A formalistic Comparative Reading of Wordsworth's "Lucy" and Ilya Abu Madi's "Smile"

Abstract

     This study aims at analyzing Wordsworth's "Lucy" and Ilya Abu Madi's "Smile". Both of the poets are romantic. The two selected poems have a lot in common since both address the sustenance of love inside the human spirits. However, they relate to love from different perspectives. Wordsworth`s "Lucy" tackles the theme of love of a beloved, but  Ilya Abu Madi's "Smile" tackles the theme of love of life. The two poems are analyzed comparatively according to the theory of new cricism (formalism). The theory finds its foundations in the works of I.A. Richards (1929) , William Empson (1930), and T.S. Eliot (1933). The two poems are analyzed in observation of the major formalist literary terms into: characters, figures of speech, imagery, plot, point of view, setting, and theme. Each if which has sub-categories. The study concludes that the two poems have related themes, seeing images are fundamental in revealing the themes of the poem by expressing mental pictures, and allegory  plays a great role in presenting extended comparison.