Reader's Log 6A

There are two Reader’s Log units in this block. After preparing your responses carefully from the following Web page, you should click on one of the links to the Web Portfolio provided below and go there to post your responses. You will need your text book at hand.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), pp. 1424-1556.

Read the editors’ introduction, pp. 1424-1427. Wordsworth is the most important poet of the Romantic Era, a peer to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope in the canon of English poets. He is credited with (1) having ushered in a revolutionary new style in poetry and (2) being the foremost poet of nature in the English language.

In collaboration with Coleridge, he published a small book of poems, Lyrical Ballads, in 1798. For many scholars, this event marks the true beginning of the Romantic Era. In later editions, Wordsworth developed in prose a theory of poetry to match his practice in his poems. In its essentials, his theory was taken up by the chief poets of his time, putting an end to the long reigning Neoclassical style.

As for his treatment of nature, his poetry declared not only the joy of being among the beauties of nature but also the intimate connection those beauties give with the cosmic spirit underlying nature. His was the most characteristic expression in poetry of what may be called Romantic religion, which was not Christian in its essence yet harmonious enough with the reverence Christians feel for the handiwork of the Creator that it did not rouse the opposition that Deism, the counter religion of the Neoclassical Era, had engendered. Wordsworth himself was never at open odds with the Anglican faith in which he was raised and in fact became visibly supportive of the Church of England in his later years.

It is helpful to know that Wordsworth spent his childhood and much of a his adulthood in the Lake District of northwestern England, a beautiful mountainous terrain dotted by lakes, which even today retains much of its rural character.

It is not expected that you will have the time to study all the assigned pages in detail. You will be told to read certain passages carefully. Please do so. Otherwise, browse through the assigned passages to form a sense of their theme and tone.

Lyrical Ballads (1798), pp. 1427-1435. Your editors have given you four brief poems and one long poem from the first edition of this book. You are asked to respond to the long poem. You may wish to browse through the others.

READER’S LOG. Lines above Tintern Abbey, pp. 1432-1435. Read this poem and also note # 1, p. 1432. This poem is in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, the favored meter of the Romantic Era. The poem is addressed to Wordsworth’s beloved sister and life-long companion, Dorothy. At the present moment of the poem, Wordsworth has returned to a hill above Tintern Abbey, the ruins of a monastery in a valley of the Wye River in Wales. His two visits, his first being here vividly recalled, remind him of the difference between his ecstatic youthful response to the external forms of nature and his present more mature response to the spiritual reality underlying those forms. Quote lines 25-30 where the poet explains the memory of his first visit here.

READER’S LOG. Tintern Abbey, p. 1433. Quote lines 76-83, which eloquently describe the poet’s unthinking joy in nature.

READER’S LOG. Tintern Abbey, pp. 1433-1434. Read with extra care lines 83-111, which describe the poet’s more sober mature response, a recognition of the intangible cosmic spirit which underlies visible nature. Sometimes called Transcendentalism, this religion of nature held (1) that God is an immaterial spirit filling the entire universe and serving as the cause and origin of visible nature; (2) that truth, beauty, and goodness emanate from this cosmic spirt; and (3) that the human soul, being a tiny part of this spirit, could discern these qualities in their essence through tranquil communion with visible nature. Quote lines 93-102, in which the poet describes his recognition of the cosmic spirit underlying nature.

Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), pp.1435-1448. Read these pages including the editors’ introduction, pp. 1435-1436.

READER’S LOG. Preface to Lyrical Ballads, p. 1438. Note in the upper paragraph that Wordsworth speaks of the poetry of the Neoclassical Age as having a "gaudiness and inane phraseology." From the lower paragraph, summarize the poet’s reasons for selecting situations and incidents from "low and rustic life."

READER’S LOG. Preface to Lyrical Ballads, p. 1446. From the bottom paragraph, quote the sentence which in your estimation best defines what a poet is.

READER’S LOG. Preface to Lyrical Ballads, p. 1447. Note that Wordsworth specifies in the middle paragraph of this page that poetry is both written and read in a state of pleasure, making it probable, as he says at the conclusion of the paragraph, that people will generally prefer verse to prose. Quote Wordsworth’s succinct (and famous) definition of poetry in the opening sentence of this paragraph.

