英国文学史_复习资料大二英语专业必考(10)

lives and alter the course of English poetry. [...] Through all these years Wordsworth was assailed by vicious and tireless critical attacks by contemptuous reviewers; no great poet has ever had to endure worse.But finally,with the publication of The River Duddon in 1820,the tide began to turn,and by the mid-1830s his reputation had been established with both critics and the reading public. Wordsworth's last years were given over partly to "tinkering" his poems, as the family called his compulsive and persistent habit of revising his earlier poems through edition after edition.The Prelude,for instance, went through four distinct manuscript versions (1798-99,1805-06,1818-20, and 1832-39) and was published only after the poet's death in 1850.Most readers find the earliest versions of The Prelude and other heavily revised poems to be the best,but flashes of brilliance can appear in revisions added when the poet was in his seventies. Wordsworth succeeded his friend Robert Southey as Britain's poet laureate in 1843 and held that post until his own death in 1850.Thereafter his influence was felt throughout the rest of the 19th century,though he was honoured more for his smaller poems,as singled out by the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold,than for his masterpiece,The Prelude.In the 20th century his reputation was strengthened both by recognition of his importance in the Romantic movement and by an appreciation of the darker elements in his personality and verse.