Essay on The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth essays

Essay on The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth essays THE TABLES TURNED BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH The intention of this poem is to convince the reader of the wisdom that Nature has. This is just a mere theory of the speaker presented in the text through the opposing point of view of the poetic voice and his friend who thinks that books are the source of wisdom, but the poetic I argues, "Let Nature be your Teacher" (line 16). The intellectual pursuit of knowledge, he argues, distorts "the forms of things," (line 17) but Nature is sweet. There is a relation of friendship between the poetic I and the addressee, in which there is a close supposedly affection, which we assume from the use of the appellative friend (line 1 and 3). However with regards to authority it seems that the speaker is placed in a little inferior position, since he tries to convince his friend. The speakers presence is very obvious, in the fact that he refers to himself using the possessive pronoun my (lines 1, 3 and 11). So we have a case of a double situational context, as the speaker is on the one hand addressing to his friend and on the other to us, the implied reader. In fact, it seems that the author has used his friend as a pretext for addressing us. So, the speaker s goal is to convince his friend, and also to us who are supposed to share the friends opinion. There is an attempt to convince the reader of the truth of an assertion that is hard to accept because it opposes to what has conventionally been said. We can even perceive this idea in the title of the poem (The tables Turned) which shows that the author was aware of the difficulty of his intention. In the first stanza we have three directives and a statement. The poetic I is requesting his friend to quit his books and also to clear his looks, through the use of imperatives and ends with a question which provides negative connotations to books, since he describes them as ...