The pronunciation of william wordsworth is: [?w?lj?m], [?w?rdzw?rθ].
William Wordsworth, a British romantic poet, was once the poet laureate. His poetic theory shook the dominance of British classical poetics and effectively promoted the innovation of British poetry and the development of the Romantic movement. He is one of the most important English poets since the Renaissance. His poem "plain living and high thinking" is used as the motto of Keble College, Oxford University.
Wordsworth's short poems are fresh, and his long poems are fresh and profound. They contradict the flat and elegant style of neoclassicism and create a fresh and lively romantic poetry style. His sonnets are majestic, and his "Prelude" (1805) was the first to use verse to write an autobiographical "growth of a poet's soul", which opened a new trend in both content and art.
Wordsworth's poems about nature are beautiful and moving. One of the outstanding features of his poems is that they embody emotions in the scenery and blend the scenes. This style is reflected by the author's choice of the subject matter of the poem, the language used in the poem, as well as the meter, style and vocabulary used in the poem.
Wordsworth's artistic achievements:
He not only created theories, but also practiced them himself. The small book "Lyric Ballads" he collaborated with Coleridge started not only the literary careers of the two of them, but the entire British Romantic poetry movement.
For Chinese readers, Wordsworth is not a very familiar name. Of course, people who can read English have read some of his short poems, such as "The Solitary Reaper", but people who don't understand English have little impression of his poems.
One of the reasons is that his poetry is difficult to translate. Philosophical poetry is more difficult to translate than narrative poetry, and Wordsworth's writing is simple and fresh, which makes it even more difficult to translate. The second reason is that he was once regarded as a representative of "reactionary romanticism" in China, so many people were already disgusted with him without reading his works. Another reason may be that his kind of poetry about nature is not uncommon in China, and his thoughts are similar to those of Lao and Zhuang, so people have no novelty about him.
But Wordsworth is worth reading. In addition to his historical importance, he has many advantages, such as writing clearly and concisely, but the content is not plain, but often has a touch of inspiration. Seemingly ordinary truths are combined with a high degree of passion.
The French Revolution deeply moved him, and he later wrote this famous sentence:
Happy, living in that dawn, young people feel like they are in heaven!