Đang tải... (xem toàn văn)
Đây là bài luận văn phân tích chi tiết mọi nội dụng từ cốt truyện đến những hình ảnh của các nhân vật trong tác phẩm I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD của William Wordsworth mang lại. Bài văn sẽ gồm các phần như Biography, plot, Climax, Resolution, Conflict, SETTING,...
Class: 14tb1 Instructor: Ms.Dang Nguyen Anh Chi LITERARY WORKS I WANDERED LONLEY AS A CLOUD MEMBERS OF GROUP 4: Lâm Phương Thảo Trần Duy Khang Trần Thị Hương Giang Nguyễn Thị Minh Hiếu Trần Thị Hương Giang Nguyễn Quỳnh Ngọc Trần Thị Trúc Ngân I – BIOGRAPHY William Wordsworth (1770 -1850) Author’s Life Point of time April 7, 1770 Events • • 1791 • 1790 • 1792 • 1795 William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District of Northern England he got a degree at St John’s College, Cambridge he went on a walking tour of France and the Alps; he was fascinated by the democratic ideals of Revolutionary France he had a daughter, Caroline, from a French aristocratic woman, Caroline William inherited some money from a friend He also moved to Somerset with his sister Dorothy Dorothy was a poet, too, and wrote many diaries She was said to have a great influence on William’s writing 1797-1799 • • 1843 1850 Main works • • • • 1798, 1800 • • 1807 living with his sister Dorothy, with his friend, Coleridge, write Lyrical Ballads He got married with a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson, and had five children He became Poet Laureate He became more conservative and went on writing poems until his death Wordsworth was a well-known romantic poet with many lyric poems Almost works described the poet's love of nature and revolve around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief He gave prominence to emotion in poetry He said: “the poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” Together, Wordsworth and Cole ridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads an important work in the English Romantic movement The second edition was published in 1800 His Poems in Two Volumes were published, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" His widow Mary published his lengthy autobiographical "poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death Then it was recognized as his masterpiece 1850 3 Man and nature Wordsworth’s Style • • • • • • Death & April 23, 1850 Legacy • • Wordsworth is usually considered “the poet of nature”, but his poems contain very little natural description He was more interested in the relationship between the natural world and human consciousness He thought that man and nature are inseparable and that there are values in nature It is from nature that man learns joy and love Wordsworth exploited the sensibility of the eye and ear to perceive the beauty of nature Wordsworth was interested in ordinary, everyday world and in the common life of simple, rustic people (which was full of moral values) He used sophisticated language everyday, and was against poetic diction William Wordsworth died at his residence when he was living in Mount Rydal A total of 523 sonnet poems by William Wordsworth, which make many scholars compare him to William Shakespeare and John Milton II - THE POEM Plot Summary: The poet was wandered through the hills and valleys, but he felt lonely and sorrow Finally, he sees a crowd of golden daffodils packed tightly together, beside the lake, beneath the trees He is amazed by the beauty of the daffodils, dancing and fluttering in the breeze He gazed at the daffodils for a long time, but while he was there, he was unable to understand what he had gained when he sees the golden daffodils Whenever he feels lonely, sorrow, depressed or feeling “pensive”, the flash of daffodils, dancing and fluttering in the breeze; makes him feels cherished • • Structure of the poem: To talk about the structure of the poem, it is really very simple in form and language The poem is composed of stanzas, each with lines, which makes the entire poem 24 lines long He used end rhyme Genre - Lyric poem The poet wanted to rhyme every other line except for the last He wanted to rhyme to make it like a song (a chorus) He wanted to make it pleasant to the ear Express feeling Have specific rhyming schemes : ABABCC, ends in a couplet I wandered lonely as a cloud (A) That floats on high o'er vales and hills, (B) When all at once I saw a crowd, (A) A host of golden daffodils; (B) Besides the lake, beneath the trees, (C) Fluttering and dancing in the breeze (C) • Set to music or a beat The meter of this poem is iambic tetrameter Meter The WAVES.|.be SIDE.|.them DANCED;.|.but THEY Out-DID.|.the SPARK.|.ling WAVES.|.in GLEE: — A PO.|.et COULD.|.not BUT.|.be GAY In SUCH.|.a JOC.|.undCOM.|.pa NY: .1 .4 I GAZED—.|.and GAZED—.|.but LIT.|.tle THOUGHT .4 What WEALTH.|.the SHOW.|.to ME.