Introduction: This present essay is an analysis of the place of man and nature in [Wordsworth's] poetry ... I have been concerned essentially with trying to discover how Wordsworth used his two most prominent poetic subjects. I have attempted to trace Wordsworth's development from the poet of nature, to the poet of man, and finally to the poet of man and nature. What I have hoped would emerge from this essay is an understanding of Wordsworth's relationship with nature and his attitude to it in the poems. I have attempted to stress that man and humanity were not always important to Wordsworth as a poet, and that their importance does not eventually equal that of nature. For by 1807 man, the mind of man and humanity in general are very much more important and much more vital as poetic subjects than is nature. I have tried to show that Wordsworth was at different times a poet of landscape descriptions, a poet interested only in man and humanity, and finally a poet interested in man within nature.

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Esta pesquisa é uma introdução à obra do poeta inglês William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Ela se estrutura em seis capítulos, divididos em dois eixos paralelos. Os capítulos de número par são voltados exclusivamente a obras do poeta: o primeiro é sobre o livro Baladas líricas (1798), analisado em contraponto com o cenário da poesia inglesa da época. O segundo é sobre o poema conhecido como \"Tintern Abbey\", e se volta mais detalhadamente à singularidade do autor, passando por questões teóricas sobre a representação do pensamento na poesia e a invenção do \"eu\" no poema. O último capítulo da série é sobre o livro O prelúdio (1805/1850), autobiografia do poeta; o capítulo é uma breve discussão sobre o que são livros. O segundo eixo -- o dos capítulos de número ímpar --, compõe um ambiente para a leitura do poeta: são retratos de pessoas que participaram de seu círculo íntimo. O primeiro é sobre sua irmã, Dorothy Wordsworth, e os diários que escrevia; o segundo, sobre o poeta S.T. Coleridge, coautor das Baladas líricas; o último é sobre o utopista e viajante John \"Walking\" Stewart. / This dissertation is an introduction to the works of William Wordsworth (1770-1850). It is divided into six chapters, organized under two main lines. Chapters 2, 4 and 6 focus exclusively on William Wordsworth\'s poems: chapter 2 discussing the Lyrical Ballads (1798) in comparison to the different literatures of the period; chapter 4 focusing on Tintern Abbey and the poet\'s uniqueness, while at the same time researching the modes of thought that occur in poetry, and the invention of the poetic \"I\". The last chapter of this triad focuses on the author\'s autobiography, The prelude (1805/1850); it is a short text, concerned with the notion of what books are. The second triad chapters 1, 3 and 5 creates an environment for the reading of the poems: three portraits of people who were part of the poet\'s circle of friends and influences. The first one is on the poet\'s sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, and on her diary-writing. The second one is on S.T. Coleridge, who co-wrote the Lyrical Ballads. The last one is on John \"Walking\" Stewart, an utopian as well as a literal fellow-traveler.

Esta pesquisa é uma introdução à obra do poeta inglês William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Ela se estrutura em seis capítulos, divididos em dois eixos paralelos. Os capítulos de número par são voltados exclusivamente a obras do poeta: o primeiro é sobre o livro Baladas líricas (1798), analisado em contraponto com o cenário da poesia inglesa da época. O segundo é sobre o poema conhecido como \"Tintern Abbey\", e se volta mais detalhadamente à singularidade do autor, passando por questões teóricas sobre a representação do pensamento na poesia e a invenção do \"eu\" no poema. O último capítulo da série é sobre o livro O prelúdio (1805/1850), autobiografia do poeta; o capítulo é uma breve discussão sobre o que são livros. O segundo eixo -- o dos capítulos de número ímpar --, compõe um ambiente para a leitura do poeta: são retratos de pessoas que participaram de seu círculo íntimo. O primeiro é sobre sua irmã, Dorothy Wordsworth, e os diários que escrevia; o segundo, sobre o poeta S.T. Coleridge, coautor das Baladas líricas; o último é sobre o utopista e viajante John \"Walking\" Stewart. / This dissertation is an introduction to the works of William Wordsworth (1770-1850). It is divided into six chapters, organized under two main lines. Chapters 2, 4 and 6 focus exclusively on William Wordsworth\'s poems: chapter 2 discussing the Lyrical Ballads (1798) in comparison to the different literatures of the period; chapter 4 focusing on Tintern Abbey and the poet\'s uniqueness, while at the same time researching the modes of thought that occur in poetry, and the invention of the poetic \"I\". The last chapter of this triad focuses on the author\'s autobiography, The prelude (1805/1850); it is a short text, concerned with the notion of what books are. The second triad chapters 1, 3 and 5 creates an environment for the reading of the poems: three portraits of people who were part of the poet\'s circle of friends and influences. The first one is on the poet\'s sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, and on her diary-writing. The second one is on S.T. Coleridge, who co-wrote the Lyrical Ballads. The last one is on John \"Walking\" Stewart, an utopian as well as a literal fellow-traveler.

