An Ecological Reading Of William Wordsworth’s Lake Writings

The English countryside at the end of the eighteenth century was indeed confronted with too many threats.The biggest threat undoubtedly came from the overwhelming industrial revolution and the Enclosure movement.The traditional methods of subsistence agriculture were gradually being supplanted by more capitalintensive modes of production,and the common areas upon which the local farmers relied for their seasonal grazing and gathering activities were increasingly being withdrawn for exclusive private use by the process of enclosure.These modernizing tendencies in rural areas were greatly accelerated during the 1790 s with the advent of the Napoleonic Wars,which drove up the prices of agricultural commodities and made the intensive production of market crops a highly profitable endeavor.Rooted in the Lakeland,Wordsworth refused to follow Pope’s pastoral poetry mainstream of concealing rural miseries,but he imparted historical realism to the poor,demonstrated their economic hardships and sympathized them.The present paper examines ecological theme in William Wordsworth’s three Lake Writings Guide to the Lakes,Home at Grasmere and “Michael,a Pastoral Poem”.In doing so,the thesis purports to see Wordsworth as a proto-ecological poet and as one of the begetters of environmentalism,and analyzes the sense of home and the relationship between human and nature,nature and culture.The main body includes three chapters: Chapter one investigates the Lake District’s strong sense of place: firstly,Wordsworth gives the idyllic landscape obvious local characteristics,namely,his descriptions of scenery dismiss artificial order and give all living things equal attention,thereby representing natural disorder and simple ecological vision based on the economy of nature.Then Wordsworth’s love of nature moves to love of human beings.Nature’s great healing power enables people to boast the universal benevolence.Lastly,when industrialization destroys English rural environment and traditional lifestyle,Wordsworth sticks with his disagreement with industrialization.He is strongly opposed to the exploitation of the English scenic spots and wilderness,and deeply objects to the construction of railway because the boom of tourism will lead to increasingly disruptive influence of rural ecological environment.Wordsworth first came up with the modern concept of “National Park”,and his foresight led to the designation of the Lake District eventually as a National Park.His thoughts presciently boast the modern concepts of human ecology.Chapter two examines Wordsworth’s homecoming work—Home at Grasmere.Wordsworth went back to Grasmere after a decade of travelling and temporary lodgings.As a paragon of harmonious relationship between human and nature,Grasmere provides fertile land to his production of poetry.However,this ideal life still has its cracks,Wordsworth remarks that he has lost “romantic hope” in the native inhabitants.This is a romantic poetry’s negation on “romance”,and the word “hope”is a rare use of negation and means “losing hope”.Lastly,it concludes with his responsibility,and his tone becomes firm and determined.Throughout the poem,his thoughts and feelings swing like a pendulum,which enables readers to see a home with a mass of contradictions.Chapter three explores the violated and dying rural families.The dissolution of shepherd’s family is an epitome of the breakdown of traditional rural society.The protagonist Michael is not to represent the unrealistic pastoral romance,but to upend the traditional pastoral poetry.His poetry is a realistic rendering of the shepherds and peasants who lived in harmony with the natural landscape of sublime and who,despite the hard life,always retained their innocence of heart,it is their resilience and perseverance that are the key to their survival in the harsh environment.The solitary and sublime shepherds are free as well because they worked for themselves,hence,they represent the spirits of unalienated labour.Wordsworth believes that the shepherds represent the finest celebration of the values of fortitude,constancy,and love.With the present environmental catastrophe,the strong contemporary force of“Green Romanticism” lies in not only enriching Romanticism studies by digging into its ecological value,but redirecting literary criticism from conventional formalist textualism critique into a novel social political criticism,more importantly investing literature study with social responsibility.