Monday, February 27, 2012
Nature and Memory in Tintern Abbey
Wordsworth's ode-like poem, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, is written in blank verse and reads much like a prose piece. In the poem, the speaker looks back on his childhood memories filled with sensory experiences of nature. His writing is what I always considered the "romantic" style to embody. He uses images of "wild green landscape" and "cottage-grouds" to reflect on his childhood naivete and simplistic understanding of nature. There exists a turn within the poem where the speaker proclaims that he has "learned to look on nature, not as in the hour/of thoughtless youth" and that he feels the joy "of elevated thoughts; a sense of the sublime" (96). The speaker is able to reflect on his childhood and to extract his old sensory experiences of nature. Simultaneously he appreciates the ways in which his mental maturity into adulthood helped him hear the "music of humanity" (92) and experience nature in a healthier light. He now has an understanding of the "sublime" and possesses "elevated thoughts"; thoughts which have turned him into the developed intellectual he is today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I thought it was interesting how you read Wordsworth as appreciating his mental maturity and being able to look at nature in a healthier light in adulthood. I looked at it from the view that he could no longer experience the pure harmony with nature in adulthood and used his childhood memory to re-experience this connection. There is something pure and magical about examining an event/scene in childhood and not understanding that the world is not that perfect. In adulthood, you can't simply look at a scene and accept it because you are more mature and understand concepts not familiar to an innocent child. I thought that the poem carried strings of this idea.
ReplyDelete