- Lucy (poems)
Lucy is an unknown girl who is the subject of
William Wordsworth 's "Lucy poems". Most of the poems were written in the winter of 1798-99. The group comprises the five poems "Strange fits of passion have I known ", "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways ", "I travelled among unknown men", "Three years she grew in sun and shower" and "A slumber did my spirit seal". Most scholarship regarding the series has focussed on the ordering of the poems and the identity of Lucy. [James Taaffe, 'Poet and Lover in Wordsworth's "Lucy" Poems, "The Modern Language Review", 61 (1966), p. 175.] Some scholars speculated that Lucy maybe intended to representDorothy Wordsworth or Annette Vallon; however others argue that the name was "a neo-Arcadian commonplace" and therefore she like was not based on any real person. [Herbert Hartmann, 'Wordsworth's "Lucy" Poems: Notes and Marginalia', "PMLA", 49 (1934), p. 141.]Wordsworth also wrote a
ballad entitled "Lucy Gray", [ [http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/poetry/index.asp?pageid=194 wordsworth.org.uk] ] although it is not about the girl of the Lucy poems.M. H. Abrams, editor of "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period", writes of these five poems: "This and the four following pieces are often grouped by editors as the 'Lucy poems,' even though 'A slumber did my spirit seal' does not identify the 'she' who is the subject of that poem. All but the last were written in 1799, while Wordsworth and his sister were in Germany, and homesick. There has been diligent speculation about the identity of Lucy, but it remains speculation. The one certainty is that she is not the girl of Wordsworth's 'Lucy Gray'" (Abrams 2000).]References
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