The deadly turn of the Revolution, which horrified Wordsworth, impacted him for the rest of his life. While he was in his twenties, he affected so many Europeans as the ideals and resentments of the French Revolution grew and eventually devolved into La Terreur. He was awarded honorary degrees by both Durham and Oxford-honors to which Wordsworth responded dryly in a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (July 28, 1838): ‘I forgot to mention that the University of Durham the other day by especial inauguration conferred upon me the honorary degree of L.L.D. He had many high-ranking friends, including Queen Victoria herself. In his youth, for example, he was enthralled by the revolutionary enthusiasm that characterized the 1790s. After many years of less than favorable reception, he spent his final few decades enjoying his well-earned reputation among the early Victorians. Wordsworth introduced unique poetry to English literature and the globe in those eighty years it had never been seen before and has never been seen since. William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770-the same year that Beethoven, Hegel, and Hölderlin were born-and died at Rydal Mount, Westmorland, at the age of eighty, wealthy in the knowledge of his enormous accomplishments. He revived the native grotesque tradition in English literature and extended the grotesque to become a positive artistic expression, a means of projecting a vision of the mystery and beauty of the divinity alive in all of creation.Here are the most Exquisite Poems of William Wordsworth The final chapter argues that Wordsworth now needs to be recognized as a masterful artist of the true grotesque. Wordsworth discovered the poetic voice necessary to expressing how incongruous perceptions temper and mature the imagination, preparing it to achieve a heightened vision, the sublime. The specific argument is that Wordsworth became a true artist of the "noble" grotesque, functionally employing grotesque image patterns in his poems, not just for the sake of idle fancy or to relate social and moral meanings, but rather to reveal the dynamic role of the grotesque in the process of the imagination's growth. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters study the poet's developing use of grotesque image patterns, beginning with his youthful poetry and continuing through the Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude (1805). They offer a backdrop against which to consider the grotesque and provide a working definition of that mode particularly applicable to Wordsworth. The first two chapters of this dissertation include and introduction to critical considerations of the importance of a dark, fearful tension in Wordsworth's poetry and attempt to synthesize important definitions of the grotesque. The few scholars who have discussed the grotesque in Wordsworth's poetry either have not recognized the value of that mode to the development of Wordsworth's poetic idiom or have confused it with the sublime, and thus have misunderstood the nature and function of his images. Yet perceptions characterized by the juxtaposition of fearful, unattractive images with images of beauty and harmony appear throughout Wordsworth's youthful poetry and are focused and directed in the Lyrical Ballads volumes and in The Prelude (1805). The function of the grotesque within William Wordsworth's most important poetry, that written between 17, has not been appreciated.
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