2。 A Brief Introduction of Wordsworth

Looking back to the romantic period of English literature, one among the greatest poets deserves to be remembered by time is William Wordsworth, who helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature。 William Wordsworth is the great Poet Laureate, as one of the eminent English romantic Lake Poets along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, is best-renowned as a worshipper of nature。  In his poems he aimed at simplicity and purity of the language, fighting against the conventional forms of the 18th century poetry。 During the late 18th century, the twenty-three poems collected in Lyrical Ballads set in rural England were composed as experiments by Wordsworth to testify whether the language of common people might be adapted to the pleasure of poetic pleasure。 

3。 Literature Review

Carl Woodring once highly praised that “Wordsworth grew into the greatest English poet since Milton”。 (Woodring, 1955; 59) Through reading his poems, it is not difficult for us to find out his advanced ecological ideas in his poetry。 Over the past two centuries, his works have been discussed by critics from different critical perspectives at different periods。 The significance of his spiritual development, his views on immortality and his historical position as a nature poet are commonplace to the critics。 文献综述

However, since the 1990s, with the booming development of industrialization, science and technology, human misbehaved in embracing nature。 We sacrificed environment to make progress in creating material wealth。 In most circumstances, we hindered the process of nature, disobeyed the rules of nature, destroyed the beauty of  nature, broke the balance of nature, even much more worse, we had run out of some resources。 According to such undesirable situations, many critics alleged that literature should come down from the Ivory Tower to help people consciously to retrieve ecological awareness and so Ecocriticism had been emerging。 And in the same way, with the development of Ecocriticism, a new field of reading poetry of Wordsworth had been opened up。 

Jonathan Bates wrote the book Romantic Ecology “Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition” which indicated that it not only imbued the Romantic age with environmentalist thoughts, but also disclosed a new study field concerning Wordsworth。(Bates, 1991; 64) “neither apolitical nor a disguise for covert ideological polemics” written by Karl Kroeber, claimed romantic poets’ focus on nature。(Kroeber, 1994; 80)  On the opposite, “poetry about nature express the romantic poet’s deepest political commitments” which is “in respect for the earth and a skepticism as to the orthodoxy that economic growth and material production are the be-all and end-all of human society” in Bates words。(Bates, 1991; 64) 

However, there are some negative criticism on Wordsworth’s literal work。 First in the history, Francis Jeffery devalued his poetry。 And with the leaping fame of Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold depreciated Wordsworth’s accomplishments as well。 As or the 20th century, T。S。Eliot created the impersonality theory which also stroke Wordsworth’s work but at the same time induced more attention and interest in his poems。 Particularly after 1960, various kinds of critical theories like New Marxism, New Historicism, Feminism,Deconstruction challenged Wordsworth。 For instance, Alan Liu argued the nature that Wordsworth depicted: “except as it is constituted by acts of political definition made possible by particular forms of government。” Even Geoffrey H。 Hartman held the idea that William Wordsworth was a visionary poet not romanticism。来,自,优.尔:论;文*网www.chuibin.com +QQ752018766-

In the most poems written by Wordsworth, we could feel his ecological consciousness in his simple but cheerful language。 His respect and reverence for nature, his compassionate attitude towards the living creatures proved his ecological thought。 Jonathan Bate wrote in the Romantic Ecology: “Wordsworth went before us in some of the steps we are now taking in our thinking about the environment”, and he also claimed that “Wordsworth and the Environment Tradition to the proposition that the way in which William Wordsworth sought to enable his readers better to enjoy or to endure life was by teaching them to look at and dwell in the natural world”。 (Bates, 1991; 64)