The cambridge introduction to william wordsworth

This page intentionally left blank The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth William Wordsworth is the most influential of the Romantic poets, and remains widely popular, even though his work is more complex and more engaged with the political, social and religious upheavals of his time than his reputation as a ‘nature poet’ might suggest Outlining a series of contexts€– biographical, historical and literary€– as well as critical approaches to Wordsworth, this Introduction offers students ways to understand and enjoy Wordsworth’s poetry and his role in the development of Romanticism in Britain Emma Mason offers a completely up-to-date summary of criticism on Wordsworth from the Romantics to the present, and an annotated guide to further reading With definitions of technical terms and close readings of individual poems, Wordsworth’s experiments with form are fully explained This concise book is the ideal starting point for studying Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude and the major poems, as well as Wordsworth’s lesser-known writings Emma Mason is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Warwick The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth E mm a M a so n CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521896689 © Emma Mason 2010 This publication is in copyright Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press First published in print format 2010 ISBN-13 978-0-511-90231-4 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-89668-9 Hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-72147-9 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate For G J A Contents Preface Acknowledgements Texts page ix xii xiii Chapter 1╇ Life Education and politics Coleridge Home at Grasmere Friendship and love Tory humanist? Poet Laureate 11 16 19 Chapter 2╇ Contexts 23 The Enlightenment Nature and the land Revolution and social change Imperialism and colonialism Community Religion 24 27 30 35 37 40 Chapter 3╇ Poetics 44 Poetic diction Blank verse Sonnets Odes, elegies, epitaphs Silent poetry 46 49 52 55 60 vii viii Contents Chapter 4╇ Works 63 ‘An Evening Walk’ and ‘Salisbury Plain’ ‘The Ruined Cottage’ and ‘The Discharged Soldier’ The Lyrical Ballads Lucy and ‘The Danish Boy’ ‘Michael’ and ‘The Brothers’ ‘The Solitary Reaper’ and ‘The White Doe of Rylstone’ The Prelude The Excursion Late poems 64 67 70 78 81 83 87 93 95 Chapter 5╇ Critical reception 98 Victorian consolation New criticism and phenomenology Psychoanalysis and feminism Historicism and prosody Aesthetics and ethics 99 100 103 106 108 Notes Guide to further reading Index 111 121 131 Guide to further reading Wordsworth’s poetry should always be the focal point of your reading, but the extensive criticism written on his work can enable or speak to your own reflections To date, the only journal dedicated to Wordsworth and his associates is The Wordsworth Circle, but there are frequent articles on and about him in Studies in Romanticism, European Romantic Review, Romanticism and The Charles Lamb Bulletin For an annual index of and commentary on new criticism on the poet, readers are advised to refer to the annual The Year’s Work in English Studies The following guide is indicative only, but the first titles listed in each grouping serve as introductions to the subject Ten fields of criticism are outlined here:€Textual issues; Biography; Poetics; Major poems; Philosophy and religion; Psychoanalysis and gender; Politics and historicism; Eco- and ethical criticism; Reception and influence; and Reference Textual issues:€for information on available primary texts, see my note on ‘Texts’; for the politics and psychology of Wordsworth’s revisions, see Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago:€Â�University of Chicago Press, 1983); William Galperin, Revision and Authority in Â�Wordsworth:€ The Interpretation of a Career (Philadelphia:€Â�University of Â�Pennsylvania Press, 1989); and Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley, Romantic Revisions (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 1992) Further commentary can be found in Jack Stillinger, ‘Textual Primitivism and the Editing of Wordsworth’, Studies in Romanticism, 28:1 (1989), 3–28; and Kathryn Â�Sutherland, ‘Revised Relations? Material Text, Immaterial Text, and the Â�Electronic Environment’, Text, 11 (1998), 16–39 On The Prelude, which tends to dominate editorial debates, see Jonathan Wordsworth and Stephen Gill, ‘The Two-Part Prelude of 1798–99’, Journal of English and Germanic Â�Philology, 72:4 (1973), 503–25; Robin Jarvis, ‘The Five-Book Prelude:€A Reconsideration’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 80:4 (1981), 528–51; and Herbert Lindenberger, Norman Fruman, Robert J Barth and Jeffrey Baker, ‘Waiting for the Palfreys:€The Great Prelude Debate’, The Wordsworth Circle, 17:1 (1986) On the ‘Ruined Cottage’ manuscripts, see John Alban Finch, ‘â•›“The Ruined Cottage” Restored:€Three Stages of Composition’, in Jonathan 121 122 Guide to further reading Â� Wordsworth and Beth Darlington, eds., Bicentenary Wordsworth