Chaucer’s and Wordsworth’s Vivid Daisies

Author(s):  
Elizabeth Robertson

In 1802, shortly after William Wordsworth read and translated Chaucer, he set down to write a series of poems that mark a shift from his primary focus on the rural poor to tiny and seemingly insignificant natural objects, insects, birds and small common flowers such as the celandine and, above all, the daisy. While Wordsworth’s identity as a nature poet has long been observed, literary critics have yet to notice that among the poems that Wordsworth read and indeed knew well was Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, written in 1386 or thereabouts, a poem whose prologue also includes not only close observation of the daisy but also a consideration of the kind of poetic language one should employ when encountering nature. Close study of Chaucer’s poem and Wordsworth’s multiple poems to daisies within the frame of Timothy Morton’s stimulating theory of ecomimetic ambient poetics reveals that for Wordsworth, Chaucerian medievalism offered a language for thinking through the strengths and limits of poetic encounters with nature.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Maryam Soltan Beyad ◽  
Mahsa Vafa

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is generally known as a nature poet or a “worshipper of nature”. Yet, his nature poems are not merely confined to the portrayal of the physical elements of nature but are marked by his enlightened spiritual vision. The belief in one life flowing through all, which is a prominent feature of Wordsworth’s nature poetry is a prevalent theme also in the treatment of man and the universe in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s philosophy_ a Sufi mystic whose philosophy is most famously associated with the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud or “the oneness of being”. This paper is an attempt to critically analyze the traces of pantheistic and mystical elements underlying Wordsworth’s poetry, and more importantly compare this with Ibn al-‘Arabi’s stand on the matter. Through analysis of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology, particularly his concept of unity of being and his emphasis on the importance of the faculty of imagination, this study first meets the controversy surrounding the pantheistic elements in Wordsworth’s nature philosophy and then attempts to demonstrate that the mystical doctrine of unity in all beings and the reliance on intuition and imagination as a means of perception of divine immanence is evident in both Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ontology and Wordsworth’s nature poetry. This study also reveals that Wordsworth’s attempt to get to coalescence of subject and object via imagination and its sublime product, poetic language, resembles the mystic’s yearning for transcendental states of consciousness and unification with the divine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 843-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Tarshis ◽  
Michelle Garcia Winner ◽  
Pamela Crooke

Purpose What does it mean to be social? In addition, how is that different from behaving socially appropriately? The purpose of this clinical focus article is to tackle these two questions along with taking a deeper look into how communication challenges in childhood apraxia of speech impact social competencies for young children. Through the lens of early social development and social competency, this clinical focus article will explore how speech motor challenges can impact social development and what happens when young learners miss early opportunities to grow socially. While not the primary focus, the clinical focus article will touch upon lingering issues for individuals diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech as they enter the school-aged years. Conclusion Finally, it will address some foundational aspects of intervention and offer ideas and suggestions for structuring therapy to address both speech and social goals.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sridhar Krishnamurti

This article illustrates the potential of placing audiology services in a family physician’s practice setting to increase referrals of geriatric and pediatric patients to audiologists. The primary focus of family practice physicians is the diagnosis/intervention of critical systemic disorders (e.g., cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer). Hence concurrent hearing/balance disorders are likely to be overshadowed in such patients. If audiologists get referrals from these physicians and have direct access to diagnose and manage concurrent hearing/balance problems in these patients, successful audiology practice patterns will emerge, and there will be increased visibility and profitability of audiological services. As a direct consequence, audiological services will move into the mainstream of healthcare delivery, and the profession of audiology will move further towards its goals of early detection and intervention for hearing and balance problems in geriatric and pediatric populations.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arno Böhler

Nietzsche's model of eternal return triggers a drama of affirmation, the overcoming of a simple miming of our ancestors in favour of an active participation in the counter-actualisation of hidden potentials in recurrent events. Based on a close study of Zarathustra's struggle to free himself from a suffocating nihilism, the paper focuses on the revelatory caesura that ushers in what Deleuze calls the third synthesis of time, a time of ‘doing’ rather than reflection.


Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-153
Author(s):  
Daisy Sainsbury

Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of minor literature, deterritorialization and agrammaticality, this article explores the possibility of a ‘minor poetry’, considering various interpretations of the term, and interrogating the value of the distinction between minor poetry and minor literature. The article considers Bakhtin's work, which offers several parallels to Deleuze and Guattari's in its consideration of the language system and the place of literature within it, but which also addresses questions of genre. It pursues Christian Prigent's hypothesis, in contrast to Bakhtin's account of poetic discourse, that Deleuze and Guattari's notion of deterritorialization might offer a definition of poetic language. Considering the work of two French-language poets, Ghérasim Luca and Olivier Cadiot, the article argues that the term ‘minor poetry’ gains an additional relevance for experimental twentieth-century poetry which grapples with its own generic identity, deterritorializing established conceptions of poetry, and making ‘minor’ the major poetic discourses on which it is contingent.


Romanticism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101
Author(s):  
Brandon C. Yen

Through hitherto neglected manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin, the Bodleian Library, and the Wordsworth Trust, this paper explores the relationship between William Wordsworth and his Irish friends William Rowan Hamilton and Francis Beaufort Edgeworth around 1829. It details the debates about poetry and science between Hamilton (Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin and Royal Astronomer of Ireland) and Edgeworth (the novelist Maria Edgeworth's half-brother), in which Wordsworth was embroiled when he visited Ireland in the autumn of 1829. By examining a variety of documents including letters, poems, lectures, and memoirs, a fragment of literary history may be restored and a clearer understanding may be reached of the tensions between poetry and science in Wordsworth's poetry, particularly in The Excursion, and of the Irish provenance of a memorable passage in ‘On the Power of Sound’.


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