|.had BROUGHT: It is a unstressed, stressed pattern Each line is four iambic feet, consisting of eight syllables It is a regular rhyme scheme throughout the poem except for a few deviations III - SETTING The setting of the poem is very important, as it helps develop the theme of the relationship between man and nature The poet’s blissful state is not triggered by any event, but by being in nature Time: The poem was based on an experience Wordsworth had with his sister, Dorothy, on April 15, 1802 They went to their friends, the Clarksons, at Eusemere When they were came back to Grasmere, they saw a large of number of golden daffodils growing on the bank of a lake Ullswater in the Lake District of Northern England They both were astonished by the mesmeric beauty of these daffodils, which were fluttering and dancing with the light breeze • The season in the poem is the Spring: • the March of spring • Season of flowers “Daffodils” • This is on a sunny, breezy day • • • “A host, of golden daffodils;” :Yellow daffodils are considered golden under the sunlight “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” : Daffodils look like dancing because of the breeze Place: The first place is the Lake District of Northern England Wordsworth lived in a part of England called the Lake District, filled with valleys, hills and lakes Is seemed possible that he is wandering through the Lake Valley, describing what he sees: “…o’re vales and hills” The Lake District of Northern England • The second place is on (28)………… The ninth sentence will show you: “For oft, when on my couch I lie” “Lying on a couch in a thinking mood could easily be a way to describe a meditative state where the forces of the universe and our connection with the continual movement, and our powerful God.” IV - POINT OF VIEW: About the poem This poem is written in first person It’s all told in the perspective of Wordsworth Although he is reflecting back upon his memories, it is still written in first person More interesting things about the poem… • First one, this short poem is one of Wordsworth’s most famous works; it is interesting the fact that there are two versions of the title The Daffodils I wandered lonely as a cloud I not know if it is a choice of the poet himself or a conventional attitude of critics who came after him But if I pause over one of the two versions, I may suppose that "I wandered lonely as a cloud" wants to point to the first personal pronoun "I", so the subject is the poet; the verb "wandered" is a perception and intellectual one, so the imagination of the poet could be the action of the poem; moreover, the adjective "lonely" indicates the solitude of the poet, what is more, the comparison "as a cloud" affirms his loneliness • Last one, we know that the speaker is a poet because he tells us so in line 15 He speaks in the third person, but we know he’s talking about himself “A poet could but be gay” Speaker of the poem: • The speaker is a (35) ……………… who learns to find companions not in people but in nature • The speaker of the poem seems to be a (36) …………… He thinks that he is a cloud that is looking over dancing daffodils • The speaker demonstrates how (37) ………………… was to Romantics The speaker of the poem is (38) ……… V - CHARACTERIZATION Cloud: “I wander’d lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills” The poem opened with the narrator walking in the state of worldly detachment, his wandering When he thought lonely as a cloud, he described it lightly and helped readers did not feel sad when they were reading because clouds usually travel in groups Also, the cloud could be lonely because it floats over a natural landscape with no people in it This is a romantic poet in a romantic emotion lead readers feel interested in the poem Daffodils: “When all at once I saw a crowd A host, of golden daffodils Beside the lake, beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” When the poet was wandering in the forest and enjoying the fascinating nature around him, he suddenly saw a crowd of golden daffodils by the lakeside The daffodils appeared so beautifully that he was compelled to gaze at these flowers playing with pleasure in the wind The author used personification to describe the beauty of daffodils Therefore, they became to have action and mind like people It made the poem as beautiful as a lively picture Stars: In the 2nd poem, he continued describing daffodils: “Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way”, The figure of simile is subtly used “as the stars that shine” and “milky way” The golden daffodils were compared with the stars shining and twinkling on the galaxy By that way the poet immortalized daffodils And this is in contrast to transitory nature of life examined in other works Daffodils seemed to become more beautiful and amazing in Wordsworth’s poem The author could feel how many flowers were stretching as far as the eyes can see though he had just come to that place: 10 “They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” Like the Milky Way galaxy, the flowers are roughly concentrated in a line that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see If readers have ever seen the Milky Way, they can know that the galaxy appears to be a band that has more stars and a brighter appearance than the night sky around it They can also imagine the same effect with the flowers It’s not as if there are no flowers outside the shore of the lake, but most are concentrated on the shore Particularly, the author reversed usual syntax and hyperbole in: “Ten thousand saw I at a glance” That was capable of emphasizing quantities of daffodils In the last of the 2nd poem, Wordsworth used personification “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance” again And in the next several lines the 3rd stanza: “The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:” Through characterized daffodils, we can find that nature has its own soul These light-hearted daffodils, weaving in unison with each other in the wind And the author compared them with waves Through the lake’s sparking waves danced beautifully, the daffodils seemed to much better than them That reinforced beauty of daffodils William lifted him out of his