Wordsworth's Classical Undersong

Wordsworth's Classical Undersong recounts the grammar-school training of a great Romantic revolutionary poet. His teachers were Cambridge graduates, his curriculum the Classics, his academic home a rural secondary school set in the beautiful mountains of the Lake District. But his gifted teachers so charged that traditional curriculum and so melded it with contemporary literature that Wordsworth received a truly inspiring and holistic literary education. Richard Clancey's meticulously researched study presents new biographical information on Wordsworth's classical education and new facts about the education of his teachers. Wordsworth developed a deep love for such masters as Ovid, Virgil and Homer. He came to revere Horace as a mentor. Wordsworth's training was ahead of its time. He was delivered from the tedium of doing artificial Greek and Latin verse composition; he was allowed to use translations. And while he studied the classics, his teachers shared their volumes of contemporary poetry and especially their love for poetry as such. Urged by his beloved teacher William Taylor, Wordsworth composed verse of his own, and the Romantic, revolutionary poet was born. But the classics subtly sing in his poetry, especially in his Prelude.