William Wordsworth Study questions Millennium I p 238

William Wordsworth Study questions Millennium I p. 238

STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Where did Wordsworth live? Take a map of England point it out. • He lived in the Lake District, a region in the north-west of England close to the Scottish border, in a beautiful natural scenery, which was a source of inspiration for all his life. He spent most of his adult life in Dorset with his sister Dorothy, enjoying the company and the friendship of Coleridge. 2. What effect did France and the French Revolution have on Wordsworth? • While in France he was a passionate supporter of the French Revolution; he also had a daughter, whom he left in France. When he went back to England he abandoned the revolutionary ideas and became increasingly conservative. 3. Why was the friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge fundamental to English Romantic poetry? • Because they collaborated in writing the “Lyrical Ballads”, that is, the collection of poems which is considered the manifesto of English Romantic poetry. 4. Wordsworth thought that the child was (give reasons for your choice): a. closer to nature than man b. more beautiful than man c. less educated than man d. nearer a pre-natal existence.

STUDY QUESTIONS a. c. d. closer to nature than man: the child is capable of simplicity and goodness and is in harmony with the living world; less educated than man: the child, however, possesses a deeper wisdom, due to its closer contact with nature; nearer a pre-natal existence: during the process of growth the child loses the original contact with the perfect knowledge it had during its pre-natal life. The child is still united to the universe but the adult gradually loses this union. 5. Explain Wordsworth’s belief in the pre-existence of the soul as expressed in “Intimations of Immortality”. • Wordsworth believed in the pre-existence of the soul and that after birth the soul gradually loses its perfect knowledge. In fact, as the child grows up and becomes an adult, he/she gradually loses his/her perfect union with the universe.