New Thinking: Wordsworth
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
April 7th 1770 was the day William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria. As we prepare to mark this anniversary, poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson is joined by Sally Bushell, Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature, and Simon Bainbridge, Professor of Romantic Studies – Co-Directors of The Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry at the University of Lancaster to discuss new insights into Wordsworth's writing.
Sally Bushell has edited The Cambridge Companion to ‘Lyrical Ballads’ . You can find more about her research project here https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/chronotopic-cartographies/ Simon Bainbridge is the author of Mountaineering and British Romanticism
The conversation was recorded with an audience at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama at the University of Manchester. It's part of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research in UK universities produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. You can find more episodes in the collection on the Free Thinking programme website called New Research and uploaded into the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed as episodes called New Thinking.
Producer: Karl Bos
You may also like to check out BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature exploring Wordsworth https://www.bbc.com/programmes/m000h020
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. This is the |
| 0:32.5 | Arts and Ideas podcast. I'm Sarah Jackson and welcome to this edition of New Thinking, which is part of our |
| 0:39.3 | series looking at the very best in Arts and Humanities research from UK universities. This |
| 0:45.2 | conversation is being recorded with an audience at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama |
| 0:49.8 | at the University of Manchester. |
| 0:58.9 | This year marks what would have been the 250th birthday of one of the most revered poets in the English language, William Wordsworth. |
| 1:03.5 | Born in 1770, Wersworth is considered to be one of the founders of the English Romantic Movement, |
| 1:09.2 | alongside contemporaries such as his friend and |
| 1:11.8 | creative partner in crime, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wedsworth grew up around the Lake District, |
| 1:18.4 | studied at Cambridge, travelled Europe as a young man, tramped through revolutionary France, |
| 1:23.6 | and returned to live by the lakes in his late 20s, where he stayed for the rest of his life. |
| 1:29.4 | Unlike many poets of his age, |
| 1:31.2 | he attained acclaim during his lifetime |
| 1:33.0 | and was poet laureate when he died aged 80 in 1850. |
| 1:37.9 | Today, reflecting on this anniversary, |
| 1:40.4 | will be looking at his relationship to nature, |
| 1:42.9 | reimagining the places most important to him, |
| 1:45.8 | as well as exploring the current buzz |
| 1:47.5 | in contemporary Wordsworth circles. |
| 1:50.2 | But I'm certainly not wondering as lonely as a cloud |
... |
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