William Wordsworth

Poetic Imagination in the Speculative Philosophies of Plato, Schelling, and Whitehead

by Matthew David Segall

sketching the speculative platonism of Schelling and Whitehead as it relates to the poetic imagination.

• ‘’Vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods’: Gypsies and the idea of the picturesque in ‘Tintern Abbey’ and The Task’

by Alexandra Drayton

Grasmere 2009, 63-72.

• ‘ ‘The poor tawny wanderers’: The Coleridges, Wordsworth, Arnold and the Gypsies’

by Alexandra Drayton

The Coleridge Bulletin (Winter 2009), 17-24.

Romantic Disaster Ecology: Blake, Shelley, Wordsworth

by Tim Morton

Published in Romantic Circles Praxis (2012).

The concept of disaster is getting in the way of a true ecological engagement with the current emergency. Can we find... more The concept of disaster is getting in the way of a true ecological engagement with the current emergency. Can we find alternatives in the poetics of early modernity (Romanticism)?

Why Ambient Poetics?

by Tim Morton

Published in The Wordsworth Circle 33.1 (Winter, 2002), 52–6.

My first attempt to work towards the philosophical view of “ecology without nature.” My first attempt to work towards the philosophical view of “ecology without nature.”

‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth

by Tim Morton

Published in James McKusick, ed., “Romanticism and Ecology,” Romantic Praxis (November, 2001).

Jane Taylor's globally known poem offers ways to think past certain deadlocks in environmentalist criticism. Jane Taylor's globally known poem offers ways to think past certain deadlocks in environmentalist criticism.

Wordsworth Digs the Lawn

by Tim Morton

Published in European Romantic Review 15.2 (March, 2004), 317–327.

Wordsworth's Benjaminian, constructivist approach to poetics de-fetishizes the symbol of bourgeois individualism. Wordsworth's Benjaminian, constructivist approach to poetics de-fetishizes the symbol of bourgeois individualism.

The Dark Ecology of Elegy

by Tim Morton

Published in Karen Weisman, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy (Oxford UP, 2010), 251–271.

Shelley's still-baffling masterpiece Alastor unfolds layer upon layer of ecological significance as long as we are... more Shelley's still-baffling masterpiece Alastor unfolds layer upon layer of ecological significance as long as we are prepared to drop normative concepts of Nature and accept that the narrator(s) is/are part of the poem (a very potent example of Romantic irony). Alastor forces us into the uncomfortable position that its preface condemns.

Jean Giono et William Faulkner : deux hommes du Sud, deux visions du Nord

by Charles Scheel

Version française d'une communication faite en anglais au 29e congrès de la S.F.L.G.C. "Le Nord, latitudes imaginaires", Université Lille 3, 21-23 octobre 1999, parue dans Le Nord, latitudes imaginaires, éd. Monique Dubar et Jean-Marc Moura, Collection UL3 - Travaux et Recherches, Université Lille 3, 2000, p. 295-303.

Cette étude confronte le positionnement idéologique et les stratégies discursives dans l'essai fortement poétisé de... more Cette étude confronte le positionnement idéologique et les stratégies discursives dans l'essai fortement poétisé de Giono, paru en 1936 sous le titre « Les Vraies Richesses », et dans le roman « The Unvanquished » (« Les Invaincus »), paru en 1938, que William Faulkner avait constitué à partir de nouvelles publiées précédemment dans des revues grand public. Giono, homme du Sud-Est de la France, écrivain alors engagé dans le pacifisme et dans l'utopie d'une société agraire et anarchiste, s'attaque par un discours très poétisé au centralisme étatique parisien (donc du Nord) qui encourage l'entrée en guerre et l'industrialisation de l'agriculture. Faulkner, lui, s'investit dans le récit d'une saga épique inspirée par des épisodes « glorieux » vécus par certains de ces « aristocrates » ancêtres, saga épousant une nostalgie surprenante – voire navrante – d'une société sudiste que le Nord n'aurait pas vaincue. 

