Identity
On 27 March 1843, Wordsworth wrote to Henry Reed, "The character of the schoolmaster, had like the Wanderer in The Excursion a solid foundation in fact and reality, but like him it was also in some degree a composition: I will not, and need not, call it an invention — it was no such thing." The character Matthew is likely based on Wordsworth's schoolmaster while at Hawkeshead, William Taylor, who died in 1786 at the age of 32. However, Moorman argues that the character is most likely based on a "Packman", or peddler that would visit Hawkshead to sell his wares. The "Packman" would sing and tell stories, and, with his traveling, resembled the Wanderer from The Excursion.
Read more about this topic: The Matthew Poems
Famous quotes containing the word identity:
“Though your views are in straight antagonism to theirs, assume an identity of sentiment, assume that you are saying precisely that which all think, and in the flow of wit and love roll out your paradoxes in solid column, with not the infirmity of a doubt.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women.... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)