Wordsworth Handout #2

English 203

Dr. Fike

The Prelude, Book I

What is an epic?  What is an invocation of the muse?  Consider lines 1-30.

• What is Wordsworth's muse? 

• Cf. Abrams idea of natural supernaturalism in Romantic poetry:  .

• Parallel to TA: 

• Miltonic allusion in line 14:  "The earth is all before me."

Some natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;

The World was all before them, where to choose

Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:

They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,

Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

• A sense that WW is picking up where Milton left off. 
• Milton:pathos::WW:__________________.
• Another important parallel:  blank verse.

• The "correspondent breeze" (page 189, line 135):  .

• WW starts his poem by _______________________________________________________.

• Look at page 192, line 269ff.:  "Was it for this / That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved / To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song," etc.?  What is he saying? 

• Possible topics:
  • "noble theme," line 129 vs. "common things" in line 109
  • Lines 132-33:  "Sometimes it suits me better to invent / A tale from my own heart," etc.
• Re topics:  We get the stages again:
  • Stage zero:  "Intimations"—
  • Stage one at line 288—.
  • Stage two at 301, not ten years old at line 307, the bird stealing episode the stolen boat episode—
  • Stage three at 237:  "mellower years will bring a riper mind / And clearer insight."
  • No hint here of the fourth stage.

• Key concept:  "spots of time" on page 223 (12.208).
  • First spot:  going to a place where a guy was hanged and having sexual feelings for a girl.
  • Second spot:  Christmas time, father's death "appeared / A chastisement" (310-11) for his sexual feelings.

• The effect of these spots of time:  See lines 344-50.  Cf. "The Child is the father of the Man."

Group Activity:  Consider the stolen boat episode on pages 194-95, starting at line 358.  What happens, and what do you make of WW's reaction?

What kind of imagery does WW employ here? 

"Intimations Ode"

It was begun in 1802, and WW got to the end of stanza 4.  He didn't know the answer to the question in lines 56-57:  "Wither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"  He completed the poem in 1804.  Coleridge wrote "Dejection" in 1802 in response to just the first four stanzas. 

Stanzas I-IV:  Wordsworth's sense of loss of the imaginative power that is the "glory" of childhood.  The problem is that WW thinks that the gleam is in nature, something external to him, and he thinks it has passed away.

Stanzas V-VIII:  A negative response to the loss:  preoccupation with the imaginative loss:  "Shades of the prison-house begin to close / Upon the growing Boy" (lines 64-65).

Stanzas IX-XI:  A positive response to the loss:  the "embers" in line130.  Memory saves us.  WW stresses a unity of seeing and hearing.  The solution is WW's realization in stanza 9, lines 180-87, that the gleam wasn't external; it hasn't fled.  It's internal.  Though diminished, it hasn't gone anyplace.  WW has passed out of stages one and two; however, he realizes that stage three offers important compensation.

Response Paper Topics:  Coleridge

1. Why is the church an appropriate setting?  And why does the Ancient Mariner speak to a wedding guest?
2. "Kubla Khan":  What is the setting in lines 6-20?  What contrasts appear, and how do you interpret them?
3. "Frost at Midnight":  According lines 44ff., what has the speaker learned from the experience he discusses in the preceding lines?