soul and placed him in a higher 11 state in which the soul of nature and the soul of man were united into a single harmony The Author: The poet felt happy and pleasant when he saw golden flowers smiling in the sunshine: “I gazed - and gazed - but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:” The repetition of "gaze" tells us that he kept looking at the flowers for a long time It's as if the speaker enjoys looking at these daffodils at the time because he seems to be really enjoying those daffodils Perhaps to him, the daffodil’s charm was a gift which God granted Many years later, the daffodil’s beauty still haunted Wordsworth Whether he stayed in empty or thoughtful mood, the images of daffodils came to mind and flashed upon his eyes: “They flash upon that inward eye And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.” Which is the bliss of solitude; 12 In the last stanza, it is revealed that this scene is only a memory of the pensive speaker This is marked by a change from a narrative past tense to the present tense as a conclusion to a sense of movement within the poem: passive to active motion, from sadness to blissfulness The memory of daffodils was etched in the author’s mind and soul forever When the poet was feeling lonely, dull or depressed, he thought of daffodils and cheered up He desired to “dances with the daffodils” because he can feel the soul of nature and the soul of him were united into a single harmony, The above two lines weren’t composed by Wordsworth but by his wife, Mary Wordsworth considered them the best lines of the whole poem They showed love of daffodils To him, daffodils are friends who come to console and encourage him And images of daffodils would never seem to fade in Wordsworth’s mind The title, “Daffodils” appears as a simple word that reminds us about the arrival the spring season, when the field is full of daffodils Daffodils are yellow flowers, with amazing shapes and charming fragrance But daffodils in Wordsworth’s poem is also an artistic symbol They symbolize the nature and the joys and happiness of life The poem not only showed us natural beauty and the potential of nature towards people but also showed the traditional family about nature’s love VI – THEMES The theme of the poem is mainly a collection of human emotions inspired by nature that we may have neglected due to our busy lives At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is feeling lonely and sad “I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o’er vales and hills” He begins the poem by telling his loneliness This is the first theme that I want to say about “a feeling of loneliness” He compares himself to a floating cloud over hills and valleys, precisely described how deep his loneliness was He didn’t say “walked around”, but he used the much more descriptive word “wandered” which literally means roaming around without a purpose, like when you explore something, you feel purposeless and directionless in general However, is a cloud lonely? Clouds always travel in group; they are big, and far away above the sky How could such big groups of cloud can be lonely? Or maybe just the cloud on the hills, the cloud in the speaker’s eyes was lonely as he seemed to be loneliness on it We feel that the speaker is seeking for the meaning of his life He walked aimlessly, beside his sister but he still felt “lonely as a cloud” that could be affected by our daily routines So The speaker wanted to use “cloud” to show us the meaning of people’s life This cloud represents the majority of human population that is so self-involved with their own insignificant lives that they will just the same old thing and get basically a monotonous existence without meaning or any worthwhile experiences to shape their characters They are so far removed from their surroundings, “lonely as a cloud, that floats high o’er vales and hills” that many people will never take the time to slow down to enjoy the simple beauty of life Therefore, some people will never know the glorious sense of peace that they are missing This poem is relevant to me because it describes time of loneliness Sometimes we feel that we are the only people on Earth, akin to a lonely cloud in the sky, until we encounter something beautiful which completely changes our mindset Suddenly, “When all at once I saw a crowd A host, of golden daffodils Beside the lake, beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” From the first stanza, we saw the landscape which includes the valleys and hills, the lake and the trees, the flowers beneath them and the breezy atmosphere that came from where he was born, England This beautiful landscape gave him a love of nature As for the theme, the poem is all about nature Nature has its beauty and influence to man Man shows his love of nature This is the relationship between “Man and Nature” In the second stanza, the flowers are continued as compared as the stars “Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way” They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” He compares the daffodils to the shining stars that sparkle in the Milky Way as the number of daffodils are near the river seem to be thousands in number It reminds him of the Milky Way, because there were so many bright flowers grouped together that they seemed to be never ending Also, the poet says that the daffodils were tossing their heads as if they were dancing in happiness Actually, the poet was amazed at the beauty of the flowers So he found everything around