Close Reading of William Wordsworths Nutting
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Close Reading of Nutting
If William Wordsworth rests on the throne as the King of the Romantic Period, Nutting is a shining exemplar of why he should be put on a pedestal. Flirting with the five senses, he seduces the reader into the beautiful backdrop of his lyrical ballad with an extravagant description of the natural setting. Ignoring the conventional devices of figurative language, such as metaphor, Wordsworth manipulates natural language to evoke the images he desires to illustrate his memories. Prosaic analysis of the lines, "[w]here fairy water-breaks do murmur on/For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam" (Wordsworth 33) reveals his talent for turning common language into poetic genius. Wordsworth's sensational description of the stream is heightened through his tight fusion of landscape, symbolism and diction.
The physical structure contributes as much to the tone of the poem as the words themselves. The physical presentation of the poem can be seen as parallel to the course of the stream and similar to the emotional change of the speaker. As the stream is interrupted by "water-breaks," so is the poet's account of his youth by extended hyphens. These extended pauses represent "water-breaks" in the flow of his thoughts. Playing with the constructs of time and space, Wordsworth uses the format of his poem and punctuation to stress certain words and enhance specific scenes...