The Impact Of The French Revolution Upon English Poets William Wordsworth
University of Baghdad
College of Education (Ibn-Rushd)
English Department
French Revolution in Wordsworth poetry
A research paper presented by M. A. student Othman A. Marzouq to Dr. Saad Najim .
2014
The French Revolution in Wordsworth poetry
The impact of the French Revolution upon English poets, and especially Wordsworth, is well known. Wordsworth’s Prelude , which was begun in 1798 appeared only after Wordsworth’s death, is an account not only of a poet’s coming of age, but also of his disillusionment with the radical political causes that propelled the unexpected violence following from the first revolutionary acts that culminated in the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Writing The Prelude in 1798, Wordsworth expresses the ecstasy he and his contemporaries felt "When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights / A prime enchanter to assist the work / Which then was going forward in her name" . These hopes were dashed, when, as Wordsworth writes, revolutionaries "now, become oppressors in their turn, / Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense / For one of conquest, losing sight of all / Which they had struggled for". A year after Wordsworth began to write The Prelude, notes Simon Bainbridge: Coleridge [wrote] to his friend and fellow poet Wordsworth identifying the Revolution as the theme for the era’s definitive poem, writing . . . that "I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind. . . . It would do great good". It was, Bainbridge further notes, Coleridge’s urgings that "informed Wordsworth’s examination of the Revolution’s impact in The Prelude and The Excursion . . . but poems on the events in France had begun to appear very quickly". The early period of the Revolution appeared to the English poets as the realization of a poetic ideal. When reflecting in The Prelude on his
College of Education (Ibn-Rushd)
English Department
French Revolution in Wordsworth poetry
A research paper presented by M. A. student Othman A. Marzouq to Dr. Saad Najim .
2014
The French Revolution in Wordsworth poetry
The impact of the French Revolution upon English poets, and especially Wordsworth, is well known. Wordsworth’s Prelude , which was begun in 1798 appeared only after Wordsworth’s death, is an account not only of a poet’s coming of age, but also of his disillusionment with the radical political causes that propelled the unexpected violence following from the first revolutionary acts that culminated in the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Writing The Prelude in 1798, Wordsworth expresses the ecstasy he and his contemporaries felt "When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights / A prime enchanter to assist the work / Which then was going forward in her name" . These hopes were dashed, when, as Wordsworth writes, revolutionaries "now, become oppressors in their turn, / Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense / For one of conquest, losing sight of all / Which they had struggled for". A year after Wordsworth began to write The Prelude, notes Simon Bainbridge: Coleridge [wrote] to his friend and fellow poet Wordsworth identifying the Revolution as the theme for the era’s definitive poem, writing . . . that "I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind. . . . It would do great good". It was, Bainbridge further notes, Coleridge’s urgings that "informed Wordsworth’s examination of the Revolution’s impact in The Prelude and The Excursion . . . but poems on the events in France had begun to appear very quickly". The early period of the Revolution appeared to the English poets as the realization of a poetic ideal. When reflecting in The Prelude on his