Narrative Poems: ‘The Ruined Cottage’ and ‘Michael’ by William Wordsworth
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How did Coleridge and Wordsworth's friendship influence 'The Ruined Cottage'?
Hello. We spoke in a previous installment about the wonderful moment when a brilliant young man from the West Country, called Samuel Taylor Coleridge, erupted into the life of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, siblings from the Lake District, who had found themselves living in Dorset in June 1797. As they all befriended one another at breakneck speed, the poets naturally read one another their latest literary efforts. Dorothy wrote to a friend, the first thing that was read after he came was William's new poem, The Ruined Cottage, with which he was much delighted. And after tea, he repeated to us two acts and a half of his tragedy, Osorio. Well, apart from devoted Coleridge scholars, no one much concerns themselves with Osorio, I'm afraid, but The Ruined Cottage has become one of the central texts of the Wordsworth canon.
And this is surprising, in a way, since it didn't actually appear as a separate poem under that title until 1969. Wordsworth had never printed it as a standalone work. Instead, he incorporated it, heavily revised, into book one of a weighty philosophical epic called The Excursion, published years later, which these days really is a bit of a specialist's delicacy.
What is the significance of 'The Ruined Cottage' in Wordsworth's body of work?
Late in life, Coleridge was so revered by his young circle of young admirers that they scribbled down everything he said. And one of his recorded remarks was that the opening bits of the excursion should have been published separately. Under the title, he suggested The Deserted Cottage, which would have made, he said, one of the most beautiful poems in the language. And much earlier than that, in 1815, he'd said that he'd always thought of that as the finest poem in our language. comparing it with any of the same or similar length. Well, it's that early poem that we're looking at today. Not quite the poem that Coleridge listened to with such admiration on that summer evening in 1797, as that very, very first version doesn't survive.
The poem that we're going to talk about called The Ruined Cottage is the revision, the expansion of that original poem. And it's reworking was done under Coleridge's influence in the spring of 1798, which is one of the things we're going to go on and talk about. We have a second great Wordsworth narrative poem to talk about as well, Michael, written a couple of years later. It also has an odd Coleridge connection. The scene has now changed. The Wordsworth have returned north and they've taken Coleridge north with them. The origins of Michael lie in stories that Wordsworth remembered from his childhood. And the story of Michael or the original of Michael took place near Grasmere where, of course, the Wordsworths had settled at the end of 1799.
In October 1800, Dorothy records in her journal, after dinner, we walked up Greenhead Gill in search of a sheepfold. So, they're trying to, you know, find the centerpiece of this piece of folklore that Wordsworth had remembered from his childhood. And Dorothy mentions a very striking detail that didn't make it into the poem explicitly, but perhaps haunts it nevertheless. She writes, the sheepfold is falling away.
What themes are explored in Wordsworth's narrative poems?
It is built nearly in the form of a heart, unequally divided. At this point, Wordsworth and Coleridge were putting together the second edition of their landmark volume, Lyrical Ballads, and Coleridge's job was to finish his extraordinary, spooky narrative poem, Christabel, which tells the story of a household destroyed by the catastrophic arrival of an irresistible, supernatural femme fatale, and Coleridge couldn't finish it. And so Wordsworth wrote Michael against the clock to fill the space in volume two. And in so doing, as we'll go on to say, I'm sure, he wrote his own narrative about the destruction of a home, although, of course, in completely unsupernatural terms. So those are our two texts for today.
My name is Seamus Perry. I teach English at Balliol College in Oxford. And as always, I'm speaking to Mark Ford, poet, critic, and professor of English at University College London. I suppose one place to start might be to say, I guess we think of Wordsworth as being, in some senses, quite a positive or optimistic poet.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Coleridge and Wordsworth's friendship influence 'The Ruined Cottage'?
0:00–1:24
2
What is the significance of 'The Ruined Cottage' in Wordsworth's body of work?
1:24–3:28
3
What themes are explored in Wordsworth's narrative poems?
3:28–6:03
4
How does 'Michael' reflect Wordsworth's views on rural life?
6:03–8:26
5
What social issues are highlighted in 'The Ruined Cottage' and 'Michael'?
8:26–10:57
6
How do the poems depict the disintegration of ordinary lives?
10:57–13:13
7
What role does nature play in Wordsworth's narrative poems?
13:13–14:43
8
What insights can we gain from the characters in 'The Ruined Cottage' and 'Michael'?
14:43–16:11
Speakers
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