William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
The Prelude (1799, 1804, 1805, 1850)

• Intended as introduction/prologue to a three-part magnum opus, The Recluse or views of Nature, Man, and Society.
• "On Man, on Nature, on human Life, / Musing in Solitude" ("Prospectus" / "Home at Grasmere" 959-60).
• Part One, Book One: "Home at Grasmere" (ca. 1800, unpublished)
• Part Two: The Excursion (1814)
• Part Three: Unfinished
• "If WW had finished the project as planned, The Recluse would have totalled about 33,000 lines (Paradise Lost is only 10,500)" (Mandell--source link defunct).
• In the Preface to The Excursion, WW "likened the design implicit in all his writings to the structural plan of a 'gothic church,' in which the 'preparatory poem' we now call The Prelude [a name given the work by his widow after his death] is 'the ante-chapel,' the tripartite Recluse is 'the body,' and all his 'minor Pieces,' when 'properly arranged,' are equivalent to 'little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices'" (Abrams 20).
• Thus, WW "envisaged all his poems as one immense work, a poem made up of poems, written in accordance with a single comprehensive design" (Abrams 20).
• Ideas to Consider:
• Love of Nature leads to Love of Man (from headnote to Book 8)
• French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars:
• "Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense / For one of conquest, losing sight of all / Which they had struggled for" (10.792-94).
• Leads to tremendous disillusionment for WW.
• Godwinian rationalism offers temporary alternative, but lacks emotional foundation.
• Dorothy WW, STC, help him return to the restorative "bosom" of Nature.

Important Dates:

1770:  Born  1771:  Dorothy Born 1778:  Mother's Death 1783:  Father's Death 1787:  Enters Cambridge 1790:  Tour of France 1791:  Degree from Cambridge 1791-92:  Second Tour of France 1792:  Daughter Anne-Caroline Born 1795:  Bequest from Raisley Calvert

1797:  Moves to Alfoxden 1798:  Lyrical Ballads published 1798-99:  Winter in Germany 1799:  Moves to Grasmere  1802:  Marriage to Mary Hutchinson 1805:  Brother John drowns 1812:  Deaths of children, Catherine and Thomas 1813:  Moves to Rydal Mount  1843:  Becomes Poet Laureate 1850:  Dies

Homework Questions: (See Part Two )
392:

• In what ways, according to the editors did Wordsworth's Prelude become "a kind of lifetime companion to the poet" (392)?
• In what way, according to Wordsworth, is his poem "unprecedented" (392)?

Book First:
393:

• What is the speaker's situation at the beginning of the poem?

394:

• Summarize the discussion of the "glad preamble" in the footnote to lines 1.1-54.

399:

• In what way is Wordsworth "Like a false steward who hath much received/And renders nothing back" (1.270-71)?
• Explain lines 1.271-76.

400:

• Explain lines 1. 305-8.

401:

• Explain the potential symbolism of the stolen boat episode (1.372-426).

406:

• Explain: "even then I felt/Gleams like the flashing of a shield" (1.613-14).

407:

• What hope does Wordsworth express in 1.648-53?

• Summarize the process of composition of  The Prelude.

• Explain the connections of The Prelude to Paradise Lost and The Confessions of both St. Augustine and Rousseau.
• Explain: "But as narrator, rather than narrated subject, Wordsworth insists on the wider import of this singular story" (361).
• According to the editors, what persistent metaphor can be found in The Prelude?
• How do many modern readers view Wordsworth's attempts to address the issues associated with that metaphor?

393:

• Explain: "sometimes self-estrangement ... and self-knowledge proceed hand in hand (361).
• Explain the allusion to Paradise Lost.

393-94:

• Explain the reference to the "corresponding mild creative breeze" (1.41-47).

394:

• What friend does Wordsworth address in line 55?
• What is "the mind's/Internal echo of the imperfect sound" (1.6-65)?
• What "vale" has Wordsworth chosen in 1.81-82?

395:

• What are "Eolian visitations" (1.104)? What "harp" is being "defrauded" (1.104, 105)?

396:

• What is the source of the discouragement Wordsworth discusses in 1.134ff?
• What qualities does he identify in himself that should enable him to pursue his creative goals?
• What elements does he still require?

397:

• What subjects does Wordsworth consider but reject?
• Who are Gustavus Vassa and William Wallace?

398:

• Why does Wordsworth believe "I live a mockery of the brotherhood/Of vice and virtue" (1.239-40)?
• In what ways, according to Wordsworth, do "Humility and modest awe themselves/Betray me" (1.245-46)?

399:

• Describe the significance of the Derwent River.

