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English Literature / Unit 12   ENL 1126 short lesson, about 20 seconds

"The World Is Too Much With Us"

Captions available

The idea

In the Petrarchan sonnet "The World Is Too Much With Us," Wordsworth criticizes an industrial world absorbed in materialism and cut off from nature. In the sestet he would rather believe a pagan "creed outworn" and glimpse the sea gods Proteus and Triton.

In practice

Getting and spending; pagan sea gods.

Where people slip

The sestet answers the octave.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

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