Free Essay on "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

Classification of author's works through time requires map out the evolution of writings categorized in a specific timeframe to show period also referred to as a movement. Literary periods may include Renaissance literature, romanticism, realism, Modernism, existentialism, and naturalism among others to signify the age of poetry (Warrack, 2002). William Wordsworth is an early time poet whose work shows specific characteristics reflecting the period of his publications and writings. This paper will analyze the poem "I Wander Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth to examine its reflection of age categorizing it in the timeframe of literary period.

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The poem by Wordsworth "I Wander Lonely as a Cloud" presents the emotional perception of the poet in response to the beauty of nature classifying the literary work into the romanticism period. The categorization of this text into the romanticism movement is due to the personified emphasizes made by Wordsworth to describe his feelings and imagination on nature to gain critical analysis of the poetry's age. In the poem, Wordsworth appeals to his inner mood by using imagination to depict the relationship of nature and man draw from personal experience and observations. For instance, in the second line of the poem, Wordsworth states: "...that floats on high o'ver vales and hills..." in this statement the poet felt the loneliness drifting his emotions and imagined he was floating the way he has previously seen flaccid clouds hover over the hills and valleys. Therefore, this poem reflects the romanticism period due to the way author's imaginations shapes from his prior engagement with the environment. This philosophical movement dates in the 18th century that lay emphasizes on the integration of imagination and emotions in the production of literary works (Reynolds, 2010). Therefore, The poem "1 Wander Lonely as a Cloud" dates back in the late 18th century when the intellectual period is approximately between 1800 and 1850.

Wordsworth utilized the primary characteristics of romanticism when he integrated his emotions with the inner world's imagination to celebrate the beauty of nature, personification, and mythological elements to emphasize on individual experience. For instance, in the second stanza, Wordsworth recounts the view of the sky using personified expertise and mythical features to appreciate the stars when he states: "...Continuous as the stars that shine...they stretched in never-ending lines....ten thousand saw I as a glance..." (Line 7 - 11). In this explanation, the work qualifies as an efficient representation of the literary period characterized by the romanticism movement during the late 18th and early 19th century.

Further, Wordsworth employs the elements of music and fantasy in the poem though imagery and actual representation to signify his use of hyperbole that makes a considerable contribution to the literature of the romanticism period, for example, in line 24: "...dance with the daffodils" and line 12: "... tossing their heads in sprightly dance" to show his prior experience on the scenarios that he uses in his natural habitat. Therefore, the poet's intellectual movement harmonizes his observation and imagination capacities to reflect the age of his times. In the exploitation of romanticism properties to place the writing and publishing age of the poem "I Wander Lonely as a Cloud" depicts simplicity and creativity inspired by imagination influenced by individual thoughts. Thus the work typically characterizes pantheistic in content, structure, and connotation to having been produced between the late 18th and early 19th century.

Works cited

Reynolds, Nicole. Building Romanticism: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-century Britain. University of Michigan Press, 2010.

Warrack, John. "Romanticism". The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Wordsworth, Williams "I Wander Lonely as a Cloud" retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud