Fashioning England and the English by Unknown

Fashioning England and the English by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319921266
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


Wordsworth’s Middle-Class Idyll at Grasmere

Critics beginning with Coleridge generally agree that Wordsworth’s revolutionary style, which blurred the boundaries with prose and treated subjects “with the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness” (Arnold 1961, 345), contributed significantly to the development of a modern, middle-class literature. His rural subjects, on the other hand, continue to invite controversy. William Hazlitt , for example, immediately saw the poet’s strong affinity with Rousseau and found much to praise in The Excursion , but criticised the poem’s sentimental idealisation of rural life as unrealistic , wielding Rousseauian arguments to deconstruct its pastoralism :All country people hate each other. They have so little comfort, that they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure or advantage, and nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not being accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse to it—stupid, for want of thought—selfish, for want of society. There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not let you have it … Vanity and luxury are the civilizers of the world, and sweeteners of human life. The common people in civilized countries are a kind of domesticated savages … They are taken out of a state of nature, without being put in possession of the refinements of art. The customs and institutions of society cramp their imaginations without giving them knowledge. If the inhabitants of the mountainous districts described by Mr. Wordsworth are less gross and sensual than others, they are more selfish. (Hazlitt 1998a, 123)



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