A Comparative Analysis of Pastoral Poetry of Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming: A Case Study of Tintern Abbey and Back to Country Life

Abstract

Wordsworth was the representative poet of British romanticism in the early nineteenth century, and Tao Yuanming represented the highest attainments of Chinese pastoral poetry. The two poets’ writing themes were based on nature and countryside. They zealously praised nature, gained inspiration in nature and understood the truth. Their artistic accomplishments had an important influence on the literature of their own countries and the world. But because both of them came from different cultural backgrounds, and they had different life experiences, they showed different attitudes towards nature and the poetry of the two poets had many differences. This article mainly compares the pastoral poetry of Tao Yuanming and Wordsworth’s representative works Back to Country Life and Tintern Abbey to analyze the similarities and differences between their pastoral poems and obtain the two poets’ views on nature.

 This article is divided into four parts: The first part briefly introduces Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming, and their poems Tintern Abbey and Back to Country Life; the second part mainly analyzes the similarities of Wordsworth's pastoral poetry and Tao Yuanming’s pastoral poetry, taking their works Tintern Abbey and Back to Country Life as examples; the third part compares Wordsworth’s pastoral poetry with Tao Yuanming’s pastoral poetry, taking Tintern Abbey and Back to Country Life as examples to analyze the differences between the two poets in natural perspectives; the fourth part explores the practical significance of the two poets and their works. Through the comparative analysis of the pastoral poetry of the two poets, this study concludes that the views of nature Tao Yuanming and Wordsworth have far-reaching influence on world literature and profound significance for modern people to think about the relationship between human and nature.

Keywords: Tao Yuanming; Wordsworth; pastoral poetry ; the view of nature