Studies in Memory of John Alban Finch (Ithaca, NY:€ Cornell University Press, 1970), pp.29–49 Stephen Gill, ‘Wordsworth’s Poems:€The Â�Question of Text’, Review of English Studies, 34.134 (1983), 172–90; Stephen Parrish, ‘The Editor as Archaeologist’, Â�Kentucky Review, (1983), 3–14; Duncan Wu, ‘Editing Intentions’, Essays in Criticism, 41:1 (1991), 1–10; and Andrew Bennett, Wordsworth Writing Â�(Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 2007) are also helpful commentaries on Wordsworth’s self-revisions Biography:€ start with Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth:€ A Life (Oxford:€Â�Clarendon Press, 1989); John Williams, William Wordsworth:€A Literary Life (Basingstoke:€Macmillan, 1996); and Juliet Barker, Â�Wordsworth:€A Life (London:€Viking, 2000) and Wordsworth:€A Life in Letters Â�(London:€Viking, 2002) The letters of Wordsworth, Mary, Dorothy and Henry Crabb Â�Robinson are available as a Past Masters electronic resource (InteLex, 2002); for John Wordsworth’s correspondence, see Carl H Ketcham, ed., The Letters of John Wordsworth (Ithaca, NY:€ Cornell University Press, 1969) Â�William Knight, The Life of William Wordsworth, vols (Edinburgh:€ William Â�Patterson, 1889), Frances Blanshard, Portraits of Wordsworth (London:€Allen and Unwin, 1959) and Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth a Biography:€ The Early Years Â�1770–1803 and The Later Years 1803–1850 (Oxford:€Clarendon, 1957; 1965) are still helpful Kenneth R Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth Â� (London:€ Pimlico, 2000) caused a stir on first publication, suggesting that Wordsworth may have been a government spy, an assertion deployed in Julian Temple’s rather anti-Wordsworth film Pandaemonium (2000), and contested by Michael Durey, ‘The Spy Who Never Was’, Times Literary Supplement, 10 March 2000, 14–15 Keith Hanley, Wordsworth:€ A Poet’s History (Basingstoke:€Palgrave, 2000) and Duncan Wu, William Wordsworth:€An Inner Life (Oxford:€Â�Blackwell, 2002) both use psychoanalysis to address the poet’s biography H D Â�Rawnsley, Reminiscences of Wordsworth among the Â�Peasantry of Westmoreland (London:€Â�Dillon’s, 1968) and T W Thompson, Wordsworth’s Hawkshead (Oxford:€ Oxford Â�University Press, 1970) offer domestic detail Biographies of Dorothy are also suggestive:€ start with Frances Wilson, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (London:€ Faber and Faber, 2008); and then Robert Gittings and Jo Manton, Dorothy Wordsworth (Oxford:€ Oxford Â�University Press, 1985); plus Pamela Woof, Dorothy Wordsworth:€ Writer (Grasmere:€Wordsworth Trust, 1988) Poetics:€for an introduction to this topic, see Susan Wolfson, Â�‘Wordsworth’s Craft’, in Stephen Gill, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth Â�(Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.108–24; and Stuart Â�Curran, ‘Wordsworth and the Forms of Poetry’, in Kenneth R Johnston and Gene W Guide to further reading 123 Ruoff, eds., The Age of William Wordsworth:€ Critical Essays on the Romantic Tradition (New Brunswick:€ Rutgers University Press, 1987), pp.121–6; Â�readers new to prosody might start with a general introduction to the field, such as Rhian Williams, The Poetry Toolkit:€ The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry (London:€Continuum, 2009) For detailed studies of Wordsworth’sÂ�lexicon, see Brennan O’Donnell’s The Passion of Metre:€A Study of Wordsworth’s Metrical Art (London:€ Kent State University Press, 1995); Susan Â�Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech:€ Wordsworth, Coleridge and Literary Possession (Oxford:€Oxford University Press, 1992); and Hugh Sykes Davies, Wordsworth and the Worth of Words (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 1986) For a theoretical approach, see J Hillis Miller, ‘The Stone and the Shell:€The Problem of Poetic Form in Wordsworth’s Dream of the Arab’, in Â�Robert Â�Ellrodt, ed., Mouvements premiers:€Etudes critiques offertes Georges Poulet (Paris:€José Corti, 1972), pp.125–47; Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York:€Â�Columbia University Press, 1984); Andrzej Warminski and Cynthia Chase, ‘Wordsworth and the Production of Poetry’, special issue of Diacritics, 17.4 (1987); and Don H Bialostosky, Wordsworth, Dialogics, and the Practice of Criticism Â�(Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 1992) Â�Stuart Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism (Oxford:€Oxford University Press, 1986) offers a Â�historical account of form, while Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language, 1798–1819 (Oxford:€ Clarendon Press, 1984) provides a political one Â�Christopher Ricks, ‘A Pure Organic Pleasure from the Lines’, Essays in Criticism, 21 (1971), 1–32; and Peter Howarth, ‘Wordsworth, Free Verse and Exteriority’, The Wordsworth Circle, 34.1 (2003), 44–8, are both lively accounts of Wordsworth’s innovative poetic experiments; and Robert Rehder tracks the impact of such innovation in Wordsworth and the Beginnings of Modern Poetry (London:€Croom Helm, 1981) Major poems:€included here are several model analyses, which offer an introduction to both specific