1.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
2.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
3.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
4.
Newfoundland (island)
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Newfoundland is a large Canadian island off the east coast of the North American mainland, and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has 29 percent of the land area. The island is separated from the Labrador Peninsula by the Strait of Belle Isle and it blocks the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, creating the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the worlds largest estuary. Newfoundlands nearest neighbour is the French overseas community of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, with an area of 108,860 square kilometres, Newfoundland is the worlds 16th-largest island, Canadas fourth-largest island, and the largest Canadian island outside the North. The provincial capital, St. Johns, is located on the southeastern coast of the island, Cape Spear, just south of the capital, is the easternmost point of North America, excluding Greenland. It is common to consider all directly neighbouring islands such as New World, Twillingate, Fogo, by that classification, Newfoundland and its associated small islands have a total area of 111,390 square kilometres. Additionally 6. 1% claimed at least one parent of French ancestry, the islands total population as of the 2006 census was 479,105. Long settled by peoples of the Dorset culture, the island was visited by the Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson in the 11th century. The next European visitors to Newfoundland were Portuguese, Basque, Spanish, French, the island was visited by the Genoese navigator John Cabot, working under contract to King Henry VII of England on his expedition from Bristol in 1497. In 1501, Portuguese explorers Gaspar Corte-Real and his brother Miguel Corte-Real charted part of the coast of Newfoundland in a attempt to find the Northwest Passage. Newfoundland is considered Britains oldest colony, at the time of English settlement, the Beothuk inhabited the island. While there is evidence of ancient indigenous peoples on the island. LAnse aux Meadows was a Norse settlement near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, the site is considered the only undisputed evidence of Pre-Columbian contact between the Old and New Worlds, if the Norse-Inuit contact on Greenland is not counted. There is a second suspected Norse site in Point Rosee, the island is a likely location of Vinland, mentioned in the Viking Chronicles, although this has been disputed. The indigenous people on the island at the time of European settlement were the Beothuk, later immigrants developed a variety of dialects associated with settlement on the island, Newfoundland English, Newfoundland French. In the 19th century, it also had a dialect of Irish known as Newfoundland Irish, Scottish Gaelic was spoken on the island during the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the Codroy Valley area, chiefly by settlers from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The Gaelic names reflected the association with fishing, in Scottish Gaelic, it was called Eilean a Trosg, or literally, similarly, the Irish Gaelic name Talamh an Éisc means Land of the Fish. The first inhabitants of Newfoundland were the Paleo-Eskimo, who have no link to other groups in Newfoundland history
5.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
6.
The Deserted Village
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The Deserted Village is a poem by Oliver Goldsmith published in 1770. It is a work of social commentary, and condemns rural depopulation, the location of the poems deserted village is unknown, but the description may have been influenced by Goldsmiths memory of his childhood in rural Ireland, and his travels around England. The poem is written in couplets, and describes the decline of a village. In the poem, Goldsmith criticises rural depopulation, the moral corruption found in towns, consumerism, enclosure, landscape gardening, avarice, and the pursuit of wealth from international trade. The poem employs, in the words of one critic, deliberately precise obscurity, the poem was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also provoked critical responses, including from other poets such as George Crabbe. References to the poem, and particularly its ominous Ill fares the land warning, have appeared in a number of other contexts, Goldsmith grew up in the hamlet of Lissoy in Ireland. In the 1760s, Goldsmith travelled extensively around England, visiting many small settlements, in this period, the enclosure movement was at its height. The poem is dedicated to the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, Reynolds and Goldsmith were close friends, and were both founding members, along with Samuel Johnson, of a dining society called The Club. Reynolds had helped to promote Goldsmiths play The Good-Naturd Man to the actor and theatre manager David Garrick, the Deserted Village condemns rural depopulation and the indulgence of the rich. This was a subject that Goldsmith had tackled in his earlier poem The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society, Goldsmith also set out his ideas about rural depopulation in an essay entitled The Revolution in Low Life, published in Lloyds Evening Post in 1762. There is no single place which has identified as the village of the poems title. While personal references in the give the impression of referring to the village in which Goldsmith grew up. In The Revolution in Low Life, Goldsmith had condemned the destruction of a village within 50 miles of London in order to construct a landscape garden. Goldsmith reported that he had witnessed this scene in 1761. In the same year, Nuneham Courtenay was removed to make way for Nuneham Park and its owner—Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt—moved the village 1.5 miles away. There are a number of other concordances between Nuneham Courtenays destruction and the contents of the The Deserted Village, the position of both villages, on a hill near a river, was similar, and both had parsons who enjoyed gardening. The poem opens with a description of a village named Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summers lingering blooms delayed. The poem then moves on to describe the village in its current state, Goldsmith then states that the residents of Auburn have not moved to the city, but have emigrated overseas
7.
