Structuralism is a theory in which all elements of human culture, including literature are thought part of a system of signs. This theory appeared as a reaction at modernist and despair. It was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by the pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure, followed by Levi Strauss.
Structuralism identifies and distinguishes between “surface structures” and “deep structures” in language and linguistic literatures, including texts.The reason why I choose to apply a structuralist point of view upon Wordsworth’s poem is because I can be easily related to it, due to the fact that it is situated in the lyrical genre. “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, written by William Wordsworth in 1804 and published in 1815, is one of the most famous poems of Wordsworth, and it’s also known as “Daffodils” or “The daffodils”. The poem is 24 lines long and it’s composed by four six-lines stanzas.
In each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. The stanza then ends with a rhyming couplet.Wordsworth unifies the content of the poem by focusing the first three stanzas on the experience at the lake and the last stanza on the memory of that experience. An interesting aspect is that despite the fact that it is a lyrical poem, it’s built as a sonnet, meaning that the rhyme is type ABABCC, and each stanza is composed by a quatrain and then a couplet.
Also ,the lines in the poem are in a iambic tetrameter. The writer uses figures of speech, such as metaphors, epithets, personifications or comparisons in order to express his feelings to the reader.As a sub-genre it is a lyrical poem focused on the poet’s response to the beauty of nature(lyrical poetry is a form of poetry with rhyming schemes that express personal feelings ,emotions, ideas or thoughts). The title also reveals a lot about the topic of the poem, the pronoun “I” suggests that the subject is the poet, ”wandered” could explain the slow movement and it is related to the cloud(AS-comparison ),and lonely indicates the solitude of the speaker.The poet describes himself as alone and lonely, detached even from nature as, cloudlike, he "floats on high o'er vales and hills.
Sadness emerges from the term "lonely," but it is tempered by the superiority of the elevation and the transcendence of "on high. " The cloud Wordsworth compares himself to is personified by being given the capabilities to feel lonely and to wander. Wordsworth personifies the images of daffodils by giving them human characteristics such as :”dancing” or ” tossing their heads”.The disinvolvement and idleness generated by the verb "wandered" are erased when in line 3 he focuses on the "crowd" or "host of golden daffodils. The suggested personification of the massed flowers is made definite in the end of the stanza when he describes them as "dancing in the breeze.
" No longer is the speaker distant, remote and aloof. The prepositions of line 5 locate him on the earth "beside the lake" and "beneath the trees. " The dancers are not just yellow but costumed in rich gold for their performance. He is actively among them and no longer at the elevated remove mentioned in lines 1 and 2.In this poem there is also a reverse personification: the speaker is compared to a material object, with the “cloud”, in the structure “I wandered lonely as a cloud.
The inversion or the reversal of usual syntax such as “ten thousands saw I at a glance” has the role to emphasis the writer’s feelings and maintain a constant rhythm of the poem. Others figures of speech: alliteration(“lonely as a cloud”, ”golden daffodils”, ”beside the lake” ,”beneath the trees”). Wordsworth also uses a color reference” host of golden daffodils”.Golden is a symbol for the sun, as for health and beauty. Daffodils are a symbol of love and happiness.
Apart of “golden” there are other words associated with light: “sprightly” ,”stars” ,”shine”, ”flash and sparkling” All of these words give the poem a positive appeal, even though Wordsworth uses words with a negative impact such as “lonely”, ”pensive mood” or “solitude”. In the second stanza the daffodils stretch all along the shore, and there are so many of them that they remind the speaker of the Milky Way.He compares the daffodils to the shining stars that twinkle in the Milky Way as the number of daffodils lined near the river seem to be thousands in number. The hyperbole in here expresses the intensity of the speaker’s excitement and joyous imagining. As with "fluttering" in the concluding line of stanza 1, "tossing" in the same position in the second stanza interrupts the iambic tetrameter with a trochaic substitution that emphasizes the sense of movement . In order to compare the continuity of stars with the quantity of stars , he uses words like never-ending and continuous.
All the four stanzas in the poem are containing a different grammatical form of the word “dance”. In the third stanza, the poet’s view expands, and includes the waves of bay, whose dance movements are out-done by the sprightly flowers. The final line of the third stanza is his indirect thanks to nature for providing him with “wealth”, by showing him a show like this. In the last stanza, the poet returns to the solitude of the lonely cloud wandering in line 1.
”In the bliss of solitude”, the memory of those flowers fills him with pleasure, and it is as if his heart “dances with the daffodils”.Earlier loneliness is now is now blissful solitude. he bliss comes from what he has imaginatively created and is able to summon to his mind's eye. That creation is his poem in which flowers of only vegetable animation can be jocund, feel glee, dance for his entertainment, and counteract his melancholy. Such is the power of nature, a company in which humanity should be not merely silent partners but active participants.
This is a beautiful but simple poem about the beauty of nature and how inspiring it can be.The images that Wordsworth uses to describe the scene are like an artist painting a scene vividly so the reader can see it with his mind's eye. You can clearly visualize the day exactly how Wordsworth must have seen it all those years ago. It was interesting how Wordsworth gave the daffodils an almost human quality in the way they seemed to resemble dancers dancing in unison as if presenting a show.
There are rhyming words at the end of every alternate line of the poem giving it both continuity and a sense of rhythm throughout.
