming successful at the career and this young passion made William later on become the successful poet he was set to becoming. The Wordsworth family lived in a rural paradise that was located along the Derwent River. William began his schooling at a grammar school near Cockermouth Church and also Ann Birkett’s school at Penrith, which was the house of his maternal grandparents. William had an “intense” lifelong friendship with his sister Dorothy along with Mary Hutchinson that began while they all three attended school together in Penrith. A lot of William’s childhood are vividly shown in many of his known poetry and writings (Poetry Foundation Editorial). William, later on in life, would use his poetry and writings to intertwine a lot of his life growing up and explain what he was feeling while going through different experiences as a youth.