Joseph Howe
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Joseph Howe, PC was a Nova Scotian journalist, politician, public servant, and poet. Howe is often ranked as one of Nova Scotias most admired politicians and his skills as a journalist. He was born the son of John Howe and Mary Edes at Halifax and inherited from his loyalist father a love for Great Britain. At age 23, the self-taught but widely read Howe purchased the Novascotian, soon making it into a popular and he reported extensively on debates in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and travelled to every part of the province writing about its geography and people. In 1835, Howe was charged with libel, a serious criminal offence, after the Novascotian published a letter attacking Halifax politicians. Howe addressed the jury for more than six hours, citing example after example of civic corruption, the judge called for Howes conviction, but swayed by his passionate address, jurors acquitted him in what is considered a landmark case in the struggle for a free press in Canada. The next year, Howe was elected to the assembly as a reformer, beginning a long. He was instrumental in helping Nova Scotia become the first British colony to win government in 1848. He served as premier of Nova Scotia from 1860 to 1863, having failed to persuade the British to repeal Confederation, Howe joined the federal cabinet of John A. Macdonald in 1869 and played a major role in bringing Manitoba into the union. Howe became the third Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia in 1873, the Howe family was of Puritan stock from Massachusetts. Howe arrived at Halifax in 1779 and set up a printing shop, in 1801, Howe was rewarded for his loyalty by appointment as the Kings Printer and in 1803 he became deputy postmaster for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. In 1798, he had married Mary Edes, their son Joseph was born at Halifax on December 13,1804. Like many lads of that time, Joseph Howe attended the Royal Acadian School before beginning an apprenticeship and he married Catherine Ann Susan McNab on February 2,1828. That same year he went into the business himself with the purchase of the Nova Scotian. Howe acted as its editor until 1841, turning the paper into the most influential in the province and his name ranks as perhaps the greatest in Canadian journalism. On January 1,1835, Howes Novascotian published a letter accusing Halifax politicians. The outraged civic politicians had Howe charged with libel, a serious criminal offence. Howes case seemed hopeless since truth was not a defence, the prosecution had only to prove that Howe had published the letter
8.
