Prelude

For those of you that were thinking of using Extract from Prelude as a secondary text (for comparison if it doesn't come up in exam)...then some ideas from today's lesson...

William Wordsworth -

• Famous as one of the Romantic Poets - a movement of poets who wrote poems about the magnitude and awe-inspiring power of nature. Also concerned with exposing the ills of society and wrote social criticism to try and challenge symbols of authority and power (such as the church and the monarchy)
• Lost his mother when he was 8 years old and his father sent him away whilst he was young so the poem deals with these feelings of solitude and isolation 
• Grew up in the Lake District, an isolated, rural and very beautiful part of England so he often wrote about the landscape's powerful beauty

The Poem-

• Explores the conflict between guilt and desire
• Autobiographical about a trip in a stolen boat to view a mountain in the darkness
• The poem has clear episodes within it - stealthily stealing the boat; determinedly making towards the mountain; the personification of the mountain (manifesting his guilt at stealing and his fear of nature?); terror and fear as he escapes and returns the boat. The final part of the poem is clearly melancholic and nostalgic in tone where he says that he never saw nature in the same way again (lost his childhood innocence / grew up) and he remained troubled night and day with the vision he had seen of the mountain striding towards him. 

Wider themes - Loss of youthful innocence / Power and authority of nature / Wonder and beauty of nature / Mystical nostalgia / Isolation

+ watch this video which is very good on the themes and context reminders:
Prelude context video