ワーズワスにおける都市 : アンチテーゼとしてのロンドン(文学編)

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The aim of this paper is to show how London, as an antithesis to nature, played a crucial role in making Wordsworth acknowledge the value of his communion with nature as a child. Wordsworth was undoubtedly a nature poet since he devoted his life to writing poems on nature and its meanings to man. It does not follow, however, that he was not concerned with a city and the life there. His description of London, for instance, reveals the fact that his view of nature was formed and consolidated through his experiences in the city. He frequently explains how often 'amid the din of towns and cities in hours of weariness.' he turned to nature and to what it represented. It was with this acute sense of contrast between nature and London in mind that he started The Prelude with the symbolical depiction of his pleasure of returning to the Lake District from the great capital. Wordsworth thought that nature set the absolute moral standard man could always abide by, whereas London at that time was in a state of 'blank confusion' where people had no choice but to live without a meaning or an end. Living in the age of the industrial revolution and its inevitable strain, Wordsworth, we might say, was the first English poet who, in view of both nature and the great city, pointed out the darker side of urbanization and asserted the superiority nature had over London.
1990-12-15