The Revolutionary ‘I’: Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation

208 Pages·1998·11.476 MB·English

by  Ashton Nichols (auth.)

ROMANTICISM IN PERSPECTNE:
TEXTS, CULTURES, HISTORIES
General Editors:
Marilyn Gaull, Professor of English,
Temple University/New York University
Stephen Prickett, Regius Professor of English Language and Literature,
University of Glasgow
This series aims to offer a fresh assessment of Romanticism by
looking at it from a wide variety of perspectives. Both
comparative and interdisciplinary, it will bring together cognate
themes from architecture, art history, landscape gardening,
linguistics, literature, philosophy, politics, science, social and
political history and theology to deal with original, contentious or
as yet unexplored aspects of Romanticism as a Europe-wide
phenomenon.
Titles include
Richard Cronin (editor)
1798: THE YEAR OF THE LYRICAL BALLADS
Peter Davidhazi
THE ROMANTIC CULT OF SHAKESPEARE: Literary
Reception in Anthropological Perspective
David Jasper
THE SACRED AND SECULAR CANON IN ROMANTICISM:
Preserving the Sacred Truths
Malcolm Kelsall
JEFFERSON AND THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM:
Folk, Land, Culture, and the Romantic Nation
Andrew McCann
CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE 1790s: Literature, Activism
and the Public Sphere
Ashton Nichols
THE REVOLUTIONARY 'I': Wordsworth and the Politics of
Self-Presentation
Jeffrey C. Robinson
RECEPTION AND POETICS IN KEATS: 'My Ended Poet'
Anya Taylor
BACCHUS IN ROMANTIC ENGLAND: Writers and Drink,
1780-1830
Michael Wiley
ROMANTIC GEOGRAPHY: Wordsworth and
Anglo-European Spaces
Eric Wilson
EMERSON'S SUBLIME SCIENCE
The Revolutionary 'I'
Wordsworth and the Politics
of Self-Presentation
Ashton Nichols
Associate Professor
Dickinson College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
First published in Great Britain 1998 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-40403-2 ISBN 978-0-230-37923-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230379237
First published in the United States of America 1998 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC ..
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21165-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nichols, Ashton, 1953-
The revolutionary "I" : Wordsworth and the politics of self
-presentation 1 Ashton Nichols.
p. cm. - (Romanticism in perspective)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21165-3
I. Wordsworth, William, 1770-1 850-Political and social views.
2. Politics and literature-Great Britain-History-19th century.
3. Revolutionary poetry, English-History and criticism.
4. Political poetry, English-History and criticism.
5. Romanticism-England. 6. Self in literature. I. Title.
II. Series.
PR5892.P64N53 1997
82) '.7-dc2 I 97-40501
CIP
© Ashton Nichols 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-333-71889-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
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Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98
To Kimberley Anne Smith Nichols
il miglior fabbro

Contents
Preface: The Prelude as Prologue ix
Acknowledgments xvn
Abbreviations xix
1 Silencing the (Other) Self: Wordsworth as
'Wordsworth!' in 'There was a boy' 1
2 The Politics of Self-Presentation: Wordsworth as
Revolutionary Actor in a Literary Drama 29
3 Sounds into Speech: the Two-Part Prelude of 1799
as Dialogic Dramatic Monologue 56
4 Coleridge as Catalyst to Autobiography: the
Wordsworthian Self as Therapeutic Gift, 1804-5 78
5 Dialogizing Dorothy: Voicing the Feminine as
Spousal Sister in The Prelude 102
6 Colonizing Consciousness: Culture as Identity in
Wordsworth's Prelude and Walcott's Another Life 132
Notes 151
Bibliography 176
Index 185
vii

Preface
The Prelude as Prologue
Wordsworth's Prelude is a significant text for a number of reasons,
not least because it bears the name of a person who has assumed a
complex and often contradictory status in literary studies. William
Wordsworth has long been viewed by many scholars, teachers, and
readers as claimant of a place in a canonical firmament that
includes only Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. At the same time,
however, he is described by other commentators as a pretender to
such a role: a pompous, overbearing composer of simplistic ballads
and Miltonic blank verse who lacked a consistent voice or a coher
ent philosophy. Recent criticism has sought to connect him with
major cultural currents of the past two centuries while linking his
work to the sources of modernism, postmodernism, and eco-criti
cism; or to chastise him for his lack of political engagement while
relegating him to the role of reactionary pseudo-revolutionary.
The Prelude itself accounts for part of this uncertainty. It was
composed in confusing drafts over a period of half a century,
unpublished until after its author's death, and also related in
complex ways to his major unfinished project: The Recluse. The text
is currently available in four 'finished' forms (two-book, 13-book
and 14-book versions) with a fourth' complete' five-book text exist
ing as a shadowy, but complete (now published) palimpsest. Not
one of these editions was ever seen through the press by its author.
As a supposed standard for 'Romantic' autobiography, the text was
only available to a wide range of readers by the middle of the
Victorian era. More importantly, autobiography as a literary form
was suspect in Wordsworth's day and still occupies an uncertain
position in our own critical canon. It currently holds an increas
ingly important status in literary study, but one that is complicated
by recent theoretical critiques of the genre. This ambivalence arises
partly out of our confused sense of the purpose of self-life writing.
Is autobiography literature? Is it designed to explain the sources
of personal 'greatness'? Is it intended to justify the action or in
action of individuals who feel a need for such justification? Is it a
reply to its author's critics? Is it merely a rhetorical'practice'? Is it
ix