This text recontextualizes Wordsworth's writings by showing the ways in which they question the assumptions about "philosophy" and "poetry" that have been constructed within the field of Cartesian dualisms. It employs the ideas of classical rhetoricians, particularly Isocrates and Quintilian, contemporary rhetorical thinkers such as Kenneth Burke, and twentieth-century scientists, particularly Gregory Bateson, David Bohm, and Antonio Damasio, to show that Wordsworth's efforts to establish connections between mind and body, mind and world, and feeling and thinking were coherent and highly relevant rather than simply paradoxical. And it argues that Wordsworth's writings embody his effort to develop a "rhetorical epistemology" or an "epistemic rhetoric" that could counterbalance the dangers of the reductive scientific epistemology of his time.Employing his knowledge of classical rhetoric, particularly Quintilian, and his own sense of the complexities of perception and representation, Wordsworth developed a model of knowing founded on personal experience, representation, relationship, and revision rather than on the establishment of "demonstrable" or "objective" knowledge. His model, like Gregory Bateson's "ecology of mind," was built on an integrated view of mind and world. He believed that perception, feeling, thinking and acting were related in a continuum of mental process (rather than being separate categories), and that individual minds had a mutually-shaping, integrative relationship with what he saw as larger mindlike processes (particularly "Nature").Within this ecology of mind, Wordsworth positioned poetry as a mental process which completed science by providing the means for joining fact and value, "objective knowledge" and personal meaning, reflection and participation. In his construction, poetry was to be an accessible, experience-based discourse of learning and knowing. He aimed to return poetry to its origins, not in "primitive utterance of feelings" but in "poesis" or meaning-making.By countering the assumptions of scientific epistemology, and offering a vital alternative, he sought to reshape and revalue poetry, to broaden his society's narrowing view of knowledge, and to reconstitute moral vision and belief in a society on its way to terminal doubt. His model of knowing is worth considering as we reshape our own views of knowing in the late twentieth century. / Department of English

The following study is interested in Dorothy Wordsworth's formation of her unique authorial identity and environmental ethos. I attend to her poetry and prose, specifically her journals written at Grasmere and her Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland (1874) to demonstrate how she shaped her individual voice while navigating her occasionally conflicting roles of sister and writer. My project begins with a chapter providing a selective biographical and critical history of Dorothy Wordsworth and details how my work emerges from current trends in scholarship and continues an ongoing critical conversation about Dorothy Wordsworth's agency and originality. In my analysis of Dorothy's distinct poetic voice, I compare selections of her writing with William's to demonstrate how Dorothy expressed her perspectives regarding nature, community, and her place within her environment. In my chapter on Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, I analyze the ways in which Dorothy's narrative embraces the tenets of the picturesque while simultaneously acknowledging the tradition's limitations. Her environmental perspective was inherently rooted in domesticity; the idea of home and her community connections influenced how she engaged with and then recorded the environments she traveled to and the people she met. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dorothy Wordsworth's environmental ethos relates to the values promoted by modern environmental writers. Dorothy was intimately connected to her home and environment and modern environmental protection and conservation efforts encourage human connection to home and place. I consider how modern environmentalist movements could benefit from embodying the empathy that Dorothy showed for the natural world in their practices today. / Master of Arts / My thesis argues that while Dorothy Wordsworth was intrinsically involved in her brother William's poetic process, she actively created a unique writerly identity that can be detected throughout her journals and poems. My project begins with a chapter detailing how my work emerges from current trends in Dorothy Wordsworth scholarship, including feminist and ecocritical studies. In my analysis of Dorothy's individual poetic voice, I suggest that through her distinctive style and her mingling of poetry and prose, Dorothy was strongly asserting herself and her perspectives even when they conflicted with William's. Dorothy's Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland exemplifies her unique environmental perspective, which was influenced by her community-centered identity; this contributes to what she chooses to recollect in her journal. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dorothy Wordsworth's environmental ethos relates to the values promoted by modern environmental writers. Dorothy was intimately connected to her home and environment and modern environmental protection and conservation efforts encourage human connection to home and place. I consider how modern environmentalist movements could benefit from embodying the empathy that Dorothy showed for the natural world in their practices today.

This thesis revisits William Wordsworth’s practical and poetic engagement with education as epitomised in his claim that “Every Great poet is a Teacher: I wish either to be considered as a Teacher, or as nothing.” By situating this claim in the larger contexts of Wordsworth’s writings and Britain’s educational development from the late eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, it argues that Wordsworth advocated a poetic education of receptive and creative imagination as a corrective to the practical education of passive learning and reading, and that his authority as a poet-teacher was confirmed rather than challenged by the wide divergence of his reception in Nineteenth Century Britain. The introduction defines the research topic, argues for Wordsworth’s relevance as a poet-teacher against his dubious reception in contemporary educational institutions, and examines some mistaken notions of him as a poet of nature and childhood. Chapter One investigates Wordsworth’s lifelong critique of contemporary pedagogical theories and practices for their confusion of education with instruction and their neglect of religion. Chapter Two studies Wordsworth’s proposal for an alternative mode of poetic education that relies on nature, books, and religion to foster the individual’s religious imagination, which informed Wordsworth’s vocation as a poet, and underlay the revisions of the educational backgrounds of his major poetic speakers. Chapter Three explores Wordsworth’s endeavours to cultivate readers’ receptive and creative imagination against the prevalent literary taste through differentiating strategies of communication in his poetic theories and short poems written between 1794 and 1815. Chapter Four discusses the educational uses made of Wordsworth’s poetry through studying the representative selections of his poems edited by Victorian educators, so as to reveal the slow, winding, but steady process of his being recognised as a teacher in both practical and poetic senses. The thesis concludes with a reaffirmation of Wordsworth’s authority and relevance as a teacher, both then and now.