‘‘Elegiac Stanzas by a Picture of

Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by

Sir George Beaumont’’
by William Wordsworth
GROUP 2
Marta Sánchez
Victoria Rabadán
Jose Luis Núñez
María Calzado
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION: EKPHRASIS
2. CONTEXT OF THE POEM
3. “PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM”, INTRODUCTION
4. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM “THE PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM” BY
SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
5. ‘‘PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM’’ BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
6. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE PAINTING AND THE POEM
7. CONCLUSION
8. REFERENCES
1. INTRODUCTION

❖ Ekphrasis - It is the verbal representation of a visual figure.

It is a type of intermediality; it can be real or fictitious and its Further information
description is often embedded in a narrative.
One of the earliest and most
commonly cited forms of ekphrasis
occurs in The Iliad, when Homer
provides a long and discursive account
❖ It derives from Greek, where it literally means of the elaborate scenes embossed on the
"description" and was formed by combining the prefix ex- shield of Achilles

("out") with the verb "phrazein" ("to point out or

explain").
2. CONTEXT OF THE POEM

❖ This poem originates from one of the author’s most horrifying

experiences. This work was written in 1806 after the death of
his younger brother, John Wordsworth.

❖ This poem depicts a picture in which he projects sun to be a

source of happiness, the wind as a source of fear, and the sea to
Portrait of William Wordsworth
be a mystifying creature that seems to have a life of its own. In
contrast to the tumult of Beaumont’s painting, Wordsworth
remembers Peele Castle in a state of solid peace.
3. “PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM”,
INTRODUCTION
❖ This painting was the inspiration for Wordsworth's 'Elegiac
Stanzas', written after the death of his brother John at sea in
1805.

❖ Sir George Beaumont painted this scene of Peel Castle for

William Wordsworth, who was devastated by his brother
John's death at sea.
Peele Castle in a Storm
4. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
➔ The nature of memory and perception
➔ The theme of substitution
➔ Wordsworth’s poetry preoccupation with joy and pleasure

An elegy to his old way of writing

to his dead brother, John Wordsworth

‘’Elegiac Stanzas’ was inspired by the painting by

George Beaumont of ‘Peele Castle (which Wordsworth
lived by briefly) in a Storm.’

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so every like, was day to day
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.
The poem starts by addressing directly to the castle and
evoking the first line in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’
(five years have passed, five summers…)
In this line, Wordsworth speaks about the actual Peele
Castle he saw in 1794. It is important to note that there
are two representations of Peele Castle: the actual
Peele Castle and the Peele Castle he saw in his head
at the time.
Here we find some references to nature, some nature
elements such as the sky, the air.
This repetition evokes a sense of time standing still.
Again this evokes a sense that time is not moving,
 Fancy is Wordsworth’s mind, is different from
How perfect was the calm! it seemed noimagination.
sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
While imagination is where truth can be found,
something that is fancied is completely made up, it
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
represents a negation of reality.
Was even the gentlest of all gentle thingsFancy has to do with whim and fantasy, kind of
flimsy and maybe openly optimistic visions, so there
is a suggestion here that the mind of the poet is not
ruled by imagination but by whim and fantasy.

Ah! then, if mine had been the Painter'sHere,

hand,the image of Peele Castle in Wordsworth’s
head becomes a painting he never painted.
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;
I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile A Picture had it been of lasting ease

Amid a world how different from this! Elysian quiet, without toil or strife

Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; No motion but the moving tide, a breeze

On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,

Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;— Such Picture would I at that time have made:

Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine And seen the soul of truth in every part,

The very sweetest had to theeThis

beenis agiven. A steadfast
devastating challenge peace that might not be betrayed.
of truth. What
Wordsworth knew as truth in his youth is completely
different to the truth he sees now.
So once it would have been, —'tis so no more; What is this new control? Could it be a more traditional
I have submitted to a new control:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been:
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
Christian version of God? What control was he under
before? Nature? His imagination?
The power of imagination is GONE, the power of
shaping the world to fit your desires through the power
of your mind. The old way of coloring experience with
imagination, the old way of trying to channel the light of
childhood IS GONE.
The suffering has humanized him (more sympathetic to
the suffering of others? More moral alert? More
interested in goodness than in beauty?

