The Mind in Creation: Essays on English Romantic Literature in Honour of Ross G. Woodman The Mind in Creation: Essays on English Romantic Literature in Honour of Ross G. Woodman celebrates the career of one of Canada's finest teachers and critics, whose more than forty-one years in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario have profoundly influenced scores of undergraduate and graduate students. From his important early study The Apocalyptic Vision in the Poetry of Shelley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1964) through dozens of scholarly essays and papers (in addition to his well-known work on James Reaney and Jack Chambers), Ross Woodman has illuminated the English Romantics in ways that engage both the poetic and the critical imagination in the process of what Shelley calls "the mind in creation." The seven contributors, all of them professors of literature at Canadian universities, from Dalhousie to Simon Eraser, offer a representative view of the diversity of Romantic studies in Canada today. Both senior scholars and younger critics, some of them colleagues and former students of Professor Woodman's, bring different critical perspectives, including his- torical, textual, and deconstructive methodologies, to bear on a variety of Romantic authors: Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats. This collec- tion of essays, the first of its kind in Canada, both contributes to contem- porary Romantic scholarship and criticism - from Byron's use of history to Blake's theory of illustration - and makes that contribution from within a uniquely Canadian context. A retrospective essay by Ross Woodman himself surveys the past and future of Romantic studies in the twentieth century. This volume is to honour a man whose lifelong commitment to teaching literature and whose prolific criticism have indeed been acts of the mind in creation - inspirational, exemplary, and lasting. j. DOUGLAS KNEALE is an associate professor in the Department of English, University of Western Ontario. Ross G. Woodman Courtesy of Dr Martin L. Robinson The Mind in Creation Essays on English Romantic Literature in Honour of Ross G. Woodman EDITED BY J. DOUGLAS KNEALE © McGill-Queen's University Press 1992 ISBN 0-7735-0898-8 Legal deposit second quarter 1992 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Mind in creation ISBN 0-7735-0898-8 1. English literature - 18th century - History and criticism. 2. English literature - 19th century - History and criticism. 3. Romanticism - England. I. Kneale, John Douglas, 1955- . II. Woodman, Ross Greig PR457.M461992 820.9'145 C92-090096-8 Typeset in 10/12 Palatino by Nancy Poirier Typesetting Ltd., Ottawa. Contents List of Illustrations/ix Acknowledgments/xi Introduction/3 J. DOUGLAS KNEALE 1 Byron and the Battle of Waterloo/6 MILTON WILSON 2 Such Structures as the Mind Builds/27 W.J.B. OWEN 3 Matthew Arnold's Wordsworth: The Tinker Tinkered/44 JARED CURTIS 4 Women and Words in Keats (with an Instance from La Belle Dame sans Merci)/58 RONALD TETREAULT 5 En-Gendering the System: The Book of Thel and Visions of the Daughters of Albion /74 TILOTTAMA RAJAN 6 Romantic Aversions: Apostrophe Reconsidered/91 ]. DOUGLAS KNEALE 7 How to Do Things with Shakespeare: Illustrative Theory and Practice in Blake's Pity l\ 06 DAVID L. CLARK vi Contents Afterword: Prometheus Bound: The Case for Jupiter/134 ROSS G. WOODMAN Notes/145 Selected Bibliography of Ross G. Woodman/175 Contributors /181 List of Illustrations Frontispiece Photograph of Ross G. Woodman (Courtesy of Dr Martin L. Robinson) 1 Pity, by William Blake. Colour print with pen and watercolour. c. 1795. Tate Gallery, London / 107 2 A Sunshine Holiday, illustration for Milton's L'Allegro, by William Blake. Pen and watercolour. c. 1816-20. The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (1949.4:4) /111 3 As if an Angel Dropped Down from the Clouds, by William Blake. Pen and watercolour. 1809. The British Museum, London / 113 4 "Yet see how all around them wait / The vultures of the Mind," illustration for Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, by William Blake. Pen and watercolour over pencil, c. 1797-98. From the Collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia / 124 For the Students Acknowledgments There are many people I wish to thank for their help in preparing this volume. First, I express my appreciation to those colleagues who assisted in different ways with the "Romanticism in Canada" conference held in October 1988 to mark Professor Woodman's official retirement from the University of Western Ontario: the other members of the organizing com- mittee, Professors David Bentley, James Good, and Richard Shroyer; the moderators, Professors James Good, D.H. Hensley, Richard Shroyer, and Thomas Tausky; the Office of University Relations; the Chair of the Department of English, Dr J. Alan B. Somerset; the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dr Thomas M. Lennon; and the Vice-President (Academic) and Provost of the University of Western Ontario, Dr Thomas J. Collins. I also thank Professors John Graham, Balachandra Rajan, and James Reaney for their part in the after-dinner ceremonies at the conference banquet. For their financial support of the conference I am grateful to the Department of English and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Western Ontario, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Publication of this volume has been made possible by the generous funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Western Ontario (Thomas M. Lennon, Dean), and the Good Foundation Inc. To all I express my great appreciation for their generosity and timely support, without which this project would not have been realized. My thanks also go to Philip J. Cercone, Executive Director of McGill-Queen's University Press (who today still remembers the influence of Ross Woodman's Romanticism), for his helpful advice.