texts and examples of how to critically approach individual poems:€Jonathan Wordsworth, The Music of Humanity:€A Critical Study of Wordsworth’s ‘Ruined Cottage’ (London:€Nelson, 1969); Stephen Â�Parrish, The Art of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (Cambridge, MA:€Harvard University Press, 1973); James Butler, ‘Wordsworth’s Tuft of Primroses:€“An Unrelenting Doom”â•›’, Studies in Romanticism, 14.3 (1975), 237–48; W J B Owen, ‘The Borderers and the Aesthetics of Drama’, The Wordsworth Circle, 6.4 (1975), 227–39; Peter Larkin, ‘Wordsworth’s “After-Sojourn”:€ Revision and Unself-Rivalry in the Later Poetry’, Studies in Romanticism, 20.4 (1981), 409–36; Kenneth Johnston, Wordsworth and ‘The Recluse’ (New Haven:€Yale University Press, 1984); Judith W Page, ‘â•›“A History / Homely and Rude”:€Genre and Style in Wordsworth’s “Michael”â•›’, Studies in English Literature, 29.4 (1989), 621–36; Charles Rzepka, 124 Guide to further reading ‘A Gift that Complicates Employ:€ Poetry and Poverty in “Resolution and Â�Independence”â•›’, Studies in Romanticism, 28.2 (1989), 225–47; Anne Janowitz, ‘â•›“A Night on Salisbury Plain”:€A Dreadful, Ruined Nature’, in Keith Hanley and Raman Selden, eds., Revolution and English Romanticism:€Politics and Â�Rhetoric Â�(London:€ Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp.225–40; Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth:€ ‘The Prelude’ (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1991); Anne L Rylestone, Prophetic Memory in Wordsworth’s Â�Ecclesiastical Sketches (Carbondale:€ Southern Illinois University Press, 1991); Peter J Â�Manning, ‘Troubling the Borders:€Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1998’, The Wordsworth Â�Circle, 30 (1999), 22–6; and Richard Gravil, ‘â•›“Tintern Abbey” and The System of Nature’, Romanticism, (2000), 35–54 Philosophy and religion:€before historicism came to dominate literary studies, the question of how to interpret Wordsworth tended towards the philosophical and phenomenological Geoffrey Hartman’s readings of Wordsworth remain, I think, the most important and influential in any field of criticism on the poet, and both Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787–1814 (New Haven:€Yale University Press, 1964) and The Unremarkable Wordsworth (London:€ Methuen, 1987) are required and illuminating reading See also G Wilson Knight, ‘The Wordsworthian Profundity’, The Starlit Dome:€Studies in the Poetry of Vision (London:€Oxford University Press, 1941), pp.1–82; John Jones, The Egotistical Sublime:€ A History of Wordsworth’s Imagination (Westport, CT:€ Greenwood Press, 1954); David Ferry, The Limits of Mortality:€An Essay on Wordsworth’s Major Poems (Middletown, CT:€ Wesleyan University Press, 1959); M H Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism:€Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York:€Norton, 1971); Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime:€Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore:€Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Frances Ferguson, Wordsworth:€Language as CounterSpirit (New Haven:€ Yale University Press, 1977); Cynthia Chase, Decomposing Figures:€Rhetorical Readings in the Romantic Tradition (Baltimore:€Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); David Bromwich, Disowned by Memory:€Wordsworth’s Poetry of the 1790s (Chicago:€University of Chicago Press, 1998); Simon Jarvis, ‘Wordsworth and Idolatry’, Studies in Romanticism, 38.1 (1999), 3–27; Richard Eldridge, The Persistence of Romanticism:€Essays in Philosophy and Literature (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 2001); Scott R Stroud, ‘John Dewey and the Question of Artful Communication’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 41.2 (2008), 153–83 On religion, see Stephen Prickett, Romanticism and Religion:€The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1976); David P Haney, William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation (University Park:€Â�Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); John G Rudy, Â�Wordsworth Guide to further reading 125 and the Zen Mind:€ The Poetry of Self-emptying (Albany:€ State University of New York Press, 1996); Robert Ryan, The Romantic Reformation:€ Religious Politics in English Literature 1789–1824 (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1997); Morton Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford:€Clarendon Press, 1999); David Jasper, The Sacred and Secular Canon in Romanticism:€Preserving the Sacred Truths (Basingstoke:€Â�Macmillan, 1999); Mark Canuel, Religion, Toleration, and British Writing 1790–1830 Â�(Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 2002); Daniel E White, Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 2006); Colin Jager, The Book of God:€Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era (Philadelphia:€University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); and Jonathan Â�Roberts, Blake Wordsworth Religion (London:€Continuum, 2010) Psychoanalysis and gender:€given the focus on self-analysis in Wordsworth’s poetry, psychoanalytic criticism is an