him joyful All these references of dancing and tossing their heads are parts of his personification of the flowers We have seen the daffodils become to have action and mind like people Those lines are beautiful as a picture If Wordsworth didn’t have love of nature, he couldn’t write how good the verses were! According to him, man’s inner feelings can be better polished and strengthened by nature He also thinks that man is near to the nature Man gets real satisfaction, knowledge and pleasure through nature Nature inspires him a lot And I can say that “I wandered lonely as a cloud” is the poem that just makes you feel good about life It is said that when you are by yourself and lonely and missing your friends, you can use your imagination to find new friends in the world around you In this poem, nature became his kind of friend when he is feeling alone and when he thinks about “daffodils” “A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company” (lines 15-16) As one more the influence of Nature In the last stanza, the poet speaks about the healing and refreshing of nature and also praises “solitude” When the person is in solitude and there is nobody around him He is all alone He has the opportunity to think of nature These memories have a cheerful and lively effect on him He greatly feels happy not only with himself but also with all that happened to him In the poem, the poet says that whenever he lies on his couch having nothing to or in “pensive” mood, it means that when he is either busy thinking or not thinking about anything, he is reminded of the daffodils He says that loneliness becomes lovely if he thinks about “daffodils” in his loneliness When he remembers the daffodils, he starts feeling happy, content and perfectly at peace with himself This is how nature influences him The memories of the daffodils fills his heart with pleasure and joy and he feels like dancing along with the daffodils This show the healing and refreshing effect of nature on the poet *** The third theme, feeling happiness after enjoying the beauty of nature Let’s read the third stanza: “The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee” The fact that the daffodils are happier than the waves The poet felt happy because he is amused by the daffodils For instance, when he sees the daffodils waving in the breeze, he feels glee and his heart is at peace “A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company” (lines 15-16) Glee? Gay? Jocund? It’s as if he’s running out of words for “happy” “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought” Or, he writes “the show to me had brought” instead of “the show brought to me” The word “Wealth” expresses a more permanent kind of happiness It also carries a hint of money that does not quite fit with the supernatural language that has come before And whenever he feels vacant or depress, the flash of daffodils make him happy and pleasant “For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye” And when he thinks about daffodils like he is thinking of good times and things that make him fill with happiness and make him feel happy when his feeling under the weather The happiness of the daffodils can always cheer him up Whenever you feel down, you can think about the things that make you happy and you will then become happy too In the final line of the third stanza: “What wealth the show to me had brought” is his thanks to nature for providing him with “wealth” by putting up a “show” like this He really enjoyed nature and felt like he belonged to there *** Before we read the poem, we predicted that the poem would be about We thought it would be about a guy that is very lonely and has no one in his life Also, we thought the poem would be very depressing and sad We predicted wrong, the poem is mainly about nature The poem showed us natural beauty and the potential of nature towards people He would like to call us to come back to the nature and enjoy it The soul of nature and the soul of man were united into a single harmony Nature is the key connection between the author and the poem In the description of the daffodils, William used quite a lot of literary devices and it was these figures that helped us understand more about the vivid picture he draw and the way he connected with the nature, and also he conveys his feelings to the reader VII - FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: Meaning of the title: When you read the title as "I wandered lonely as a Cloud", you might have done a double take because many people know the poem as "Daffodils" or "The Daffodils" The original title merely follows a standard informal practice of using the first line of a poem as its title But this title is misleading, because you think you’re going to read a poem about loneliness, but then you get a poem about sublime happiness Still, that’s what Wordsworth wanted, so you have to trust the man “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” (C) Figures of speech The poem is also rich in its use of figures of speech The use of the figures of speech lets the reader feel what the poet feels, and imagine what the poem is talking about A Personification It is also notable that the poet is fond of using personification in describing the movements and ambience of the daffodils He first establishes the image of the daffodils in lines and “Beside the lake, beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” The poet could have easily depicted the flowers to be swaying with the wind, but