William Wordsworth Group

Question:

mtariq
mtariq
Teacher
High School - 12th Grade

Please tell me how I can explain the literary essay, "Child is the father of the man".

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Posted by mtariq on Friday November 13, 2009 at 1:14 AM and tagged with child is the father of man, essay, literature.

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  1. kc4u Teacher
    College - Senior

    eNotes Editor

    This line from Wordsworth's poem 'My Heart Leaps Up' is an example of what is known as an Epigram. An Epigram shows some contradiction in meaning, but the contradiction is resolved and a deeper layer of meaning gets explored as we probe into the saying/statement. Used as the epigraph of Wordsworth's famous ode--'Ode on the Intimations of Immortality', the epigrammatic observation may lead to the following suggestions:

    a) The seed of maturity/adulthood is in the child, and so every child is a potential father;

    b) The nature and quality of the growth of a child may lead to the nature and quality of the adult state;

    c) If God is believed to be the Father, the Child is the closest approximation of God.

    It may also be striking that the said line betrays a sort of male sexist bias for if the Child is the Father of the Man, what's going to happen to the girl-child?

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    Posted by kc4u on Friday November 13, 2009 at 12:12 PM