Who is wordsworth addressing in the prelude

A comparison of it with the and final version shows the vast change the work underwent. Some passages in the earlier version do not appear at all in the later; others are altered almost beyond recognition.

The draft contains the clearest statement of Wordsworth's philosophy and is fresher and more vigorously written. The toned-down work as published in represents the shift of his thought toward conservatism and orthodoxy during the intervening years.

The student is likely to find the version much more accessible for the purpose of reading the whole poem. Yet on the whole, critics tend to prefer the version when citing actual lines from the poem. The only action in the entire poem is an action of ideas.

Similarly, it would be inaccurate to speak of the poem has having a plot in any standard sense. Its "story" is easily summarized. The poem falls rather naturally into three consecutive sections: Books offer a half-literal, half-fanciful description of his boyhood and youthful environment; Book 8 is a kind of reprise.

He addresses what he terms the spirit of the universe. He decries the artifacts of civilization and praises enduring things — life and nature. In a more literal section, he tells of his youthful pastimes and mentions winter ice games with a group of companions and games of cards and tick-tack-toe in front of the peat fire. But above all, he tried to be outdoors at all times of the year so that nature could be unstinting in its education of him.

He is particularly troubled when he remembers that certain vistas in Westmoreland — particularly the sea — brought him great pleasure, though he had no prior experience of the same kind of joy. Since beauty is eternal, he may have learned to love such sights during a previous existence of his soul. He then proceeds to develop a romantic theory of aesthetics. He maintains that certain individuals create great art because, in the midst of mundane events, they sense the magical urgency in everyday objects.

Insignificant things take on a critical meaning over and above their common and instrumental role. They suggest to the practitioner of the fine arts, the clergyman, and the idealistic philosopher that the universe is of vast and harmonious design.

The layman, on the other hand, is insensible to this oneness of all things, and the idea must be communicated to him. With the elision of the historical spatial distance between the poets, distance re-emerges not only temporally within the self but also between Wordsworth and others. In the valediction at the end of Part II, for instance, Wordsworth firmly closes any geographical distance between him and Coleridge only to open up and explore the emotional distance between men in general.

The implication is that their dialogue in a shared poetic language will sustain their intimacy across distances and be its own place. Will he receive them as affecting blank verses or, perhaps with a broader audience, in affective blankness? Although Dorothy will play this redemptive role again in the Prelude , the comparison shows Wordsworth, since Germany, writing temporal difference as unbridged spatial distance, figuring the passage of time as a stretch of silence between persons and aspects of the self.

Although no complete manuscript of this state of the poem exists, Wordsworth references a five-book project in several letters of this period, and periodic calculations of his progress suggest its best representation is in MSS WW and W, notebooks that contain drafting toward and fair copy of Books III-V.

As the editors of the Norton Prelude note p. WL With the addition of exclamation points to existing and new addresses to Coleridge, and the inclusion of the new device of quoted self-address, MS M develops a complex vocal texture. These textual acoustic chambers, moreover, have self-referential and dialogical tendencies, resonating in their reflections on poetic inspiration, composition, subject, and theme.

Turning outwards, the new address to Coleridge at the end of Book I displays the strengthening of poetic voice and also serves as a vehicle for meta-poetic comment—its figure of thematic organization bearing traces of the meta-postal addresses exchanged in Germany:.

In the books of The Prelude that Wordsworth went on to write, Wordsworth distanced Coleridge geographically as well as temporally. Coleridge was restored to the Wordsworths in , and although not renovated in health, he was prepared to receive the poem elaborated during his absence. Wordsworth: Lines composed, for the greater part on the Night, on which he finished the recitation of his Poem in thirteen Books concerning the growth and history of his own Mind.

O Teacher! This is hearing not with the ear but through it: a sensual rendering of the rhythmical and spiritual dynamics of intimate address. This form of communion, predicated on the simultaneity of expression and reception, happens in place, in time, and in community.

In this fantasy of intimate communion, the poets form two points at the center of love. With this pointed image of prayer in the epode , or stand, Coleridge marks his redemption and his presence in place.

Themes Motifs Symbols. Literary Devices Themes. The Power of the Human Mind Wordsworth praised the power of the human mind. Next section Motifs. Take a Study Break.