especially apt way into his work Start with G Kim Blank, Wordsworth and Feeling:€ The Poetry of an Adult Child (London:€Associated University Presses, 1995); and then Richard J Onorato, The Character of the Poet:€Wordsworth in ‘The Prelude’ (Princeton:€Â�Princeton University Press, 1971); David Ellis, Wordsworth, Freud and the Spots of Time:€Interpretation in ‘The Prelude’ (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 1985); Mark Edmundson, Towards Reading Freud:€ Self-creation in Milton, Wordsworth, Emerson and Sigmund Freud (Princeton:€ Princeton University Press, 1990); W Speed Hill, ‘The Psychic Link’, Textual Cultures:€Texts, Contexts, Interpretation, 3.1 (2008), 56–64; Joel Faflak, Romantic Psychoanalysis:€ The Burden of the Mystery (New York:€State University of New York Press, 2008); and Anne-Lise Franỗois, Open Secrets:The Literature of Uncounted Experience (Stanford:€ Stanford University Press, 2008) Mary Jacobus’s scholarship is a model of how psychoanalysis has focused criticism on questions of gender and sexual difference, see, for example, Romanticism, Writing, and Sexual Difference:€Essays on ‘The Prelude’ (Oxford:€Clarendon Press, 1989); and see Adela Pinch, ‘Female Chatter:€Meter, Masochism and the Lyrical Ballads’, English Literary History, 55:4 (1988), 835–52 On Wordsworth’s relationship to women and the domestic:€start with Anne K Mellor, ed., Romanticism and Feminism (Bloomington:€Indiana University Press, 1988), especially Susan J Wolfson’s essay ‘Individual in Community:€Dorothy Wordsworth in Conversation with William’, pp.139–66; and then Marlon B Ross ‘Naturalizing Gender:€Woman’s Place in Wordsworth’s Ideological Landscape’, English Literary History, 53:2 (1986), 391–410; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Sex and History in The Prelude (1805):€ Books IX to XIII’, in Richard Machin and Christopher Norris, eds., Post-structuralist Readings of English Poetry (Cambridge:€Â�Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp.193–226; Theresa M Kelley, Wordsworth’s Â�Revisionary 126 Guide to further reading Â� Aesthetics (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1988); Judith Page, Â�Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women (Berkeley:€University of California Press, 1994); Anne K Mellor, ‘A Criticism of Their Own:€Romantic Women Literary Critics’, in John Beer, ed., Questioning Romanticism (Baltimore:€Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp.29–48; Elizabeth A Fay, Becoming Wordsworthian:€ A Performative Aesthetics (Amherst:€ University of Massachusetts Press, 1995); John Barrell, ‘â•›“Laodamia” and the Moaning of Mary’, Textual Practice, 10.3 (1996), 449–77; John Powell Ward, ‘â•›“Will No One Tell Me What She Sings?”:€Women and Gender in the Poetry of William Wordsworth’, Studies in Romanticism, 36.4 (1997), 611–33; and Heidi Thomson, ‘â•›“We Are Two”:€The Address to Dorothy in “Tintern Abbey”â•›’, Studies in Romanticism, 40 (2001), 531–46 Politics and historicism:€the material rather than transcendental conditions of Wordsworth’s work came into focus in the 1970s:€see E P Â�Thompson, ‘Disenchantment or Default? A Lay Sermon’, in Conor Cruise O’Brien and W D Vanech, eds., Power and Consciousness (London:€ University of Â�London Press, 1969), pp.149–81; Carl Woodring, Politics in English Romantic Poetry (Cambridge, MA:€Harvard University Press, 1970); Leslie F Chard, Dissenting Republican:€Wordsworth’s Early Life and Thought in Their Political Context (The Hague:€ Mouton, 1972); and Michael Friedman, The Making of a Tory Humanist:€William Wordsworth and the Idea of Community (New York:€Columbia University Press, 1979) New historicism followed, intent on positioning Wordsworth as a reactionary, rather than radical figure:€James Chandler labels him a Burkean in Wordsworth’s Second Nature:€ A Study of the Poetry and the Politics (Chicago:€ University of Chicago Press, 1984); and see also Â�Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries (Oxford:€Oxford University Press, 1982); Jerome McGann, The Romantic Ideology:€A Critical Investigation (Chicago:€ University of Chicago Press, 1983); Marjorie Â�Levinson, Wordsworth’s Great Period Poems (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1986); David Simpson, Wordsworth’s Historical Imagination:€The Poetry of Displacement (London:€Methuen, 1987); Alan Liu, Wordsworth:€The Sense of History (Stanford:€Stanford University Press, 1988); and Clifford Siskin, ‘Working The Prelude:€ Foucault and the New History’, in Nigel Wood, ed., The Prelude (Buckingham:€Open University Press, 1993), all studies that accuse him of displacing political ideas from his works For a less subjective and more detailed response to Wordsworth’s politics, see Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Â�Coleridge:€The Radical Years (Oxford:€Clarendon Press, 1988); and for a response to new historical criticism see Helen Vendler, ‘â•›“Tintern Abbey”:€Two Assaults’, Bucknell Review, 36.1 (1992), 173–90; and Thomas McFarland, Â�William Wordsworth:€ Intensity and Achievement (Oxford:€ Clarendon Press, Guide to further reading 127 1992) On Wordsworth’s revolutionary