5. Childhood

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about how Wordsworth engages with the idea of childhood in his 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality'.

Course

In this course, Professor Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh) explores the poetry of the great Romantic poet, William Wordsworth. In the first module, we look at Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, in which he outlines his views on the proper language and subject matter of poetry, as well as the role of the poet himself. After that, in the second module, we turn to his views on the composition of poetry, focusing in particular on his poems 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' and 'Tintern Abbey'. In the third module, we explore Wordsworth's presentation of the relationship between the poet and his society in his poem 'Resolution and Independence' before moving on in the fourth module to consider the theme of nature in Wordsworth's poetry. In the fifth and final module, we think about the concept of childhood, looking in particular at 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality'.

Lecturer

Tom Mole is Reader in English Literature and Director of the Centre for the History of the Book. He has previously held appointments at the University of Glasgow, the University of Bristol and, most recently, as Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he was Principal Investigator of the Interacting with Print Research Group.

Mole's interests include literature of the Romantic period in Britain, especially Lord Byron. His monograph, Byron's Romantic Celebrity (Palgrave, 2007), argues that our modern celebrity culture began in the Romantic period, and that Lord Byron should be understood as one of its earliest examples and most astute critics. He edited Romanticism and Celebrity Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and a volume of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Pickering and Chatto, 2006).