"We read A the better to read B": A Comparative Study of Robert Frost and William Wordsworth

Abstract

Robert Frost’s poetry appeals to a wide audience because of its apparent simplicity, which leads to his poems being frequently misunderstood. In an age in which Modernism was at its peak, his poems seemed not to require footnotes in order to be fully comprehended. Reputable literary traditions, however, hide behind this only apparent simplicity. Critics tend to place Frost in the same literary strand as Wordsworth, especially due to the extensive presence of natural settings in his poetry. This hypothesis is not at all illogical, since Frost appears to engage with many of the same themes the Romantic poet was interested in. Through a comparison with Wordsworth, this thesis will attempt to trace the literary traditions which have influenced Frost’s poetic production. In particular, it will do so by focusing on four themes that the two poets have in common, namely nature, the pastoral, the different manifestations of loneliness, and the gothic. Each chapter will discuss the most relevant critical approaches to that specific area, supporting every argument with the analysis of numerous poems. The ultimate goal is to point out in which ways Frost conforms to Wordsworth, while never disregarding the originality of his approach.