A Spirit of Resistance: A Comparative Study of William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and Yu Chi-hwan’s “Daffodil”

Abstract

This paper discusses two poems about daffodils and their respective ideas about poetry: one poem by British Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and one poem by twentieth-century Korean poet Yu Chi-hwan (1908–1967). Although scholars have performed comparative studies on Wordsworth and Korean poets including Kim Jeoung-hee, Kim So-wol, and Hwang Seok-woo, there is no research comparing Wordsworth and Yu. Thus, this study expands the field of comparative studies of Korean and British poets and enhances our understanding of British Romanticism and the Korean Life School. It argues that both poets used their poems as a medium for expressing resistance under repressive social atmospheres. On the one hand, presented in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807) epitomizes his poetic principles by challenging conventional poetic practices to introduce his own approach. By using plain language and choosing daffodils as his subject matter, he demonstrates the possibility of composing a beautiful poem without following convention. On the other hand, Yu used his poem “Daffodil” (1939) to imply his resistance to the Japanese colonial government’s oppression. Given the likely difficulty explicitly expressing anti-Japanese sentiments and longing for independence, Yu describes the situations around the speaker and the daffodils, tacitly criticizing Japan’s brutal rule over Koreans. The poem’s focus on the resilient nature of the daffodil encourages both readers and himself not to give up hope for independence. This paper argues that despite their differences, Wordsworth and Yu both employ poetry in defiance against the things they object to.