ROMANTICISM IN PERSPECTNE: TEXTS, CULTURES, HISTORIES General Editors: Marilyn Gaull, Professor of English, Temple University/New York University Stephen Prickett, Regius Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Glasgow This series aims to offer a fresh assessment of Romanticism by looking at it from a wide variety of perspectives. Both comparative and interdisciplinary, it will bring together cognate themes from architecture, art history, landscape gardening, linguistics, literature, philosophy, politics, science, social and political history and theology to deal with original, contentious or as yet unexplored aspects of Romanticism as a Europe-wide phenomenon. Titles include Richard Cronin (editor) 1798: THE YEAR OF THE LYRICAL BALLADS Peter Davidhazi THE ROMANTIC CULT OF SHAKESPEARE: Literary Reception in Anthropological Perspective David Jasper THE SACRED AND SECULAR CANON IN ROMANTICISM: Preserving the Sacred Truths Malcolm Kelsall JEFFERSON AND THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM: Folk, Land, Culture, and the Romantic Nation Andrew McCann CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE 1790s: Literature, Activism and the Public Sphere Ashton Nichols THE REVOLUTIONARY 'I': Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation Jeffrey C. Robinson RECEPTION AND POETICS IN KEATS: 'My Ended Poet' Anya Taylor BACCHUS IN ROMANTIC ENGLAND: Writers and Drink, 1780-1830 Michael Wiley ROMANTIC GEOGRAPHY: Wordsworth and Anglo-European Spaces Eric Wilson EMERSON'S SUBLIME SCIENCE The Revolutionary 'I' Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation Ashton Nichols Associate Professor Dickinson College Carlisle, Pennsylvania First published in Great Britain 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-40403-2 ISBN 978-0-230-37923-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230379237 First published in the United States of America 1998 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC .. Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-21165-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nichols, Ashton, 1953- The revolutionary "I" : Wordsworth and the politics of self -presentation 1 Ashton Nichols. p. cm. - (Romanticism in perspective) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-21165-3 I. Wordsworth, William, 1770-1 850-Political and social views. 2. Politics and literature-Great Britain-History-19th century. 3. Revolutionary poetry, English-History and criticism. 4. Political poetry, English-History and criticism. 5. Romanticism-England. 6. Self in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PR5892.P64N53 1997 82) '.7-dc2 I 97-40501 CIP © Ashton Nichols 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 978-0-333-71889-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 To Kimberley Anne Smith Nichols il miglior fabbro Contents Preface: The Prelude as Prologue ix Acknowledgments xvn Abbreviations xix 1 Silencing the (Other) Self: Wordsworth as 'Wordsworth!' in 'There was a boy' 1 2 The Politics of Self-Presentation: Wordsworth as Revolutionary Actor in a Literary Drama 29 3 Sounds into Speech: the Two-Part Prelude of 1799 as Dialogic Dramatic Monologue 56 4 Coleridge as Catalyst to Autobiography: the Wordsworthian Self as Therapeutic Gift, 1804-5 78 5 Dialogizing Dorothy: Voicing the Feminine as Spousal Sister in The Prelude 102 6 Colonizing Consciousness: Culture as Identity in Wordsworth's Prelude and Walcott's Another Life 132 Notes 151 Bibliography 176 Index 185 vii Preface The Prelude as Prologue Wordsworth's Prelude is a significant text for a number of reasons, not least because it bears the name of a person who has assumed a complex and often contradictory status in literary studies. William Wordsworth has long been viewed by many scholars, teachers, and readers as claimant of a place in a canonical firmament that includes only Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. At the same time, however, he is described by other commentators as a pretender to such a role: a pompous, overbearing composer of simplistic ballads and Miltonic blank verse who lacked a consistent voice or a coher ent philosophy. Recent criticism has sought to connect him with major cultural currents of the past two centuries while linking his work to the sources of modernism, postmodernism, and eco-criti cism; or to chastise him for his lack of political engagement while relegating him to the role of reactionary pseudo-revolutionary. The Prelude itself accounts for part of this uncertainty. It was composed in confusing drafts over a period of half a century, unpublished until after its author's death, and also related in complex ways to his major unfinished project: The Recluse. The text is currently available in four 'finished' forms (two-book, 13-book and 14-book versions) with a fourth' complete' five-book text exist ing as a shadowy, but complete (now published) palimpsest. Not one of these editions was ever seen through the press by its author. As a supposed standard for 'Romantic' autobiography, the text was only available to a wide range of readers by the middle of the Victorian era. More importantly, autobiography as a literary form was suspect in Wordsworth's day and still occupies an uncertain position in our own critical canon. It currently holds an increas ingly important status in literary study, but one that is complicated by recent theoretical critiques of the genre. This ambivalence arises partly out of our confused sense of the purpose of self-life writing. Is autobiography literature? Is it designed to explain the sources of personal 'greatness'? Is it intended to justify the action or in action of individuals who feel a need for such justification? Is it a reply to its author's critics? Is it merely a rhetorical'practice'? Is it ix