17 pages • 34 minutes read
Surprised by Joy
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Further Reading & Resources
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death.
Related Literary Works
“Threnody” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847)
Often compared to “Surprised by Joy,” “Threnody” examines Emerson’s grief over the death of his youngest son from scarlet fever. The poem shares Emerson’s grief and his argument with nature about the inevitability of death.
“We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth (1798)
In this poem, a young girl reveals to the speaker how one by one her family of seven had died leaving her alone. The poem emphasizes the dramatic irony between the adult speaker’s unwillingness to count the child’s dead relatives and her belief that she still has family members.
“Preface to The Lyrical Ballads” by William Wordsworth (1800)
Written to respond to criticism, this introductory essay added to the second edition of his groundbreaking collection lays out Wordsworth’s ideals: the importance of observation of the real world, the need to introduce into poetry the unadorned language of everyday speech, and the centrality of the emotions as the subject matter of serious poetry.
Further Literary Resources
“Wordsworth’s Duty as a Poet in ‘We Are Seven’ and ‘Surprised by Joy’” by James Shokoff (1994)
Shokoff pairs two poems in which Wordsworth examines the psychological impact of grief on a family.