This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Wordsworth is accepting his devastation.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend, And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore, I love to see the look with which it braves

This work of thine I blame not, but commend; Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,

This sea in anger, and that dismal shore. The lightning, the fierce wind, the trampling waves

O 'tis a passionate Work!—yet wise and well, Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,

Well chosen is the spirit that is here; Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!

That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell, Such happiness, wherever it be known,

This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear! Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

This picture that Wordsworth would have painted (a representation of the world
Wordsworth was living in his mind) distanced him from human kind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,

And frequent sights of what is to be borne!

Note the change in voice. It shifts from “I” to “we.”
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here. — Here Wordsworth is part of the “Kind,” not
distanced from it.
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn

➔ Wordsworth does not want to be the solitary poet in the natural world trying to commune with it through
the imagination.
◆ That’s the world of dream, that’s the world of blindness, that’s the world of fantasy.
➔ The world is dark and horrible because it kills brothers and it randomly wreck ships.
➔ He changes his perspective of the world.
➔ He is warning us, instead of trying to imagine that the world is beautiful, try to face for what it is
(cruel).
➔ You have to have fortitude, you have to be patient, you have to acknowledge that we suffer, that we
mourn. And out of that, you have to conjure some kind of hope.
5. ‘‘The Peele Castle in a Storm’’ by Sir George Beaumont

Wordsworth’s inspiration →

Peele Castle in a Storm (1805)

The painting:

→Painted by Sir George Beaumont

→Oil on canvas

→Donated to the National Gallery

→Nowadays, the work resides in New Walk

Museum (England)
 5. ‘‘The Peele Castle in a Storm’’ by Sir George Beaumont
The painting provides a sublime vision The poem combines the sublime and beautiful

Sublime sight. Wordsworth had a more

‘Danger’ as a main feature positive remembering of
of the Sublime that place
→Fierce wind →Love
→Trampling waves or dark →Peace
→Tempestuous sky →Beauty
 5. ‘‘The Peele Castle in a Storm’’ by Sir George
Beaumont
→Dedicated to William Wordsworth.
→John was captain of the East Indiaman ship ‘Earl
of Abergavenny’.
→The ship sank during a storm in the Isle of
Portland in Weymouth Bay (1805).
→The castle seems to dominate all.
→Representation of Wordsworth’s misfortune and
the source of inspiration for ‘’The Elegiac
Stanzas’’.
→References in the poem to the painting and his
work: ‘’Beaumont Friend’’ or ‘’This work of thine’’
(Wordsworth, 1807).
→A smaller version of the painting was given to
Mary Wordsworth, later retrieved by Lady
6. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE PAINTING AND
THE POEM
● Actual Ekphrasis >
Peele Castle
● thou rugged Pile! >
Castle
● a glassy sea > as in
the photo
● So pure the sky, so quiet was the air
● How perfect was the calm! > It is the
opposite
● …if mine had been the Painter's
hand/ To express what then I saw;
and add the gleam > How should
have been the canvas
● This rueful sky, this pageantry of
fear! > How the canvas is
●And this huge Castle,
standing here
sublime
●The lightning, the
fierce wind, the
trampling waves.
●But welcome
fortitude, and patient
cheer > Just like the
castle endures the bad
weather, we have to
be strong and endure
bad times
● Double ekphrasis
7. CONCLUSION
‘‘The Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm Painted by Sir
George Beaumont’’
→Inspired by Sir George Beaumont’s ‘’Peele Castle in a
Storm’’
→Ekphrasis: literary description of art
→Poem references to the painting and place of the
accident.
→Difference between the aesthetic of the painting and the
poem
REFERENCES
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27706859?casa_token=sl7_IkLCvTMAAAAA%3ABmo6Fl-xdwcpidKN4wr5uR01Enl2yZOi2GvRgsOz0u0Vd
9RV2-2fmMe027giGHaXRnw3cTIXnJieplQhMl-hAm2rp9WnW08jM51aJH1NhdTJ5FA0J8E&seq=3

https://crossworks.holycross.edu/aber_image/1

https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/encounterswiththeartsartc150/chapter/opening-to-the-sublime/

https://burnthewater.org/2013/11/09/peele-castle-in-a-storm/

https://imageleicestershire.org.uk/view-item?i=1586&WINID=1649747803589

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45516/elegiac-stanzas-suggested-by-a-picture-of-peele-castle-in-a-storm-painted-by-sir-geor
ge-beaumont