Wordsworth, William - Education and Thought

Childhood and Early Years

William Wordsworth was born on

He studied firstly in the most important In the summer of 1790 he and one of his schoolmates went to France to experience the France revolution lead by their curiosity and a certain republican belief.
Here he fell in love with Annette Vallon so that in December 1792 their first daughter was born. He could not spend much time with here because the worsening political situation in France forced him to return to England but during the Peace of Amiens they met again and some agreement were made about financial contributions for her maintenance.

Life in London and Encounters

These years were spent in London where Wordsworth became close to the publisher Joseph Johnson, who published Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, and his group of radical intellectuals like William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (they will be the parents of Mary Shelley).
In 1797, near Bristol, Wordsworth met for the first time S. T. Coleridge with whom he wrote in 1798 the collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, one of the foundational literary works of Romanticism.

Perception and Memory

For the English romantic poet, William Wordsworth, through the senses or through a perception, it is possible to perceive the beauty of the nature that in a second time, in a calmier situation from a physical and a spiritual point of view, will become an emotion. As a matter of fact, the memory has a crucial role in this process, because only with its use he is able to come into contact with the Nature and what he had truly felt.

Importance of Childhood

For this reason, Wordsworth considers childhood the most important phase in the man’s life, as children’s perceptions are more vivid and more imaginative than the adult’s ones, and his experiences remain imprinted in his memory.

In fact, to communicate to the others similar emotions to those felt by the poet, Wordsworth follows the recollection of an emotion in tranquillity, that give origin to a pure poetry. And just through this re-creative power of memory, the emotion is reproduced and purified in a poetic form, so that a second emotion, "kindred" to the first one, is generated.

He describes this process in the following sequence: object > poet > sensory experience > emotion > memory =(equal to) recollection in tranquility > ‘kindred’ emotion > poem > reader > emotion. Then memory is the major force in the process of growth of Wordsworth’s moral and mental view, and also because give to his poetry its life and power.