400:

• Explain the admonition Wordsworth receives in 1.324-32.
• Explain: "The mind of man is framed ever like the breath/And harmony of music" (1.351-52).

401:

• Explain Wordsworth's description of himself as a "favored being" of Nature (1.362-71 and ff).

403:

• To what is Wordsworth referring when he discusses Nature "haunting me thus among my boyish sports"(1.445)?

404:

• Explain Wordsworth's discussion of the "lowly cottages" (1.525ff).

405:

• What relationship with Nature does Wordsworth describe having at ten years old? How does this description compare with that found in "Tintern Abbey"?

407:

• Explain the final stanza of Book First.

• Explain Wordsworth's concept of "spots of time" (11.257).

• Explain the significance of the naked pool, beacon, and woman to the first spot of time (11.278-325).

• Explain lines 11.325-27.
• Explain lines 11.337-40.

• Explain the significance of the single sheep, blasted tree, bleak music, and stone wall to the second spot of time (11.344-84), but especially in regards to the chastisement he mentions in 11.369.

• Explain the significance of the chronology of the Mount Snowdon episode (see fn 1).

• Explain: "in that breach/ .../ ...had Nature lodged/The Soul, the imagination of the whole" (13.62, 64-65).

• How, according to Wordsworth, does the scene he has described appear to be "The perfect image of a mighty mind" (13.69)?

• What, according to Wordsworth, does "genuine liberty" (13.122) involve?

• Explain the final prophecy.

• Explain:  "To compose the poem was also to compose the Poet" (452).
• Explain:  The Prelude "emerges as a great, self-conscious testimony to the construction of the past out of the urgent needs of the present" (452).

from Book Ninth: Residence in France
489:

• Explain:  "I saw the revolutionary Power / Toss like a Ship at anchor, rock'd by storms" (9.49-50).
• Explain:  "I looked for something which I could not find" (9.70).
• Explain: I "had abruptly pass'd / Into a theatre, of which the stage / Was busy with an action far advanced" (9.93-95).

• Explain his description of himself as
• Tranquil, almost and careless as a flower
• Glass'd in a Green-house, or a Parlour shrub
• When every bush and tree, the country through,
• Is shaking to the roots. (9.88-91)
• Explain:  "All things were to me / Loose and disjointed, and the affections left / Without a vital interest" (9.106-8).

• Explain:  "The soil of common life was at that time / Too hot to tread upon" (9.169-70).
• Why would Wordsworth have been "Shunn'd and not tolerated" (9.197)?

• Who is Michel Beaupuy (1755-1796)?
• Explain:  "He thro' the events / Of that great change wander'd in perfect faith, / As through a Book, an old Romance or Tale" (9.305-7).
• Explain:  "Man he lov'd / As man" (9.313-14).
• Explain:  "Oft in solitude / With him did I discourse about the end / Of civil government" (9.328-30).

• What is a "heartless mood / Of solitude" (9.517-18)?
• Explain:  "Tis against that / Which we are fighting" (9.519-20).

• How does Wordsworth justify the September Massacres?
• Explain:
•  . . . upon these
• And other sights looking as doth a man
• Upon a volume whose contents he knows
• Are memorable, but from him lock'd up,
• Being written in a tongue he cannot read. (10.48-52)

• Explain:  "All things have second birth; / The earthquake is not satisfied at once" (10.73-74).
• Explain:  "I seem'd to hear a voice that cried / To the whole City, 'Sleep no more'" (10.76-77).
• Explain:
• . . . these are things
• Of which I speak only as they were storm
• Or sunshine to my individual mind,
• No further (10.103-6).

• Explain:  "blasts / From hell came sanctified like airs from heaven" (10.313-14).

• What does it mean to have "throned / The human understanding paramount / And made of that their God" (10.317-19)?
• Explain the description of the child and the windmill in 10.337-45 (see also footnote 8).

• Explain:  "The Herculean Commonwealth had put forth her arms / And throttled with an infant Godhead's might / The snakes about her cradle" (10.362-64).
• Explain:
• They who with clumsy desperation brought
• A river of blood, and preach'd that nothing else
• Could cleanse the Augean Stable, by the might
• Of their own helper have been swept away. (10.546-49)

• Explain:  "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven" (10.692-93).
• Explain:  "Not favor'd spots alone, but the whole earth / The beauty wore of promise" (10.701-2).

• Why does Wordsworth stick "More firmly to old tenets, and to prove / Their temper, strain'd them more" (10.800-1)?

• Explain Wordsworth's discussion of "Dragging all passions, notions, shapes of faith / Like culprits to the bar" (10.889-90).

• What function do Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth perform here (10.904-29ff)?

• What is the main point of Wordsworth's Apostrophe to Burke?