Michael: A Pastoral Poem, pp. 1463-1474. Read these pages, including the editors’ notes, p. 1463. The setting and events of the poem are drawn from the close vicinity of Wordsworth’s home at Dove Cottage close to a lake called Grasmere (which your instructor has visited). Note that Wordsworth intends a contrast between his pastoral poem and the traditional pastoral, a sample of which you saw in Milton’s Lycidas, pp. 703-709. There are no allusions here to classical literature, particularly the artificial paraphernalia of the shepherds singing their laments to fellow shepherds. The abundant, vivid description is realistic and local, and the narrative, developed in careful detail, is about a humble shepherd, his wife, and the son on whom they doted when he was a child and for whose abandonment they grieved in their old age. It is a sad story in the vein of The Ruined Cottage, a poem which you have not been assigned but which you may wish to glance at nonetheless. One of Wordsworth's criteria for poetry is that it must reflect the lives and speech of common people. Both these poems are evidence that Wordsworth often met this criterion.

READER’S LOG. Michael, p. 1468. You will have noticed that Wordsworth spends much affectionate detail on the son Luke’s childhood, as if it a subject that he personally takes delight in. Luke is loved by both his parents but is particularly meaningful to his father. From lines 194-203, tell in your own words the effect upon Michael of having Luke accompany him on the mountainsides where their sheep graze.

READER’S LOG. Michael, pp. 1468-1469. From lines 207-254, tell in your own words the reason Michael sends the eighteen-year-old Luke to live with a prosperous relative.

READER’S LOG. Michael, pp. 1473-1474. You will notice here how quickly Wordsworth ends the poem once Luke’s abandonment of his parents is made known as if that is a subject too painful for Wordsworth to elaborate upon much. Quote lines 442-447, which reveal the cause of Luke’s abandonment.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality, pp. 1479-1485. Read the editors’ introduction, pp. 1479-1480 carefully. Influenced by Neoclassical treatments of the classical ode, Wordsworth here adopts a metrical pattern outside his favored blank verse. On p. 1479, Wordsworth tells a friend that as a child he felt that objects of the external world were an identical part of "my own immaterial nature," having reference there to his mind, which he regards as not composed of matter. From this he concludes that the human soul has existed before birth and retains a fresh memory of that fact until maturity gradually effaces the memory. He hastens here to assure his friend that he does not wish to challenge the traditional Christian view that the soul, though immortal thereafter, is created at birth. However that may be, in much of his other poetry, Wordsworth consistently identifies the human spirit as a part of the infinite spirit underlying nature.

READER’S LOG. Ode: Intimations of Immortality stanzas 5 & 8, pp. 1482-1483. Read these stanzas carefully. Identify the person whom the poet addresses as "Thou best Philosopher" in stanza 8.

Sonnets, pp. 1490-1493. Wordsworth also wrote a few excellent, frequently anthologized sonnets. The sonnet is a traditional form imported from Italy into English poetry by the Elizabethan poets of the late 16^th century. The sonnet is defined as a form of 14 lines in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme falls into two recognized patterns. The Italian sonnet features an octave of two identical quatrains (8 lines) and a concluding sestet (6 lines) rhyming abba abba cde cde (the sestet often varies from this pattern). The English or Shakespearean sonnet features three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.

READER’S LOG. Composed upon Westminster Bridge, p. 1490. At dawn Wordsworth contemplates the sleeping city of London and discovers there an underlying spirit akin to that he discerns in nature. Scan the rhyme scheme of this sonnet and tell here which of the above patterns it falls into.

READER’S LOG. It is a beauteous evening, p. 1490. Wordsworth strolls at sunset with his natural daughter Caroline on the French coast. Observing the girl’s apparent indifference to the spiritual suggestions of the scene’s natural beauty, he uses allusions to the Old Testament to establish that she is nonetheless possessed of a religious spirit. In your own words tell how his concluding lines harmonize with the theme of Intimations of Immortality.

The Recluse (an unfinished opus of vast proportions):

We come now to Prospectus to The Recluse, a poem of modest length, and The Prelude, a multi-chapter work of great length, both designed as parts of a much longer poetic work which Wordsworth called The Recluse and on which he worked for much of his life without completing it. In this endeavor, Wordsworth conceived of himself as a peer to Milton, intending that his opus would serve the same purpose for the Romantic world view that Milton’s Paradise Lost served for the Christian world view.