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
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Thomas DArcy Etienne Hughes McGee, was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was a Catholic Irishman who hated the British rule of Ireland and he escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism and democracy, and became intensely conservative in his politics and his fervor for Confederation garnered him the title, Canadas first nationalist. He fought the Fenians in Canada, who were Irish Catholics who hated the British, McGee succeeded in helping create the Canadian Confederation in 1867, but was assassinated by Fenian Elements in 1868. Widely known as DArcy McGee, he was born on 13 April 1825 in Carlingford, Ireland, from his mother, the daughter of a Dublin bookseller, he learned the history of Ireland, which later influenced his writing and political activity. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Wexford, where his father, James McGee, was employed by the coast guard. In 1842 at age 17, McGee left Ireland with his sister due to a relationship with their stepmother, Margaret Dea. In 1842 he sailed from Wexford harbour aboard the brig Leo, on the Leo he wrote many of his early poems, mostly about Ireland. He soon found work as assistant editor of Patrick Donahoes Boston Pilot and he specialized in articles expounding the movement for Irish self-determination led by Daniel O’Connell. He became the editor in 1844, While writing widely as well on Irish literature. He advocated the union of Canada into the United States, saying, Either by purchase, conquest, or stipulation, in 1845 he returned to Ireland where he became politically active and edited the The Nation, the voice of the Young Ireland movement. In 1847 he married Mary Theresa Caffrey, they had six children and his involvement in the Irish Confederation and Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. McGee escaped disguised as a priest and returned to the United States, in the United States, he achieved prominence in Irish American circles and founded and edited the New York Nation and the American Celt. He wrote a number of history books and he grew disillusioned with democracy, republicanism and the United States. Historian David Gerber traces a dramatic transformation from the Young Ireland revolutionary who sought a peasant insurrection to expel the British from Ireland, Gerber writes, After 1851, however, he veered increasingly toward the opposite pole, espousing an ultramontane conservatism. Catholic dogma and triumphalism, anti-Protestantism, cultural nationalism, and social conservatism were the framework of McGees thought during the 1850s, McGee emigrated to Montreal in 1857, believing Canada was far more hospitable to the Catholic Irish than was the United States. He downplayed the importance of the Orange Order in Canada and he remained a persistent critic of American institutions, and of the American way of life. He accused the Americans of hostile and expansionist motives toward Canada, McGee worked energetically for continued Canadian devotion to the British Empire seeing in imperialism the protection Canada needed from all American ills
9.
Crimean War
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The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to March 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, the French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense. While the churches eventually worked out their differences and came to an agreement, Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas issued an ultimatum that the Orthodox subjects of the Empire be placed under his protection. Britain attempted to mediate and arranged a compromise that Nicholas agreed to, when the Ottomans demanded changes, Nicholas refused and prepared for war. Having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia in October 1853. The war started in the Balkans, when Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities, until then under Ottoman suzerainty and now part of modern Romania, led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the advance at Silistra. A separate action on the town of Kars in eastern Anatolia led to a siege. Fearing an Ottoman collapse, France and Britain rushed forces to Gallipoli and they then moved north to Varna in June, arriving just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra. Aside from a skirmish at Köstence, there was little for the allies to do. Karl Marx quipped that there they are, the French doing nothing, after extended preparations, the forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and fought their way to a point south of Sevastopol after a series of successful battles. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, a second counterattack, ordered personally by Nicholas, was defeated by Omar Pasha. The front settled into a siege and led to conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller actions were carried out in the Baltic, the Caucasus, Sevastopol fell after eleven months, and neutral countries began to join the Allied cause. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued and this was welcomed by France and Britain, as their subjects were beginning to turn against their governments as the war dragged on. The war was ended by the Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, Russia was forbidden from hosting warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent, Christians there were granted a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute. The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts to use technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways
10.
Florence Nightingale
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Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC was an English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a manager of nurses trained by her during the Crimean War and she gave nursing a highly favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of The Lady with the Lamp making rounds of wounded soldiers at night. Some recent commentators have asserted Nightingales achievements in the Crimean War were exaggerated by the media at the time, nevertheless, critics agree on the decisive importance of her follow-up achievements in professionalising nursing roles for women. In 1860, Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of her school at St Thomas Hospital in London. It was the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of Kings College London, Nightingale was a prodigious and versatile writer. In her lifetime, much of her work was concerned with spreading medical knowledge. Some of her tracts were written in simple English so that they could easily be understood by those with poor literary skills and she also helped popularise the graphical presentation of statistical data. Much of her writing, including her work on religion. Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, in Florence, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florences older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly named after her place of birth, Parthenope. The family moved back to England in 1821, with Nightingale being brought up in the homes at Embley, Hampshire and Lea Hurst. Her parents were William Edward Nightingale, born William Edward Shore, williams mother Mary née Evans was the niece of Peter Nightingale, under the terms of whose will William inherited his estate at Lea Hurst, and assumed the name and arms of Nightingale. Fannys father was the abolitionist and Unitarian William Smith, in 1838, her father took the family on a tour in Europe where he was introduced to the English-born Parisian hostess Mary Clarke, with whom Florence bonded. She recorded that Clarkey was a hostess who did not care for her appearance. Her behaviour was said to be exasperating and eccentric and she had no respect for upper-class British women and she said that if given the choice between being a woman or a galley slave, then she would choose the freedom of the galleys. She generally rejected female company and spent her time with male intellectuals, however, Clarkey made an exception in the case of the Nightingale family and Florence in particular. She and Florence were to close friends for 40 years despite their 27-year age difference. Clarke demonstrated that women could be equals to men, an idea that Florence had not obtained from her mother, in her youth she was respectful of her familys opposition to her working as a nurse, only announcing her decision to enter the field in 1844
11.
