Wordsworth

1
Wordsworths Preface to Lyrical Ballads and
Tintern Abbey

• ENGL 203
• Dr. Fike

2
Reminder

• I have your tests. Please remind me to return
  them to you at the end of class.
• Explain grading system.
• Well talk about the content of the test after
  you have a chance to go over it on your own.

3
Review of Blake

• What kind of states are innocence and experience?
• This schema is an example of secularizing the
  sacred, a typical move in the Romantic period.
• Pre-existence ? ?
• According to Blake, is nature good for the
  imagination?
• For Blake, which sense has the potential to
  redeem humankind?
• For Blake, what IS the imagination?

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Imagination for Blake

• The Real Man
• The Christ in us
• An emanation of the divine spark in each of us
• The agent of renewal and of unity
• WW Imagination Reason in her most exalted
  mood (The Prelude 14.188-92).

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Blake and WW on Nature

• Blake Nature is a hindrance to the imagination.
• WW Nature is the NURSE of the imagination.
• WWs threefold understanding of nature
• External nature scenery
• All of existence
• A presence/divine life that informs the whole and
  every part. A quasi-divine ministering presence.
• See TA, lines 100ff. A motion and a spirit,
  that impels / All thinking things, all objects of
  all thought, / And rolls through all things.

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WWs Preface to Lyrical Ballads

• What are the main points in WWs theory of
  poetry?
• What is poetrys subject (595-96, 606)?
• What is poetrys purpose (603 and 607)?
• What is poetrys objective (603)?
• What kind of language should poetry use (599,
  696, 598-99, 600)?
• Take two minutes and see if you can find the
  answers.

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Answers

• Subject
• Incidents from everyday life.
• Psychology
• Page 596 the primary laws of our nature
• Page 606 the great universal passions of man
• Page 144 Into our Minds, into the Mind of man
  / My haunt, and the main region of my song.
• Purpose Pleasure.
• Objective Truth.
• Type of language everyday diction that sounds
  like prosethe language of men (599).
• Differences from 18th century
• Hazlitts comment that WWs muse is a democratic
  and leveling one (vs. 18th century poetry about
  aristocracy).
• Neo-Classical poetry uses elevated diction.

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What Is a Poet?

• See pages 601-02 and 605.
• Lets read this together.

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Answers

• A poet
• is a man speaking to men
• Knows a lotgreater knowledge of human nature
• Is tuned in to emotionshis own and others a
  lively sensibility
• Has a good memory and can imagine distant things
  as if they are present (602, 605)
• And has greater promptness to think and feel
  without immediate external excitement

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Point

• Page 13, last par. But Wordsworth chose
  another way, not a personal mythology, but a
  de-mythologizing so radical that it enabled him
  to create modern poetry, if any single figure can
  be said to have done so.

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Method of Composition

• How did WW compose his poems? See pages 596 and
  608.
• Note Be sure to burn the boldfaced phrases on
  the next slide into your thinking machines.

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Answers

• 608 I have said that poetry is the spontaneous
  overflow of powerful feelings it takes its
  origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity
  the emotion is contemplated till by a species of
  reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears,
  and an emotion, kindred to that which was before
  the subject of contemplation, is gradually
  produced, and does itself actually exist in the
  mind.

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The Nature of Poetry

• 604 Poetry is all-encompassing. It binds
  together human society, and it spans all
  knowledge, and all time periods. Poetry is not
  just literature written in verse.

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What IS WW Critical of?

• 597-98 gross and violent stimulants
• If you transpose this statement to the 21st
  century, what might it refer to?

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What Is the Poems Main Subject?

• TA concerns memory, the nature of the
  imagination, and imaginations relationship to
  nature.
• The poem is about the minds dialogue with
  nature. See 102ff.

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Group Work

1. What connections are there between WWs Preface
   and TA?
2. Lines 1-22 What situation does the poet
   describe here? What impression do these lines
   create?
3. Lines 23-49 What has WW gained from his
   experience with nature here?
4. Lines 49-57 Compare what you find here to The
   World Is Too Much With Us (page 174).
5. Lines 58-111 What temporal divisions are
   present here?
6. Lines 111-end Why is Dorothy, the poets
   sister, in the poem? What does WW want her to do
   for herself and for him?

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1 Connections to Preface

• The poet is affected by things as if they were
  presentgood memory.
• Emotion recollected in tranquility.
• Concern not only with nature but also with
  mensee line 91, The still, sad music of
  humanity.
• Psychology the mind of man (line 99).
• Prose This is blank verse, but it is closer to
  prose than, say, Miltons poetry.
• WW is writing about everyday life.

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2 What situation is described?

• WW has been away for five years.
• Emphasis on sight and hearing.
• connect in line 7 is ambiguous what does the
  connecting? Probably cliffs, but I also
  works.
• Thus there is a sense of interaction between the
  mind and nature.
• POINT Dialectical relationship.

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3 What has WW gained?

• Restoration (lines 25-31) tranquil
  restoration. Cf. spots of time on page 223.
• Pleasure (lines 27 and 31) sensations sweet
  feelings too / Of unremembered pleasure.
• Aesthetic contemplation (lines 41 and 64-65)
  that serene and blessed mood in this moment
  there is life and food / For future years

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4 Comparison to WWs Sonnet

• The World Is Too Much with Us (pages 174-75).
• Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
  (line 2).
• the fretful stir / Unprofitable, and the fever
  of the world (TA, lines 52-53).
• Octaveproblemsestetsolution.
• The imagination becomes active in the sestet.

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5 Temporal Divisions

• Early boyhoodoneness with nature. The boy is
  like an animal. Physical response to nature.
• Youthemotional response to nature (Dorothys
  current state) perception of nature brings joy
  thoughtless youth (line 90).
• Maturitymental/intellectual response the
  philosophic mind (Intimations, page 181, line
  187). More sober (sad, lines 60 and 91).
• Awareness that nature is more than scenery.
• Awareness that he is part of humanity.
• Awareness of the oneness of creation (101-02).
• Potential for elevated thoughts.
• Perception of the sublime (see HH for a
  definition).
• Decayline 113 Suffer my genial spirits to
  decay advanced age, dulled response to natural
  beauty, diminished imagination.

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More on 5

• WW is worried about the decay of his
  imaginative/poetic powers. This is what he is
  worried about in the Intimations Ode.
• Here is the progression
• Pre-existence (the soul cometh from afar on
  page 178, line 61)
• Birth (a sleep and a forgetting on page 178,
  line 58)
• Physical response to nature
• Emotional response to nature
• Intellectual response to natureWWs current
  state
• Some future state, when WW is more separate from
  nature, when he will be unable to write poetry
  (failure of the imagination, of mental powers).

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6 Dorothy, WWs Sister

• WW is afraid of the fourth stage (decay), so he
  turns to his sister, who is in the second (irony
  he is 28 she is 27).
• She is an incarnation of his former self.
• Her presence adds a social dimension. Cf. The
  Prelude, Book 8, title RetrospectLove of
  nature leading to love of man. Also, consider
  the fact that WW is addressing Coleridge in The
  Prelude (1.46). Vs. alone in line TA, line
  22.
• She frames the poem it begins with memory of
  being there in a former time, and it ends with
  WWs statement that Dorothy will recollect the
  place (lines 141-42) her memory will soothe her
  as WWs has soothed him.
• The ending also adds a religious quality lines
  151-52. Displacement of the sacred onto the
  secular. Cf. spirit in line 100.
• END