rather, he prefers to personify their movements in order to show the intense emotion that the poet has experienced towards seeing the flowers It is also remarkable that the persona is consistent in describing the flowers movement to dancing to insinuate joyful activity He even mentions how the waves danced as well but still, the daffodils are much more remarkable “The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee” The poet personifies his heart as a human being who is dancing “And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.” B Metaphor The persona also speaks in metaphors as he compares the sets of daffodils to a crowd which most likely pertains to people The lines depict the quantity of the flowers to that of a crowd of people Obviously, the speaker feels an overwhelming happiness upon the sight of the flowers that he cannot help but claim that: "A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company" Wordsworth also considers the view of the daffodils as a show which brought wealth to the narrator This line further emphasizes the impact of the flowers to the narrator Wordsworth's insistence upon language as a primitive utterance of passions is seen in the archaisms in the poem For example, we have the expression, the "jocund company" (Daffodils) that suggest the impassioned utterances of the poet C Simile Wordsworth uses simile in numerous stanzas to describe how the persona feels towards the sight of the daffodils The title itself “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” uses simile to describe how the speaker compares himself to a cloud freely wandering atop the valleys and hills He also makes use of another simile in the first two lines of the second stanza which is a parallel of the first stanza “Continuous as the stars that shine And the twinkle on the Milky Way” In these two lines, the persona compares the daffodils dancing to be as continuous as the stars This is another reference to nature It is apparent that most of the objects to which Wordsworth compares the daffodils are elements of nature as well D Alliterations Alliteration is the repetition of similar sounds that the poet used in: “The floats on high o’ver vales and hills” ** “Beside the lake, beneath the trees” ** “Ten thousand saw I at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” ** “The waves beside them danced; but they” ** “What wealth the show to me had brought:” E Hyperbole "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" This sentence is an exaggeration and a hyperbole, describing the scene of ten thousand daffodils, all together "They stretched in never-ending line" The flowers are spread everywhere in a line, significance of vastness is explained F Repetition In the third stanza, the poet repeated the word “gazed” times The word “dance” is repeated times in this poem In the 1st stanza, it denotes the happiness and liveliness of the flowers In the 2nd stanza, it creates a sense os harmonious relationship between the daffodils and the waves In the last stanza, it refers that this harmony is advanced to include the poet himself G Archaic: ‘O’er hills and dales’ The shortening of O’er from Over is what is called Archaic i.e it is abbreviated: a syntactical feature of language the Romantic poets used a lot and gives it an olden Romantic quality as you read out loud H Rhyming scheme The “ I wandered lonely as a cloud” has a rhyming scheme throughout the poem The rhyming scheme of the poem is 'ABABCC' The first four lines of each stanza has a rhyming scheme of 'ABAB' While the ending two lines, are the rhyming couplet Each stanza makes use of 'Enjambment' which converts the poem into a continuous flow of expressions without a pause I wandered lonely as a cloud (A) That floats on high o'er vales and hills, (B) When all at once I saw a crowd, (A) A host of golden daffodils; (B) Besides the lake, beneath the trees, (C) Fluttering and dancing in the breeze (C) VIII NEW ENDING VERSION I would like to add two verses to have a new ending in this poem: “The Daffodils lead me to new land Where I know I belong” The author seems to feel too tired of living in a city, his mind always have got depressed thoughts, and he is getting smaller in a crowded place There is just only one thing that help him release the depression is the nature where is a way to communicate with God God is through nature As we get older, we move away from God like the chart of life When death comes along, you are back to God’s consciousness They also said that in the city we are lost And nature is where you find yourself where you are free Nature in the city is basically trapped Although he was wandering lonely, he never feel lonely He considered the clouds, the daffodils, the waves, etc as his companions His companions are just scenery and inanimate objects, but that objects bring him peace, bring him happiness, and bring him positive emotions But in the poem, the author seem to be just passing through, he keeps going and there is no destination for his wandering He is like the clouds of mosquito netting that was floating across the sky Therefore, I want him to realize where he belongs to it, I want him to stop his tired steps, and I want him to leave what does not belong to him In our life, we can’t live with the pressure forever Life always has the options and you should not waste your life because it is short Let’s follow your purpose and never ever get back to the places, the person, and the things that you never want to exist in your life The End