William Wordsworth

As I began to read "The Prelude," I found that I could finally better understand some of my favorite lines from Tintern Abbey: For I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / the still, sad music of humanity, / Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power / to chasten and subdue (89-93). I believe that Wordsworth is alluding to the affinity between man and Nature, implying that there is a unity between the two. I see this same idea in "The Prelude" (1799) where the poet speaks of "The gravitation and the filial bond / Of Nature that connect him with the world" (293-4). There is a bond between man and Nature that like the bond between mother and child makes the two separate and yet connected. I find it interesting that these works by the young Wordsworth were written by the same man who in later life wrote to the aging Wilberforce that the two men "labored in the same vineyard." I see this most clearly in the very ending of "The Prelude" (1850) where the poet says that "The power, which all / Acknowledge when thus moved, which Nature thus / To bodily sense exhibits, is the express / Resemblance of that glorious faculty / That higher minds bear with them as their own" (86-90). The mind through imagination perceives God moving through and beneath Nature. I think Wordsworth was right when he wrote Wilberforce!

Romantic Age Library Books

The two books that are already in the library that Dr. Hall mentioned in classon 9/15 were:

Barth, J. Robert. Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordworth, Coleridge and the Religious Imagination

Westbrook, Deeanne. Wordsworth's Biblical Ghosts

What do you all think of adding additional books we find to this post as comments that are posted to this one - no need to reply but why not use this as a central area to post books on Romanticism that we find in the library or that Dr. Hall knows are there!

Northanger Abbey

In the critical essays at the back of our edition of Northanger Abbey, Gilbert and Gubar, in "Shut Up in Prose," make this statement on page 292: "This is why Northanger Abbey is, finally, a gothic story as frightening as any told by Mrs. Radcliffe, for the evil it describes is the horror described by writers as dissimilar as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Phyllis Chesler, and Sylvia Plath, the terror and self-loathing that results when a woman is made to disregard her personal sense of danger, to accept as real what contradicts her perception of her own situation." This is definitely a feminist criticism, aimed at contrasting Catherine's desire to "author herself as a heroine" (Gilbert and Gubar 291) with the treatment she receives at the hands of men. Mr. Allen is distant and disapproving; James Morland blames his sister when she fails to fall in with his scheme to drive out with Isbella; John Thorpe speaks on behalf of Catherine both figuratively and literally when he makes her "apologies" to Miss Tilney; and even Henry Tilney mocks Catherine's sensibilities and ideas - some of which are indeed not particularly worthy - and only approves of her when she begins to think as he does about architecture and landscape. Catherine - and most women - seem to be treated as a willful child to be thwarted for her own good and to be rescued. I am curious as to the reactions other women in our class have, particularly concerning Henry Tilney. Is he merely flirting with Catherine by teasing her and mocking her gothic sensibilities, hoping to produce a "better Catherine" since he finally comes to understand her good character and judgement, or is he emblematic of a darker attitude toward women, even as we keep in mind the culture in which women lived during Austen's time? I would also be interested in any other aspects of the novel that you find noteworthy.