Page 84 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Unit 7: The World is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth—An Introduction
Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Unit 7: The World is Too Much with Us by Notes

William Wordsworth—An Introduction

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
7.1 The World is Too Much with Us–A Discussion
7.2 Summary

7.3 Keywords
7.4 Review Questions
7.5 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this unit, you will be able to:
• Know about William Wordsworth;
• Weigh and consider the poem The World is Too Much with Us.

Introduction

William Wordsworth was one of the founders of the literary movement we now call Romanticism,
a period covering (roughly) the years 1790 to 1824. One of the most prominent features of
Romantic poetry—that means poetry from the Romantic period, not that lovey-dovey stuff
you see on greeting cards—is an obsession with nature; there are a whole lot of poems about
mountains, flowers, birds, you name it. In addition to talking about nature, the Romantics also
spent a lot of time on gross inequalities among social classes, industrialization, the government,
etc. In many ways, they resemble a lot of our modern-day advocates for the environment and
social equality.
William Wordsworth, the biggest nature-lover of them all, lived most of his life in a rural part
of northern England called the Lake District, a land of beautiful hills, vales, and lakes. If you
head over to “Best of the Web,” you can see some pictures of Wordsworth’s beloved Lake
District. Having grown up and lived in one of the most beautiful places in England, it’s no
surprise that Wordsworth was worried about the potential destruction of that landscape (through
deforestation, urbanization, etc.) and about humanity’s increasing inability to appreciate it.
It is humanity’s inability to “feel” nature that most concerns the speaker of “The World is too
Much with Us,” a poem Wordsworth probably wrote in 1802 but didn’t publish until 1807.
The speaker claims that our obsession with “getting and spending” has made us insensible to
the beauties of nature. “Getting and spending” refers to the consumer culture accompanying
the Industrial Revolution that was the devil incarnate for Wordsworth and other “lake poets”
like Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Only something as malevolent as that evil red guy with horns
and a pitch-fork could make people insensible to something as beautiful as (hold your breath)
the wind! But that’s just it. Wordsworth’s point is that our obsession with “getting and spending”
has made it impossible for us to appreciate the simple beauties of the world around us.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 79