politics, see Kenneth R Johnston, ‘Philanthropy or Treason? Wordsworth as “Active Partisan”â•›’, Studies in Romanticism, 25.3 (1986), 371–409; John Williams, Wordsworth:€Romantic Poetry and Revolution Politics (Manchester:€Manchester University Press, 1989); Richard Bourke, Romantic Discourse and Political Modernity:€Wordsworth, the Intellectual and Cultural Critique (London:€Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993); and Gregory Dart, Robespierre, Rousseau and English Romanticism (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 1999) On economics in Wordsworth, see Gary Harrison, Wordsworth’s Vagrant Muse:€Poetry, Poverty and Power (Detroit:€Wayne State University Press, 1994); David Chandler, ‘Wordsworth versus Malthus:€ The Political Context of “The Old Cumberland Beggar”â•›’, Charles Lamb Bulletin, 115 (2001), 72–85; Philip Connell, Romanticism, Economics, and the Question of ‘Culture’ (Oxford:€Oxford University Press, 2001); Tom Duggett, ‘Celtic Night and Gothic Grandeur:€Politics and Antiquarianism in Wordsworth’s “Salisbury Plain”â•›’, Romanticism, 13.2 (2007), 164–76; and James M Garrett, Wordsworth and the Writing of the Nation (Aldershot:€Ashgate, 2008) Eco- and ethical criticism:€ Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology:€ Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (London:€ Routledge, 1991) and The Song of the Earth (London:€ Picador, 2001) remain influential; and see also Karl Kroeber, ‘â•›“Home at Grasmere”:€ Ecological Holiness’, PMLA, 89.1 (1974), 132–41 and Ecological Literary Criticism:€ Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind (New York:€ Columbia University Press, 1994); plus Donald Â�Hayden, ‘William Â�Wordsworth:€Early Ecologist’, in T M Hanwell, ed., Studies in Relevance:€Romantic and Victorian Writers in 1972 (Salzburg:€University of Â�Salzburg, 1973), pp.36–52 Other useful sources include Ralph Pite, ‘How Green Were the Romantics’, Studies in Romanticism, 35.3 (1996), 357–74; James C McKusick, ‘Introduction’ to a special issue on ‘Romanticism and Ecology’, The Wordsworth Circle, 28.3 (1997), 123–4; Heather Frey, ‘Defining the Self, Defiling the Countryside:€Travel Writing and Romantic Ecology’, The Wordsworth Circle, 28.3 (1997), 162–6; Kevin Hutchings, ‘Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies’, Literature Compass, 4.1 (2007), 172–202; and Â�Kenneth R Cervelli, Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology (London:€ Routledge, 2007) On Wordsworth’s relationship to the landscape, see:€ Peter Bicknell and Robert Woof, The Discovery of the Lake District 1750–1810:€ A Context for Â�Wordsworth (Grasmere:€Trustees of Dove Cottage, 1982); Mary R Wedd, ‘Light on Landscape in Wordsworth’s “Spots of Time”’, The Wordsworth Circle, 14:4 (1983), 224–32; Matthew Brennan, Wordsworth, Turner, and Romantic Landscape:€ A Study in the Traditions of the Picturesque and the Sublime Â�(Columbia, SC:€Camden House, 1987); Anne Janowitz, England’s Ruins:€Poetic Purpose and the National Landscape (Oxford:€ Blackwell, 1990); John Wyatt, 128 Guide to further reading Wordsworth and the Geologists (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1995); Celeste Langan, Romantic Vagrancy:€Wordsworth and the Simulation of Freedom (Cambridge:€Cambridge University Press, 1995); Tim Fulford, Landscape, Liberty and Authority:€ Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth (Basingstoke:€Macmillan, 1996); Jonathan Bate, ‘Living with the Weather’, Studies in Romanticism, 35.3 (1996), 431–48; Robin Jarvis, Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel (Basingstoke:€Â�Macmillan, 1997); and Michael Wiley, Romantic Geography:€Wordsworth and Anglo-Â�European Spaces (Basingstoke:€Macmillan, 1998); Toby Benis, Romanticism on the Road:€The Marginal Gains of Wordsworth’s Homeless (Basingstoke:€Macmillan, 2000); and Nicholas Roe, The Politics of Nature:€William Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries (Basingstoke:€Palgrave, 2002) On ethical criticism, see Wayne C Booth, The Company We Keep:€An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley:€University of California Press, 1988); Martha C Nussbaum, Poetic Justice:€ Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston, MA:€ Beacon Press, 1995); Todd F Davis and Kenneth Womack, eds., Mapping the Ethical Turn:€A Reader in Ethics, Culture and Literary Theory (Charlottesville:€University Press of Virginia, 2001), and R Clifton Spargo, The Ethics of Mourning:€Grief and Responsibility in Elegiac Literature (Baltimore:€Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) Reception and influence:€ begin with the anecdotal but illuminating Edith J Morley, ed., Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, vols Â�(London:€ J M Dent, 1938) and scholarly Stephen Gill, Wordsworth and the Victorians (Oxford:€ Clarendon Press, 1998) On Wordsworth’s contemporary reception, see John O Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers 1802–1824 (1969) and Romantic Bards and British Reviewers (London:€ Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971); and Donald Reiman, The Romantics