Ear Perception as a Poetic Device: The Aesthetics of Sound in William Wordsworth’s Poetry

Abstract

Wordsworth’s romantic approach to poetry manifests itself through a rich array of writing techniques. His reliance on the five senses in his poetic depictions constitutes an aesthetics that swerves from a mimetic representation of reality and embraces reliance on personal experiences and subjective impressions. Among other senses, Wordsworth gives particular attention to the ear. Some important poems of his feature sound and music as stylistic devices illustrating a few theoretical concepts already developed in “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1802). In selected passages from The Prelude and “The Solitary Reaper” Wordsworth uses sound and hearing as metaphors for his principle of poetic creation in tranquillity, while in poems like “The Power of Sound” and “The Power of Music” the motive of music distinctively reveals Wordsworth’s differentiation between the poet and the ordinary man as plainly exposed in his “Preface”.