This study confronts the ideological positioning and the discursive strategies of a highly poetical essay by Giono, published in 1936 under the title "Les Vraies Richesses" ("The True Riches"), and the novel "The Unvanquished", printed in 1938, in which Faulkner gathered short stories previously published in magazines. Giono, a native and life-long resident of south-eastern France, who was then involved with pacifism and the utopia of an anarchistic agrarian society, ranted in a very poetical speech against the centralized Parisian state (in the North) which favored a return to war and industrialized agriculture. As to Faulkner, he got immersed in the epic saga of "glorious" episodes lived by certain of his "aristocratic" forbears, conveying a surprising and even embarrassing "nostalgia" of a Southern society that the North would not have vanquished after all.

« Robert Burns et les Romantiques ; ou, le poète et ses ménades ».

by Yann Tholoniat

RANAM, 43 (2010) 137-155.

Robert Burns’s work and character influenced deeply most of the Romantic poets. But Burns’s legacy proved a mooted... more Robert Burns’s work and character influenced deeply most of the Romantic poets. But Burns’s legacy proved a mooted point, and has evolved according to various reinterpretations as well as according to contrary or even contradictory interests, in so far as Burns “the Heaven-taught ploughman” obviously does not elicit the same response as Burns “the Fornicator”. This paper aims at investigating how Romantic poets used Burns’s work and character to serve their own purposes, and how they took up or recycled elements of the Burnsian poetics. Burns’s work therefore appears as a touchstone for British poets in the first half of the nineteenth century, who, in trying to pigeon-hole Burns into a “high / low” category, actually endeavoured to secure their own position within a redefined literary field.

Memory and William Wordsworth

by Haya Saboor

first attempt on research essay

For Wordsworth, memory acted like an umbilical cord as it sustains a long-term connection between an individual and... more For Wordsworth, memory acted like an umbilical cord as it sustains a long-term connection between an individual and Nature; with reference to “Tintern Abbey” and “The Prelude Book-I”

Ecofeminism and Ecocide: The Beautiful and Sublime in Wordsworth’s "Hart-Leap Well"

by Peter Heymans

Forthcoming in Poetic Ecologies (edited by Franca Bellarsi, published by Peter Lang)

How did walking serve as an integrative activity for Wordsworth?

by Trina-Marie Baird

2008, for Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University

"A few flowery phrases and he thinks I'm his" - (Re)Appropriations of Wordsworth in Contemporary Literature and Film

by Susanne Gruss

High and/versus Popular Culture. Eds. Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Dorothea Flothow. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009. 45-57.

Wordsworth, master-autobiographer and pre-eminent Romantic poet, is undoubtedly a rock-solid column of the British... more Wordsworth, master-autobiographer and pre-eminent Romantic poet, is undoubtedly a rock-solid column of the British literary canon – or is he? The poet laureate's status naturally invites both critics and those who try to profit from his immense degree of popularity. In this paper, I explore how contemporary literature and culture interact with and use both the works and the status of the canonised poet. I suggest three different directions in the manifold appropriations of Wordsworth, the revision of his (auto)biography, the rewriting and the (often parodist) playful quotation and point out that, in contrast to authors such as Shakespeare or Austen, who have secured their place in contemporary pop culture, Wordsworth remains a part of the 'classic' canon against which popular values define themselves.
Texts discussed include Michèle Roberts's Fair Exchange (1999), Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair (2001), Val McDermid's The Grave Tattoo (2007), and Julien Temple's film Pandaemonium (2000).

Visionary Power and Narrative Form: Wordsworth and Adam Bede

by Jay Clayton

Wordsworth, Class & Ambivalence

by Adair Collins

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, 2009

William Wordsworth's The Prelude includes instances of sympathy for and elevating of the underclass, demonstrating... more William Wordsworth's The Prelude includes instances of sympathy for and elevating of the underclass, demonstrating recognition and endorsement of a concept of class based on intrinsic values and in which the class hierarchy is unfixed. The poem also includes instances that undermine that sympathy and demonstrate recognition of a traditional concept of class in which the class hierarchy is fixed.

In demonstrating this ambivalence, I want to address uncertainty over the poet's views and to refute a common misperception that the poet changed his approach to class from progressive to conservative over time. Also, demonstrating the reasons behind the ambivalence challenges misinterpretations of the poet, which portray him as only altruistically championing an internal concept of class and the underclass and as suffering from a psychological disorder. In addition, demonstrating the poet's ambivalence about class is aimed at increasing scholarly recognition of the work's cultural context.

Wordsworth

by Pramod K. Nayar