Prospectus, pp. 1494-1497. Read the editors’ introductory note # 1, p. 1494. A prospectus is an announcement of intention. Predictably, this poem announces Wordsworth’s purpose in writing The Recluse, which is to explain the grand destiny of the human spirit. Multiple allusions to Paradise Lost show that Wordsworth intends that his work, like Milton’s, will serve as an explanation of evil in an essentially good universe. Such a work, as your editors make clear in their introduction to The Prelude, is called a theodicy, a vindication of a just deity in face of the existence of evil. To illustrate the parallel between Wordsworth’s and Milton’s intentions, you are asked below to read a brief passage from Paradise Lost.

Keep in mind that Milton’s book-length Christian epic justifies God by blaming the existence of evil upon the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and that it promises solace to mortal human beings through the promise of the Atonement of Christ, whereas Wordsworth’s work, being Romantic rather than Christian, propounds that the human mind will work out its own liberation from the evils of the earth by its union with the cosmic spirit underlying visible nature.

READER’S LOG. John Milton. Paradise Lost, lines 1-26, pp. 724-725. These opening lines declare Milton’s purpose and invoke the assistance of God’s spirit. Quote from the middle of line 22 through line 26.

READER’S LOG. William Wordsworth continued. Prospectus, lines 24-41, p. 1495. This poem is essentially a prayer addressed to Urania, one of the divine Muses from classical mythology to which Milton alluded. It is to be understood that Urania stands for Wordsworth’s deity, that is, for the cosmic spirit underlying visible nature just as Urania stands for the Holy Spirit of the Christians in Milton’s work. Note that Wordsworth consciously alludes to figures from classical mythology that Milton refers to. Ironically, this is a far cry from the language of everyday people advocated by Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads. At the conclusion of the passage assigned here, what is it that the poet says fills him with the greatest "fear and awe"?

READER’S LOG. Prospectus, lines 73-93, p. 1496. Having declared his intention of demonstrating how perfectly the external world (nature) is fitted to the mind of man, and the mind of man to the external world, the poet prays here for inspiration to confront evil in the world ("ill sights," "madding passions," "solitary anguish," "the fierce confederate storm of sorrow," and so on) yet remain steady in his declaration of the essential goodness of existence. Quote from the middle of line 87 through line 93, lines which summarize his prayer.

The Prelude or Growth of a Poet’s Mind: An Autobiography, pp. 1497-1556. Browse through this long poem, reading closely the editors’ introduction, pp. 1497-1498. Wordsworth’s wife named this poem The Prelude upon its posthumous publication, undoubtedly because he had intended it as the opening section of the incomplete Recluse. Please note that your editors say The Prelude does not constitute a Christian epic like Milton’s Paradise Lost, but "a spiritual autobiography of crisis" on the order of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, Book First, pp. 1499-1513. This first book and the second were composed during 1798-1799, soon after Wordsworth had found his authentic poetic voice. They are about his childhood in the Lake District, which was a pastoral region where small villages and grazing sheep and cattle did not distract from, but even added to, the wild grandeur of the general mountainous scene. They reveal the extraordinary vividness of the poet’s childhood experiences with nature. This first book establishes that nature imposed upon the juvenile Wordsworth a double discipline, that of beauty and that of fear. Please read lines 301-302 on p. 1506, and then read the editors’ note # 3 at the bottom of the page. I will ask you to pay attention to how Wordsworth resolves the antithesis between the fearful and the beautiful aspects of nature when we reach Book Fourteenth. In the meantime, also read lines 357-400, pp. 1507-1508. Summarize in your own words this example of nature’s discipline by fear.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, Book Second, pp. 1513-1523. Browse through this book, noting that Wordsworth describes specific scenes and experiences from his childhood, then elaborates on them in general terms. Note that the friend whom Wordsworth addresses in line 453, p. 1523, is Coleridge. For a summary of the influence of the Lake District on the poet, read carefully lines 420-452, pp. 1522-1523. In your own words, list a few of the disillusionments and evils from which the poet claims his experience of nature as a child has preserved him in adulthood.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Eighth, pp. 1532-1533. Read the editors’ note # 1, p. 1532. The poet ascribes his abiding faith in the nobility of humanity to his exposure to the shepherds of the countryside where he roamed as a boy. Quote the sentence formed by lines 275-282.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Tenth, pp. 1534-1537. Read the editors’ note # 1, p. 1534. This book and Book Eleventh reveal the poet’s attraction to the democratic ideals of the early years of the French Revolution and his vast disillusionment when it turned chaotically violent, a disillusionment which, as your editors tell you, precipitated both a moral crisis and something of a nervous breakdown in Wordsworth. Lines 397-415, pp. 1536-1537, reveal the depths of his crisis. Lines 356-374 reveal some of the specific causes of his crisis. What innocent image does the poet use by way of comparison for describing the eagerness of the massive guillotining that went on during the Reign of Terror?