Reviewed:€ Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers (New York:€ Garland, 1972) Â�Robert Woof, Â�William Wordsworth:€The Critical Heritage (London:€Routledge, 2001) is a useful Â�collection of sources; and Katherine M Peek, Wordsworth in Â�England:€ Studies in the History of His Fame (New York:€ Octagon, 1969) and Joel Pace and Â�Matthew Scott, Wordsworth in American Literary Culture Â�(Basingstoke:€Â�Macmillan, 2005) locate Wordsworth in different national traditions Commentaries on parodies of the poet include Nicola Trott, ‘Wordsworth in the Nursery:€The Parodic School of Criticism’, The Wordsworth Circle, 32 (2001), 66–77; and John Â�Strachan’s special issue of Romanticism on the Net, ‘Romantic Parody’, 15 (1999) On literary influence, see Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and the Â�English Romantic Imagination (Oxford:€Clarendon Press, 1986); Robin Jarvis, Wordsworth, Milton and the Theory of Poetic Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991); Lucy Newlyn, ‘Paradise Lost’ and the Romantic Reader (Oxford:€Â�Clarendon Press, 1993); Robert J Griffin, Wordsworth’s Pope: A Study Guide to further reading 129 of Literary Â�Historiography (Cambridge:€Â�Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Claudia Â�Moscovici, Romanticism and Postromanticism Â�(Lanham:€Â�Lexington, 2007) On Wordsworth’s influence, see Â�Kenneth Johnston, ‘Wordsworth, Frost, Stevens and the Poetic Vocation’, Studies in Romanticism, 21.1 (1982), 87–100; D D Devlin, De Quincey, Wordsworth and the Art of Prose Â�(London: Â�Macmillan, 1983); Heather Glen, Vision and Disenchantment:€Blake’s ‘Songs’ and Wordsworth’s ‘Lyrical Ballads’ Â�(Cambridge:€Â�Cambridge University Press, 1983); Jack Stillinger, ‘Wordsworth and Keats’, in Johnston and Ruoff, eds., Age of William Wordsworth, pp 173–95; Annabel Patterson, ‘Hard Â�Pastoral: Frost, Wordsworth, and Modernist Poetics’, Criticism, 29.1 (1987), 67–87; G Kim Blank, Wordsworth’s Influence on Shelley:€A Study of Poetic Â�Authority Â�(London:€Â�Macmillan, 1988); Laura Quinney, The Poetics of Â�Disappointment:€Wordsworth to Â�Ashbery (Charlottesville:€University Press of Virginia, 1999); Anne Ferry, Â�‘Revisions of Visions:€Wordsworth and his Inheritors’, Raritan, 21 (2001), 67–93; Michael O’Neill, ‘â•›“O Shining in Modest Glory”: Contemporary Northern Irish Poets and Romantic Poetry’, The Wordsworth Circle, 32 (2001), 59–65; Richard Â�Cronin, Romantic Victorians: Â�English Literature 1824–1840 (Basingstoke:€Â�Palgrave, 2002); and Damian Walford Â�Davies and Richard Marggraf Turley, eds., The Monstrous Debt:€Modalities of Romantic Influence in Twentieth-century Literature (Detroit:€ Wayne State University Press, 2006) The reciprocal influence between Wordsworth and Coleridge is widely commented on:€ see Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin:€Wordsworth, Coleridge and Modalities of Fragmentation Â�(Princeton:€Princeton University Press, 1981); Lucy Newlyn, Coleridge, Wordsworth and the Language of Allusion (Oxford:€Clarendon Press, 1986); Gene Ruoff, Wordsworth and Coleridge:€The Making of the Major Lyrics, 1802–1904 Â�(London:€Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989); and Adam Sisman, The Â�Friendship:€ Wordsworth and Coleridge (London:€Â�HarperPress, 2006) Reference:€there is an abundance of bibliographic material on Wordsworth; of primary importance are Wordsworth’s own reading practices, documented in Duncan Wu, Wordsworth’s Reading 1770–1799 and Wordsworth’s Reading 1800–1815 (Cambridge:€ Cambridge University Press, 1993; 1995); and Â�Chester L Shaver and Alice C Shaver, Wordsworth’s Library:€ A Catalogue (New York:€Garland, 1979) Richard W Clancey offers a solid overview of his classical reading in Wordsworth’s Classical Undersong: Â�Education, Rhetoric and Poetic Truth (Basingstoke:€Macmillan, 2000) Lane Cooper’s A Concordance to the Poems of William Wordsworth (London:€Smith, Elder, 1911) offers a different reading experience to online versions For records of Wordsworthian criticism, start with Nicholas Roe, ‘William Wordsworth’, in Michael O’Neill, ed., Literature of the Romantic Period: A Â�Bibliographical Guide (Oxford:€Oxford 130 Guide to further reading University Press, 1998), pp.45–64; and Keith Hanley and David Barron, An Annotated Critical Bibliography of William Â�Wordsworth (London:€ Prentice Hall, 1995) Further detail is Â�available in Stephen N Bauer, William Wordsworth, A Reference Guide to British Criticism, 1793–1899 (Boston, MA:€ G K Hall, 1978); Elton F Henley and David H Stam, Wordsworthian Criticism 1945–64:€ An Annotated Â�Bibliography (New York:€New York Public Library, 1965); David H Stam, Wordsworthian Criticism 1964–73:€An Annotated Bibliography (New York:€New York Public Library, 1974); and Mark Jones and Karl Kroeber, Wordsworth Â�Scholarship and Criticism, 1973–1984:€ An Annotated Bibliography, with Selected Criticism, 1809–1972 (New York:€Garland, 1985) Finally, Mark L Reed’s research on Wordsworth’s complete writing is available in Â�Wordsworth:€ The Chronology of the Early Years, 1770–1799 (Cambridge, MA:€Harvard University Press, 1967) and Wordsworth:€The Chronology of the Middle Years (Cambridge, Â� MA:€Harvard University Press, 1975) Index Arnold, Matthew, 99 Barrett Browning, Elizabeth, 99 Battle of Waterloo, 30 Beaumont, George, 11, 21 Beaupuy, Michael, Bible, 40, 41, 54, 100, 102 Ecclesiastes, 92 Genesis, 81 Gospel of Luke, 83 Gospel of Mark, 92 Psalms, 77, 92 Revelation, 54 Blake, William, 99 blank verse, 49–52 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 32 Burke, Edmund, 4, 26, 28, 32, 36 capitalism, 27 Church of England, 18, 19, 41, 42, 43, 93 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, xi, xii, xv, 7, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25, 33, 34, 38, 41, 51, 53, 70, 71, 78, 89, 92, 105, 124 ‘Christabel’, 71 fancy, 90 ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’, 70, 71 community, 37, 47, 109 De Quincey, Thomas, 13, 14, 68 deconstruction, 103 dissenting academies, 25 dissenting religion, 41 ecopoetics, 110 elegy, 57–60 Eliot, George, 99 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 20 emotion, 23, 37, 39, 43, 45, 47, 68, 77, 79, 110 enclosure, 29 Enlightenment, the 24 environmentalism, 110 epitaphs, 59 ethical criticism, 109–10 Evangelical Revival, 40, 41 Fenwick, Isabella, 21, 52, 86, 105 formalism, 107–8 Fox, Charles James, 34, 36, 51, 82 French Revolution, 4, 30, 37 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 99 gender, 103–6 Godwin, William, 6, 33, 66 Gordon Riots, 30 Grasmere, graveyard poets, 57 Greenwell, Dora, 100 Habermas, Jürgen, 26 Hartley, David, 24 Hawkshead, 2, 58 Hazlitt, William, 46, 99 Hemans, Felicia, 19, 54, 99, 104 historicism, 106 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 100 Hume, David, 26 131 132 Index Hutchinson, Mary, 1, 2, 7, 10, 12, 22, 121 Hutchinson, Sara, 21 imagination, xii, 11, 25, 28, 34, 36, 40, 46, 67, 70, 73, 77, 85, 87, 90, 101 Jewsbury, Maria Jane, 20 Jones, Robert, 3, 19, 33, 76, 87 Keats, John, 39, 63 Keble, John, 20, 42, 43, 100 Ladies of Llangollen, 20 Lamb, Charles and Mary, Lowther, James, 2, 10 memory, xii, 92, 93 Methodism, 38, 40, 42 metre, 45, 48, 110 Mill, John Stuart, xi, 20, 99 Milton, John, 50, 51, 54 Paradise Lost, 52, 55 sonnets, 52 More, Hannah, 38 nature, 24, 27, 40, 75, 76, 94, 110 new criticism, 100–1 new historicism, 106–7 Newman, John Henry, 42 odes, 56–7 Oxford Movement, the, 22, 40, 42, 54 Paine, Thomas, 4, 29, 31, 32, 33 pantheism, 42, 67 Pater, Walter, 48, 100 phenomenology, 102–3 picturesque, the, 27 Poet Laureateship, 22 poetic diction, 45, 46 Poor Law Amendment Act, 20 Price, Richard, 31, 32 Priestley, Joseph, 25 Procter, Adelaide Anne, 99 psychoaesthetics, 102 psychoanalysis, 103–4 Quakerism, 40, 41 religion, 40–3, 108 Rhythmanalysis, 110 Robespierre, Maximilien, 31 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 15, 21, 105 Roman Catholicism, 4, 19, 20, 30, 40, 42, 43 Ruskin, John, 20, 22, 100 science, 25–6 sensibility, 38 Seven Years War, 30 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 49 silent poetry, 60–2, 83 slavery, 35–6 Smith, Charlotte, 2, 4, 53 Southey, Robert, sublime, 28–9 Swinburne, Algernon, 20, 100 sympathy, 24, 47, 59 Thelwall, John, 8, 33 theopoesis, 102 Thirty-nine Articles, the, 41 Tyson, Ann and Hugh, Unitarianism, 40, 41 Vallon, Annette, 4, 10, 101 Wesley, Charles, 42 Wesley, John, 38, 42 Wilberforce, William, 36 Williams, Helen Maria, 2, 4, 19, 105 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 33 Wordsworth, Ann (mother), Wordsworth, Anne-Caroline (daughter), Wordsworth, Catherine (daughter), 15 Wordsworth, Christopher (brother), 22 Wordsworth, Dora (daughter), 12, 21, 22 Index Wordsworth, Dorothy (sister), xii, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 20, 21, 22, 38, 48, 49, 58, 63, 65, 70, 76, 77, 78, 84, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107 Wordsworth, John (brother), 9, 11, 61 elegies for, 58 silent poet, 61 Wordsworth, John (father), Wordsworth, Richard (brother), 17 Wordsworth, Thomas (son), 12 Wordsworth, William (son), 15 Wordsworth, William (works) ‘An Account of the Deceased Poetesses of Great Britain with an Estimation of Their Works’, 105 ‘Among All Lovely Things’, 104 ‘Anecdote for Fathers’, 71 Appendix on Poetic Diction (1802), 44 Benjamin the Waggoner, 19 The Borderers, 8, 34, 51, 67 ‘The Brothers’, 51, 71, 83 ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1803’, 53 The Convention of Cintra, 14, 36, 37 ‘The Convict’, 73 ‘The Danish Boy’, 79, 97 ‘Descriptive Sketches’, 64 ‘The Discharged Soldier’, 69 ‘The Dog: An Idyllium’, xi, 58 Ecclesiastical Sketches, 19, 22, 53, 54, 96 ‘Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle’, 12, 58 ‘Elegiac Verses in Memory of my Brother, John Wordsworth’, 58 ‘Elegy Written in the Same Place upon the Same Occasion’, 58 ‘Essay, Supplementary to the Preface’ (1815), 84, 86 Essays upon Epitaphs, 44, 59, 60, 62 ‘An Evening Walk’, 3, 5, 64, 65, 104 The Excursion, 16, 93 Book I, 93, 94 Book III, 93, 94 133 Book IV, 94, 95 Book V, 94 Book VI, 93, 95 Book VIII, 93, 95 Book IX, 93, 94, 95 ‘Extempore Effusion’, 21 ‘The Female Vagrant’, 65, 71, 73 ‘The Gleaner’, 96 ‘Goody Blake and Harry Gill’, 28, 49, 71, 73 ‘Grace Darling’, 96 A Guide through the District of the Lakes, 15 ‘Home at Grasmere’, 