On Wordsworth's prelude
Abstract
In a series of closely related essays, Professor Lindenberger analyzes the language, style, imagery, and organization of Wordsworth's "Prelude." In precise detail and with richly relevant use of critical and historical materials, he demonstrates the variety and complexity of "The Prelude" leading the reader into a deepened understanding of one of the major long poems in the English language.
... Those episodes also stand as counterpoints to all that would dull the mind and darken the spirit. Lindenberger (1963) identified this reflective technique as a structural unit while, for Ogden (1975), it dramatized "a progression of mental states" (p. 292). ...
... Overall, Academy poets decreased in their affective sensibility whereas Wordsworth gained in most of the SEANCE indices. In confirmation of the general impression that Wordsworth became gradually more abstract and so less frequently employed a common language energizing poetry (e.g., Lindenberger, 1963), SixLtr accounted for the largest shift between editions (.98 SD). In this tendency, he resembled his Academy counterparts. ...
Through multiple versions of Prelude, readers can follow the progress of a poem 41 years in the making, a period that exceeds by far the timeline of its narration. To do so I employed automated analysis platforms LIWC (Pennebaker, Chung, Ireland, Gonzales, & Booth, 2007a) and SEANCE (Crossley, Kyle, & McNamara, 2016). Results reveal that Wordsworth exhibited habits of mind resonant with maturation, especially in his increased positivity and abstraction. Discriminant function analysis revealed four psychological markers that almost completely identified shifts between editions. Indices connoting trust and sadness, as well as positive adjectives and the cognitive indicator of exclusion, accounted for 63 percent of the variance. The study offers a methodology for considering multiple versions of any text in which the passage of time becomes an important marker. I present these findings within a digital humanities framework and conclude by discussing applications.
The physical criteria that determine who is and who is not eligible for assisted suicide imply that some lives—such as lives with disability—are less “objectively” worthwhile than others. Besides being degrading and discriminatory, this view is self-deceived. Aging makes both the nondisabled and disabled prone over time to experience increasingly serious disabilities, from impaired mobility to hearing loss. Anthropologies that undermine life with disability therefore undermine our humanity as such, risking self-hatred and misanthropy. As an alternative to this anthropology of despair, the author considers hopeful models affirmed by disability rights activists and by Christian theology.
In this chapter I discuss Wordsworth’s early poetry written between 1798 and 1805. This period corresponds to Coleridge’s early work discussed in the last chapter and to the early stages of the composition of Wordsworth’s planned philosophical epic, The Recluse. I argue that during this period of creativity he attains a metaphysical equipoise
1; that is to say, he attains a deep balance between the outer world and the inner mind. This equipoise consistently eluded Coleridge in his own poetry. The main reason for Wordsworth’s success is his poetic organicism, the view that there is a deep connection between the imaginative powers of the poet and the natura naturans experienced when the poet communes with the natural world. While there is a clear connection with Coleridge’s theoretical dualism of the mechanical and the organic, 2 for Coleridge this theory is mainly placed in the service of his literary criticism rather than in actual poetic creation. By contrast, Wordsworth seeks to attain a union between mind and the natural world through careful deployment of stylistic devices in his poetry. In this way, Wordsworth’s organicism comes very close to the German Naturphilosophie explored by Coleridge.
The aim of this paper is to examine Wordsworth’s poem The Prelude in the sense of being autobiographical. The poem is considered as the longest, noblest and most fruitful illustration of the spiritual frugality of Wordsworth and a handsome anticipation of the modern concept of autobiography. The poem indicates that the autobiographer projects himself in his own literary work and renders his psyche, truthfully and realistically. Through analytical study, this paper tries to shed some light on the autobiographical elements in the poem, and to show how the poem outlines the growth of the poet’s mind throughout the different stages of his life. The study discovers that The Prelude is not an autobiography in the usual sense from the holy pen of the high priest of nature. In it, we have the faithful record of his inner life and emotional experiences enabling us to have a glimpse of the innermost recesses of the poet’s soul. So we may unhesitatingly call it a spiritual or poetical autobiography.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.