Aesthetics versus Politics: A Comparative Study of William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and Yu Chi – hwan’s “Daffodil”
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Abstract
This essay presents a comparative study of the poems of William Wordsworth and Yu chi – hwan, twentieth – century Korean poet. There are some aesthetic similarities between Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and Yu’s “Daffodil,” including their uses of daffodils and the first – person point of view, but this essay focuses on their differences in perspectives. While daffodil in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” serves to show the speaker’s strong aesthetic sense of imagination, daffodil in Yu’s “Daffodil” symbolizes the hope of freedom from the Japanese Occupation of Korea. By examining the images of daffodils between the twp poems, this paper explores how each writer’s mind demonstrates their aesthetic/political representation of the image of the daffodils.