9, 104 ‘I Travelled among Unknown Men’, 78 ‘The Idiot Boy’, 47, 72, 76 ‘Intimations Ode’, 56 ‘The Labourer’s Noon-Day Hymn’, 96 ‘Laodamia’, 96 ‘The Last of the Flock’, 71, 72, 76 A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, 18 A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, 5, 33, 36 ‘Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yewtree’, 7, 71 ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, 28, 38, 42, 51, 67, 71, 76, 104, 107 ‘London, 1802’ 54 Lucy poems, 9, 78 Lyrical Ballads, 8, 25, 28, 34, 36, 46, 70, 76, 77, 96 ‘The Mad Mother’, 48, 76 Matthew poems, ‘Memorials of a Tour in Italy, 1837’, 54 ‘Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820’, 97 ‘Michael’, 11, 39, 51, 71, 81 Musings near Aquapendente, 22 ‘A Night-Piece’, 52 ‘The Norman Boy’, 97 ‘Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room’, 53 134 Index Wordsworth, William (works) (cont.) ‘Nutting’, 39, 103 ‘The Old Cumberland Beggar’, 30, 71 ‘Old Man Travelling’, 54, 75 Peter Bell, 19 The Philanthropist, 6, 33 Poems (1815), 81 ‘Poems Composed or Suggested during a Tour, in the Summer of 1833’, 54 Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), 12, 17, 84 ‘The Poet’s Dream’, 97 ‘Preface’ to the Lyrical Ballads, xiv, 39, 45, 47, 48, 49, 60, 72, 73, 79, 105 The Prelude, 22, 51, 52, 85, 90, 97, 101, 103, 104 Book I, 37, 72, 88, 90, 91, 92, 108 Book II, 89, 91 Book III, 3, 90 Book IV, 69 Book V, 40, 81, 90, 91 Book VI, 87, 88, 90 Book VII, 91 Book VIII, 90 Book IX, Book X, 34, 37, 91 Book XI, 2, 39, 91, 104 Book XII, 87, 91 Book XIII, xii, 11, 92 The Recluse, 8, 9, 11, 20 ‘Resolution and Independence’ (also called ‘The Leech Gatherer’), 63, 70 The River Duddon: A Series of Sonnets, 19, 53, 96 ‘The Ruined Cottage’, 34, 51, 67, 75, 94 Salisbury Plain poems, 22, 65, 66, 97 ‘Scorn Not the Sonnet’, 54 ‘She Dwelt among th’ Untrodden Ways’, 78 ‘Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman’, 46, 76 ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’, 71, 78 ‘The Solitary Reaper’, 28, 48, 84, 106 Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty, 53 Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death, 21, 53, 55, 67 ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’, 38, 104 ‘Strange Fits of Passion’, 78, 79, 105 ‘The Sublime and the Beautiful’ (essay), 15, 28 ‘Surprised by Joy’, 92 Thanksgiving Ode, 17 ‘There was a Boy’, 50, 71, 80, 84 ‘The Thorn’, 71, 73, 74, 76 ‘Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower’, 78 ‘To a Butterfly’, 84, 104 ‘To My Sister’, 104 ‘The Vale of Esthwaite’, 64 ‘Vernal Ode’, 97 ‘We Are Seven’, 71, 72, 76 ‘The Westmoreland Girl’, 96 ‘When First I Journeyed Hither’, 61 ‘The White Doe of Rylstone’, 12, 13, 17, 85 ‘A Wren’s Nest’, 96 Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, 20, 54 Yarrow Unvisited, 20 Yarrow Visited, 20 Cambridge Introductions to… authors Jane Austen╇ Janet Todd Samuel Beckett╇ Ronan McDonald Walter Benjamin╇ David Ferris J M Coetzeꕇ Dominic Head Joseph Conrad John Peters Jacques Derrid╇ Leslie Hill Emily Dickinson╇ Wendy Martin George Eliot╇Nancy Henry T S Eliot╇ John Xiros Cooper William Faulkner╇ Theresa M Towner F Scott Fitzgerald╇ Kirk Curnutt Michel Foucault╇ Lisa Downing Robert Frost╇ Robert Faggen Nathaniel Hawthornꕇ Leland S Person Zora Neale Hurston Lovalerie King James Joycꕇ Eric Bulson Herman Melvillꕇ Kevin J Hayes Sylvia Plath╇ Jo Gill Edgar Allen Poꕇ Benjamin F Fisher Ezra Pound╇ Ira Nadel Jean Rhys╇ Elaine Savory Edward Said╇ Conor McCarthy Shakespearꕇ Emma Smith Shakespeare’s Comedies╇ Penny Gay Shakespeare’s History Plays╇ Warren Chernaik Shakespeare’s Tragedies╇ Janette Dillon Harriet Beecher Stowꕇ Sarah Robbins Mark Twain╇ Peter Messent Edith Wharton╇ Pamela Knights Walt Whitman╇ M Jimmie Killingsworth Virginia Woolf╇ Jane Goldman William Wordsworth╇ Emma Mason W B Yeats╇ David Holdeman topics The American Short Story╇ Martin Scofield Comedy╇ Eric Weitz Creative Writing╇ David Morley Early English Theatrꕇ Janette Dillon English Theatre, 1660–1900 Peter Thomson Francophone Literaturꕇ Patrick Corcoran Modern British Theatrꕇ Simon Shepherd Modern Irish Poetry╇ Justin Quinn Modernism╇ Pericles Lewis Narrative (second edition)╇ H Porter Abbott The Nineteenth-Century American Novel╇ Gregg Crane Postcolonial Literatures╇ C L Innes Postmodern Fiction╇ Bran Nicol Russian Literaturꕇ Caryl Emerson Scenograph•‡ Joslin McKinney and Philip Butterworth The Short Story in English╇Adrian Hunter Theatre Historiography╇ Thomas Postlewait Theatre Studies╇ Christopher Balme Tragedy╇ Jennifer Wallace Victorian Poetry╇ Linda K Hughes ... Dorothy had found their way to Göttingen to visit their friend and make plans to return to England Eager to re-establish the community at Racedown in the Lake District, Wordsworth toured the area with... newspapers, and walked over to Â�Grasmere to relate the news Wordsworth was devastated ‘I have done all in my power 12 The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth to alleviate the distress of poor... Warwick The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth E mm a M a so n CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge