Student Question
In "Tintern Abbey", why does Wordsworth seek comfort?
Quick answer:
In "Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth seeks comfort because he feels he has lost the intense joy and "spots in time" that inspired his poetry. By revisiting a place associated with past emotional experiences, he seeks both strength and consolation for his lost youth, aiming to reconnect with the profound emotions that once fueled his creativity.
In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," William Wordsworth is dealing with a sense that he no longer is capable of feeling the intense joy that for him was the root of poetry. The experience of "spots in time", those moments if peak experience, was "the emotion recollected in tranquillity" that Wordsworth saw was at the heart of the lyric experience. By revisiting a place where he had such an emotional experience in the past, Wordsworth was seeking comfort (in its etymological sense as a source of strength as well as its more modern sense of consolation) for his lost youth.
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