William Wordsworth is considered to be one of our greatest poets. The controversy that his poetry motivated throughout the nineteenth century helped him earn his place among the greats (Abercrombie 1). Wordsworth was known as:.
A radical of the 1790s in style and thought, as an "establishment" poet laureate, as the "Daddy Wordsworth" admired by the Victorians, as the "simple" Anglican poet of nature, as the "problematic" poet of "consciousness," and recently, as a "Nobodaddy" who was too conservative in the Age of Revolution, the poet's reputation as one of the great masters of English poetry continues (Critical Essays 1).
He will always remain as one of those poets whose name will define an age.
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Everybody is aware that Wordsworth is a "nature poet". Wordsworth lived by the mountains and lakes of Cumberland where he meditated and wrote, away from society (Critical Essays 179). Many of Wordsworth's poems foreshadow the late twentieth century conservation efforts. Wordsworth being against the progress of agriculture and industrialism writes about keeping seemingly useless territory as a sanctuary (Critical Essays 180).
Wordsworth is most known for his three major works, Lyrical Ballads, the Intimations ode, and The Prelude. His Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth uses questions and responses to show different situations from a variety of different angles. "The barely expressed questions that force the burden of this mystery onto the occasion are, perhaps, the primary "cause" behind this urgent and strenuous composition of belief" (Critical Essays 48). His Lyrical Ballads showed his strength in his use of diction (Abercrombie 54). Wordsworth's Intimations odes seem to be very uncharacteristic of him. From the Intimations ode Wordsworthian poetics come to the conclusion that, "poetic space is what we half perceive and half create on the basis of an adhoc symbiosis of mind with nature," (Critical Essays 56).