“Dubliners” is a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce in which the author analyses the failure of self-realisation of inhabitants of Dublin in biographical and in psychological ways. The novel was originally turned down by publishers because they considered it immoral for its portrait of the Irish city. Joyce treats in “Dubliners” the paralysis of will in four stages: childhood, youth, maturity and public life. The paralysis of will is the courage and self-knowledge that leads ordinary men and women to accept the limitations imposed by the social context they live in. In “Dubliners” the style is both realistic - to the degree of perfectly recreating characters and idioms of contemporary Dublin - and symbolic – giving the common object unforeseen depth and a new meaning in order to show a new view of reality. Joyce defines this effect “epiphany” which indicates that moment when a simple fact suddenly explodes with meaning and makes a person realise his / her condi...
After Grammar school, Willian went to St John's College, and left England for a walking tour of France and the Alps.
The Parisian environment led him to accept the anarchist and libertarian ideals of many rebellious and anti-monarchist thinkers of the time (for example William Godwin, Mary Shelley’s father).
Inspired by the same ideas, he repudiated not only the Christian faith but also the institution of the family and marriage, weaving relationships with different women, and in particular with Annette Vallon.
He fell in love with Annette, who bore him a daughter, Caroline, in 1792.
In 1793 Wordsworth openly expressed his political convictions in A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, in which he advocated atheism and the revolutionary cause, advocating the execution of Louis XVI of France.
However, the affirmation of Robespierre's regime of Terror and, then, the Napoleonic imperialism that turned against England, pushed Wordsworth to return to his homeland, abandoning the woman he loved so much and his daughter. He will see the two women in 1802 accompanied by his sister Dorothy.
In the same year of the visit to Annette he married Mary Hutchinson, which definitively marked his separation from France and Annette. Testimony of this deep trauma is the drama The Borderers (1795).
In 1797 he met Samuel T. Coleridge in Bristol, because of his approach to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German idealism, and the result of this friendship was a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads.
The extraordinary sensitivity of her sister Dorothy, an essential element of mediation in her dialogue with nature, was equally important: the result of this synergy were the Lyrical Ballads (1798), a milestone of English Romantic poetry.
A key work of the collection is Tintern Abbey: Wordsworth already sketches the story of his sentimental development, while Coleridge collaborated on the volume with four poems, including the famous The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The first manifesto of Romantic aesthetics is the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800), in which Wordsworth exposes in detail his romantic theory that revolutionized both the contents and the English poetic language.
In this period, the poet also published separately the so-called Lucy poems between 1800 and 1807: dedicated to a woman who died at a young age, the literary work synthetically discusses about the cult of childhood, ingenuity and candor that allow the approach to the state of nature, lost in the transition from childhood to adulthood and from the rural world to the industrial one (pre-existence of the soul), and Wordsworth's pantheistic view of nature.
For this reason, Wordsworth was the first English poet to make the child the subject of his poems.
However, the divergence of intentions and interests and some personal misunderstandings led to a rupture between Wordsworth and Coleridge around 1810.
In 1805 the death of Wordworth's brother John, a captain drowned at sea, profoundly affected his life as his future poetry: he completed the Poem to Coleridge, published posthumously in 1850 by his wife under the title The Prelude, and an autobiographical introduction to The Recluse, a work that was to be part of the (unfinished) project of a long philosophical poem: The Excursion(1814).
In 1807 he published Poems in Two Volumes, containing among other things the famous Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood and I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
For this reason, Wordsworth was the first English poet to make the child the subject of his poems.
However, the divergence of intentions and interests and some personal misunderstandings led to a rupture between Wordsworth and Coleridge around 1810.
In 1805 the death of Wordworth's brother John, a captain drowned at sea, profoundly affected his life as his future poetry: he completed the Poem to Coleridge, published posthumously in 1850 by his wife under the title The Prelude, and an autobiographical introduction to The Recluse, a work that was to be part of the (unfinished) project of a long philosophical poem: The Excursion(1814).
In 1807 he published Poems in Two Volumes, containing among other things the famous Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood and I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
He traveled to Germany (1798), Belgium (1828), the Netherlands (1823) and Italy (1820 and 1837).
In the last years of his life, Wordsworth led a retired life marked by many sad events: the death of his children Thomas and Catherine (1812), and later the infirmity that made the beloved Dorothy paralytic in 1829.
He died at Rydal Mount in 1850 and was buried in St. Oswald's Cemetery in Grasmere, among the lakes he had loved so deeply.
He died at Rydal Mount in 1850 and was buried in St. Oswald's Cemetery in Grasmere, among the lakes he had loved so deeply.
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