I Wandered Lonley as a Cloud Essay Example
I wandered lonely as a cloud By William Wordsworth -Structuralist perspective-
Structuralism is a theory in which all elements of human culture, including literature are thought part of a system of signs. This theory appeared as a reaction at modernist and despair. It was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by the pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure, followed by Levi Strauss. Structuralism identifies and distinguishes between “surface structures” and “deep structures” in language and linguistic literatures, including texts. The reason why I choose to apply a structuralist point of view upon Wordsworth’s poem is because I can be easily related to it, due to the fact that it is situated in the lyrical genre.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”, written by William Wordsworth in 1804 and published in 1815, is one of the most famous poems of Wordsworth, and it’s also known as “Daffodils” or “The daffodils”. The poem is 24 lines long and it’s composed by four six-lines stanzas. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. The stanza then ends with a rhyming couplet. Wordsworth unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the experience at the lake and the last stanza on the memory of that experience. An interesting aspect is that despite the fact that it is a lyrical poem, it’s built as a sonnet, meaning that the rhyme is type ABABCC, and each stanza is composed by a quatrain and then a couplet. Also ,the lines in the poem are in a iambic tetrameter. The writer uses figures of speech, such as metaphors, epithets, personifications or comparisons in order to express his feelings to the reader. As a sub-genre it is a lyrical poem focused on the poet’s response to the beauty of nature(lyrical poetry is a form of poetry with rhyming schemes that express personal feelings
Structuralism is a theory in which all elements of human culture, including literature are thought part of a system of signs. This theory appeared as a reaction at modernist and despair. It was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by the pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure, followed by Levi Strauss. Structuralism identifies and distinguishes between “surface structures” and “deep structures” in language and linguistic literatures, including texts. The reason why I choose to apply a structuralist point of view upon Wordsworth’s poem is because I can be easily related to it, due to the fact that it is situated in the lyrical genre.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”, written by William Wordsworth in 1804 and published in 1815, is one of the most famous poems of Wordsworth, and it’s also known as “Daffodils” or “The daffodils”. The poem is 24 lines long and it’s composed by four six-lines stanzas. In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. The stanza then ends with a rhyming couplet. Wordsworth unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the experience at the lake and the last stanza on the memory of that experience. An interesting aspect is that despite the fact that it is a lyrical poem, it’s built as a sonnet, meaning that the rhyme is type ABABCC, and each stanza is composed by a quatrain and then a couplet. Also ,the lines in the poem are in a iambic tetrameter. The writer uses figures of speech, such as metaphors, epithets, personifications or comparisons in order to express his feelings to the reader. As a sub-genre it is a lyrical poem focused on the poet’s response to the beauty of nature(lyrical poetry is a form of poetry with rhyming schemes that express personal feelings