Henry+Fagg+Outline

// Good foundation for discussion of works. Condense the biographical and historical background to develop analysis of literature. Which poems (one for each poet) best serve as examples for your points? Be sure to address literary features of each of the poems you choose. //

William Wordsworth’s poetry reflects beauty and the splendidness of nature. Philip Larkin’s poetry exudes cynicism and ponders the irony of human nature. These two men looked at the world with different lenses; Larkin dispassionately attacked the faults of man, while Wordsworth constantly praised the beauty of nature. One could say that one was an optimist while the other was a pessimist, but that would be simplifying things a bit too much. The key to understanding the views and hence the greater meaning of these men’s poems lie in what world these people were living in: the politics of the time, world events, social norms, and the role of the poet during these times. Philip Larkin was born in 1922 in the U.K. His first poems were published during the Second World War, for which he never became conscripted because of his bad eyesight. He would see, from news headlines and from witnessing actual bombing in Britain by the Luftwaffe, the horror of a new, deadlier kind of war that was being fought all over the world, killing millions of soldiers and civilians alike. This new world he seemed to have inherited, with men like Hitler and Stalin murdering millions of their own countrymen, made Larkin a cynical and pessimistic man as soon as he found out what the world was really like, and this cynicism can be found in almost all his works right up to when he died. William Wordsworth however had a very different view of life, and hence most of his poems celebrate life and its beauty, rather than grimly observe its ironic nature. Wordsworth, like Larkin, also let the social climate of the time influence his works. Unlike Larkin however, Wordsworth moved away from the main ideas dominating his time, and instead wrote extensively about something much of the rest of Europe had seemed to have forgotten, nature’s beauty. During the late 1700’s and early 1800’s much of Europe was obsessed with getting ahead of their neighbors by setting up new trade routes, conquering new lands for use as overseas colonies, and advancing sciences largely forgotten in Europe since Roman times for industrial or military means. Everyone was so focused on progress and in Britain the industrial revolution was in full swing and the land was already beginning to look ravaged because of it. Wordsworth, in his lifetime, saw that something about this newly emerging world that was amiss, it was terribly ugly. And so he decided to show Britain and the rest of industrializing Europe that there was something more to life than progress, for without the unspoilt beauty of nature, life is incredibly dull and mundane. Larkin and Wordsworth were both reactionaries to current events of their time, however where one let the emergence of a new, frighteningly destructive era lead to his poetry being consumed with cynicism and hate, the other rejected the depressing climate of the new era and found something that was still good, still pure, something so basic to human health and happiness but that had been forgotten by the rest of the society in which he lived, and he basked in it, and inspired others to bask in it as well, and to appreciate that there is always something in this world that can renew your faith, if you look hard enough to find it.