William Wordsworth
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William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworths magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was known as the poem to Coleridge. Wordsworth was Britains Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850 and his sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. Wordsworths father was a representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections. He was frequently away from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant from him until his death in 1783. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular set him to commit to memory large portions of verse, including works by Milton, Shakespeare, William was also allowed to use his fathers library. William also spent time at his mothers house in Penrith, Cumberland, where he was exposed to the moors, but did not get along with his grandparents or his uncle. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide, Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, after the death of his mother, in 1778, Wordsworths father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for nine years. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine and that same year he began attending St Johns College, Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791 and he returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790 he went on a tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland. In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement and he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britains tense relations with France forced him to return to England alone the following year. The circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raised doubts as to his wish to marry Annette. With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited Annette, the purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson
12.
Confederation Poets
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Confederation Poets is the name given to a group of Canadian poets born in the decade of Canadas Confederation who rose to prominence in Canada in the late 1880s and 1890s. The term was coined by Canadian professor and literary critic Malcolm Ross, the Confederation Poets were the first Canadian writers to become widely known after Confederation in 1867. Charles G. D. Roberts led the group, which had two branches, One, in Ottawa, consisted of the poets Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott. The other were Maritime poets, including Roberts and his cousin, none of the above poets ever used the term Confederation Poets, or any other term, for themselves as a distinct group. Nothing indicates that any of them considered themselves a group, in fact, they were in no way a cohesive group. Despite the fact there never was such a historically, there may be good reasons to treat the Confederation Poets as a distinct group in hindsight. First of all, Roberts, Lampman, Carman, and Scott were among the first really good writing in the recently formed Dominion of Canada. For that matter, they were writing the first exceptional poetry ever written in the new country, as Confederation Poet Archibald Lampman said about encountering Confederation Poet Charles G. D. Robertss work, One May evening somebody lent me Orion and Other Poems, then recently published. I sat up all night reading and rereading Orion in a state of the wildest excitement, in addition, There are several good reasons, both biographical and literary, for grouping them together. All were close contemporaries born in the early 1860s, Roberts and Carman were cousins, Roberts briefly edited Goldwin Smiths Toronto literary magazine The Week, in which Carman published his first poem. Lampman also published in the Week, and he and Roberts became friends by mail, in the early 1890s, when Carman worked on the editorial staffs of The Independent and The Chapbook, and other American magazines, he published poems by the other three. Lampman and Scott were close friends, with Wilfred Campbell they began the column At the Mermaid Inn in the Toronto Globe, the original idea was to raise some money for Campbell, who was in financial trouble. As Lampman wrote to a friend, Campbell is deplorably poor and they agreed to it, and Campbell, Scott and I have been carrying on the thing for several weeks now. Came up with the title for it, Lampman and Scott found it difficult to keep a rein on Campbell’s frank expression of his heterodox opinions. The column ran only until July 1893, in that year Campbell was given a permanent position in the Department of Militia and Defence, and his financial crisis eased. So as there was no longer the need for it, the column came to an end, the Confederation writers poetry, although striving for a certain Canadian quality, was very much the offspring of English Victorian verse. As is clear from the Lampman quote, what Roberts was striving for, and what Lampman was responding to, was not the idea of a distinctly Canadian poetry, rather, it was that of a Canadian, one of our own, writing great poetry. Irrespective of their statements about nationalism, in terms of their aesthetics the Confederation Poets were not Canadian nationalists
