Wordsworth's Ethics

267 Pages·2012·2.036 MB·English

by  Adam Potkay

Wordsworth’s Ethics
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WORDSWORTH’S
ETHICS
adam potkay
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2012
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Potkay, Adam, 1961–
Wordsworth’s ethics / Adam Potkay.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 1- 4214- 0708- 1 (hdbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 1- 4214- 0758- 6
(electronic) — ISBN 1- 4214- 0708- 6 (hdbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 1- 4214- 0758- 2 (electronic)
1. Wordsworth, William, 1770– 1850—Ethics. 2. Ethics in literature.
3. Music and literature. 4. Music in literature. I. Title.
PR5892.E8P68 2013
821'.7—dc23 2012008906
A cata log record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Contents
Ac know ledg ments vii
Introduction 1
1 Audition and Attachment 13
2 Close Encounters I 31
3 Close Encounters II 49
4 The Ethics of Things 71
5 Music versus Conscience 90
6 Captivation and Liberty in Poems on Music 108
7 The Moral Sublime 121
8 In de pen dence and Interdependence 148
9 Surviving Death 173
10 The Poetics of Life 187
Envoy: Wordsworth’s Afterlives 202
Notes 205
Works Cited 233
Index 249
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Ac know ledg ments
Behind the writing of this book are debts that extend back to my teachers at
Cornell University, where I was an undergraduate some thirty years ago. Al-
though I’ve since hiked through En gland’s Lake District, the mountains and
waterfalls I most associate with Wordsworth remain those of upstate New
York’s Finger Lakes.
At the College of William and Mary in Virginia, I’ve enjoyed the company
of numerous Wordsworth devotees over the years, among them my col-
leagues Kim Wheatley and Tim Costelloe. Both of them commented on por-
tions of my manuscript, as did Monica Brzezinski Potkay, keenest of editors
(though not yet a Wordsworth fan). Erin Minear shared some of her writing
on Shakespeare and music with me at a timely juncture. For many years my
students have been delightful and often instructive in numerous courses,
theses, and summer projects devoted wholly or partially to Wordsworth’s
poetry; I am especially grateful to Sean Barry, Lauren Cameron, Lindsay Gib-
son, and Jonathan Ogden.
Then there are the far- fl ung Wordsworth afi cionados with whom I’ve corre-
sponded, mainly in cyberspace: these include John Cole, Bruce Graver, Jeff rey
Hipolito, David Kaiser, Donald J. Moores, and Steven Scherwatzky. My special
thanks go out to Vivasvan Soni, who inspired me to rethink aspects of ethical
theory and its relation to literature.
The writing of this book was generously supported by two year- long research
leaves, the fi rst provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities—a
2006– 7 fellowship to fi nish my last book, The Story of Joy: From the Bible to Late
Romanticism. Wordsworth’s Ethics has its origins in that earlier project. It was
completed during a William and Mary Research Leave for 2010– 11.
In the fi ve years of composing this book I was assisted, as if providentially,
by panel organizers and editors who prompted me to work through my ideas in
conference papers and articles. Portions of chapter 1 appeared in A Companion
viii acknowledgments
to Romantic Poetry, ed. Charles Mahoney (Wiley- Blackwell, 2011), 176– 94. An
early version of chapter 4 was published in PMLA 123 (2008): 390– 404 (with
thanks to the journal’s then- editor, Patsy Yeager), and an early version of chap-
ter 5 in Theory and Practice in the Eigh teenth Century: Writing between Philosophy
and Literature, ed. Alexander Dick and Christina Lupton (Pickering and Chatto,
2008), 225– 38. Part of chapter 6 appeared in “Soundings of Things Done,” a 2008
special issue, edited by Susan Wolfson, of the online journal Romantic Circles;
the issue was based on a 2007 MLA panel Susan or ga nized. Parts of chapter 7
were originally written for my article on the Romantic sublime forthcoming in
The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. Tim Costelloe, and appear here
with permission of Cambridge University Press. Some of my thinking about
Wordsworth and Biblical Psalms, which weaves its way through several of my
chapters, found earlier expression in a piece I wrote for The King James Bible af-
ter Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Infl uences, ed. Hannibal
Hamlin and Norman Jones (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 219– 33. To all of
these editors and publishers I am im mensely grateful. Finally, an earlier version
of my reading of Wordsworth’s poem The Old Cumberland Beggar, included here
in chapter 2, was originally published in The Story of Joy, 121– 28 and is used with
permission of Cambridge University Press.
One journal in which I did not publish any portion of this book, but which
I nonetheless want to thank, is The Wordsworth Circle, edited by the ebullient
and ever- sharp Marilyn Gaull, to whom I am deeply indebted: thank you, Mar-
ilyn, for drawing me into the circle some twenty years ago. I am beholden to
Matt McAdam of the Johns Hopkins University Press for his faith in this proj-
ect from proposal to fi nal ac cep tance, and to Michael Baker for his eagle- eyed
copy editing.
In working out my ideas for this book with an array of talented editors, I
also had the great good fortune during its writing to have been invited to
speak at numerous universities, where I tested out ideas, got early and invalu-
able responses, and enjoyed remarkable hospitality from friends old and new.
Proceeding in more or less alphabetic order by university, and including my
principal host or hosts at each, I thank David Duff and the University of Aber-
deen; Dorota Chabrajska and the John Paul II Institute of the Catholic Uni-
versity of Lublin, Poland; James Engell, Jacob Sider Jost, Matthew Ocheltree,
and Harvard University: Sunil Agnani, Adela Pinch, and the University of
Michigan; Hannibal Hamlin, Norman Jones, and Ohio State University; Susan
Wolfson and Prince ton University; William Galperin (a rock of support) and
Rutgers University; Emma Sutton and St. Andrews University; and Jane and
acknowledgments ix
Marshall Brown at the University of Washington. Lastly, I would like to thank
Christine Dunn Henderson, Se nior Fellow at Liberty Fund, for sponsoring
my 2008 colloquium on Wordsworth in Hermosa Beach, California, an event
that included among its participants Seamus Perry, Thomas Pfau, and Margaret
Russett.
This book is dedicated to all those with whom I’ve studied Wordsworth,
both in person and in print: “what we have loved / Others will love, and we may
teach them how.”