Wordsworth and the Poetry of What We Are

257 Pages·2008·0.814 MB·English

by  Paul H. Fry

Yale Studies in English
Yale Studies in English publishes books on English, American, and
Anglophone literature developed in and by the Yale University
community. Founded in 1898 by Albert Stanburrough Cook, the
original series continued into the 1970s, producing such titles as
The Poetry of Meditation by Louis Martz, Shelley’s Mythmaking
by Harold Bloom, The Cankered Muse by Alvin Kernan, The Hero
of the Waverly Novels by Alexander Welsh, John Skelton’s Poetry
by Stanley Fish, and Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and
His Roles by Stephen Greenblatt. With the goal of encouraging
publications by emerging scholars alongside the work of estab-
lished colleagues, the series has been revived for the twenty-first
century with the support of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation and in partnership with Yale University Press.
PA U L H . F RY
Wordsworth and the Poetry
of What We Are
Yale University Press
New Haven &
London
Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund.
Copyright ∫ 2008 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in
any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publishers.
Set in Sabon by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fry, Paul H.
Wordsworth and the poetry of what we are / Paul H. Fry.
p. cm. — (Yale studies in English)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-300-12648-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850—Philosophy. 3. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,
1772–1834—Philosophy. 4. Philosophy, English—19th century. 5. Philosophical
anthropology in literature. 6. Philosophy of nature in literature. 7. Philosophy in
literature. 8. Nature in literature. I. Title.
pr5892.p5f79 2008
821%.7—dc22
2007046556
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of my parents, Jess and Ann Fry,
Wordsworthian lives in their diurnal course
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
1. Introduction: Wordsworth’s Originality 1
2. Wordsworth in the Rime 23
3. Jeffreyism, Byron’s Wordsworth, and the Nonhuman in Nature 42
4. Green to the Very Door? The Natural Wordsworth 60
5. The Novelty of Wordsworth’s Earliest Poems 75
6. Hoof After Hoof, Metric Time 91
7. The Poem to Coleridge 119
8. The Pastor’s Wife and the Wanderer: Spousal Verse or the
Mind’s Excursive Power 146
9. Intimations Revisited: From the Crisis Lyrics to Wordsworth
in 1817 176
Afterword: Just Having It There Before Us 200
Notes 205
Index 226
vii
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Preface
Introducing a reprint of the 1835 edition of Wordsworth’s Guide to the
Lakes, the Malvern Public Librarian nicely says that Wordsworth’s ‘‘great
prefaces . . . strive, with characteristic humility, to seek out the hiding-places of
his power.’’ Not just the prefaces, of course, and not just his own power:
Wordsworth had a way of sensing the power hidden in all poetry, and never
stopped writing about it. At the same time, however, he believed that his own
peculiar power, like that of a handful of predecessors, was original, and that
his originality was what mattered. In this book it is my wish to bring the
hiding-places of Wordsworth’s original power to light in the poetry that was
written as early as 1787 and as late as 1817.
My title alludes to the impassioned declaration of purpose in the ‘‘Prospec-
tus to The Recluse.’’ Having passed in review the great myths of traditional
poetry, especially Milton’s, Wordsworth claims that his own poetry will en-
courage ‘‘the discerning intellect of Man’’ to find such myths implied, or en-
tailed, as ‘‘[a] simple produce of the common day.’’ Raising his pitch still
higher, he proposes to ‘‘chant . . . the spousal verse’’ of mind and nature, using
‘‘words / Which speak of nothing more than what we are.’’ I shall add a word
about the continuation of this passage below, but for the moment I want to call
attention to a choice of words in which the theme of my book can be found.
Wordsworth might have said ‘‘who we are.’’ Agreed, ‘‘nothing more than who
ix