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Eleventh, pp. 1537-1541. Read the editors’ note # 1, p. 1537. From opening lines 105-121, p. 1537, summarize in your own words the poet’s early attitude toward the Revolution, keeping in mind that liberal minded persons all through Europe shared Wordsworth’s feelings about this event.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Eleventh, pp. 1537-1541. From lines 333-363, p. 1541, also from the editors’ notes # 5 and 6, summarize the role of the poet’s sister Dorothy in his recovery.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Thirteenth, pp. 1545-1549. The poet describes his full recovery from his spiritual crisis, a recovery which includes his becoming a permanent companion of his sister and an intimate friends of Coleridge, to whom he continues to address his thoughts. Read with care lines 278-311, pp. 1548-1549, where he describes the growth of his conviction that he has a sacred calling to be the bard of nature and its spiritual meanings. Quote the long sentence expressing his conviction, lines 298-311.

The Prelude, From Book Fourteenth, pp. 1549-1556. This concluding book describes an incident which, as your editors inform you in note # 1, p. 1550, is here presented out of chronological order. On a climb with a friend to the highest peak in Wales, Wordsworth achieved an extraordinarily vivid insight into the spiritual heart of nature. We may assume it was not the first time he had achieved this insight, and it certainly would not be the last, because this insight became the fixed center of his spiritual life and provided a rationale and guiding purpose for his poetic career. Because of this insight, Wordsworth believed the following: that, despite appearances to the contrary, nature was good rather than evil; that it was beautiful and worthy of love; that it was divine and worthy of worship, being the essence of God; that it included a grand destiny for human beings; that through the faculty of mind called Imagination a sensitive human being could fathom and understand nature; that as a consecrated poet/prophet Wordsworth’s personal calling was to declare the foregoing truths about it. The center of the poet’s spiritual crisis had been the doubt the ugly turn of the French Revolution had cast upon this insight, and the significance of his recovery from that crisis is that he returned to an even stronger conviction of the rightness of his insight.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Fourteenth, p. 1551. Read lines 63-77 carefully, also the editors’ note # 6. You may understand the terms "a majestic Intellect" and "of a Mind that feeds upon infinity" as references to the spiritual heart of nature, or, if you wish to state it in more succinct terms, to Wordsworth’s view of deity. The poet here, however, is focused upon his vision into the heart of nature, which derives from a faculty within highly sensitive human beings that is "the type" of the majestic Intellect and "emblem" of the Mind that feeds on infinity. Reading on, lines 78-90, you will see that the poet further likens this faculty of gifted persons to the spiritual heart of nature itself. Quote lines 86-90, p. 1551.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Fourteenth, p. 1554. Read lines 188-205. The poet here identifies the aforementioned faculty as Imagination, a term you will meet again in later Romantic poets. Obviously, the word as he uses it means much more than we ascribe to it today. Explain what you think the poet means by the phrase on line 193 and the first half of line 194, understanding that "our long labor" refers to The Prelude, which he is now finishing.

READER’S LOG. The Prelude, From Book Fourteenth, p. 1553. Go back a page now to lines 162-180, where the poet reconciles the antithetical disciplines of beauty and fear by declaring that love blends the two disciplines. Read the editors’ note # 3, where your editors contrast Milton’s Christian theodicy (an explanation of evil in an essentially good universe) with Wordsworth’s Romantic theodicy. Focusing particularly on lines 162-168, put into your own words Wordsworth’s explanation of evil.