William Wordsworth: The Poet of Childhood

Paper Summary:

Wordsworth's literary children comment on challenging issues such as faith versus denial; feeling versus thinking; and healthful solitude versus unhealthful isolation. In addition, they express Wordsworth's love of nature. They also allow Wordsworth to explore his own unsatisfying childhood and express the lost, forgotten, and "stuck" parts of himself as a young boy.

From the Paper:

"Author G. Kim Blanks suggests that it is no coincidence that much of Wordsworth's poetry deals, in one way or another, with a child coming face to face with death. Like an old vinyl record with the needle "stuck" in a scratched place, Wordsworth uses his literary children to try to make sense of the painful events in his own life: "Wordsworth's problem was that he was locked into childhood by unresolved feelings and events that he experienced before adolescence. That child [in "We Are Seven"], and the feelings associated with that child, had to be confronted, otherwise Wordsworth would in part remain an adult child" (Blanks 122)."

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• Analytical Essay # 115873 : "Tintern Abbey" and "Ode on a Distant Prospect"
• Analytical Essay # 53831 : "Nostalgia in Romantic Poetry"

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