Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-63). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis.

Proefschrift--Amsterdam. / Bibliography: p. 170-174.

Thesis--University of Illinois. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Influential later eighteenth-century critics and philosophers (Stewart, Knight, Alison, Jeffrey, Godwin) argued that poetry's moral and practical benefits derive from "analytical" modes of reading rather than from the poet's instructive intentions. Frequently exploiting the philosophical "language of necessity," Wordsworth's essays and prefaces (1798-1815) protested that poetry directly improves the reader's moral code and ethical conduct. This dissertation discusses Wordsworth's criticism in the context of analytical principles of interpretation current in the 1790s, providing terms for exploring the theme of reading in early mss. of Peter Bell and The Ruined Cottage (1798-1799), the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, and later poems such as "A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags," "Resolution and Independence," "Elegiac Stanzas," and The Prelude (Book V). / These poems anticipate Wordsworth's presentation of reading as the "art of admiration" in the "Essay, Supplementary" to the 1815 Poems, and indicate a sustained search for alternatives and correctives to detached investigative approaches to the aesthetic experience. Attempting to reconcile the extremes of the credulous or fanciful response, reflecting a childlike desire to be free from all constraints, and the analytical response, fuelled by perceptions of contrast between poetic illusion and reality, Wordsworth's criticism and poetry depict the reader as the"auxiliar" of poetic genius. The purpose, traditionally undermined by critics as peremptory and egotistical, was to challenge readers to examine their basic motives in seeking poetic pleasure.

This thesis examines the role of imagination in "The Prelude," within the context of recent criticism. In accordance with the impact of new historicism on contemporary Wordsworth studies, considerable attention is given to new historicist readings. It is argued that new history's methodological approach generally undervalues the complex texture of subjectivity in "The Prelude." New historical critiques tend to interpret the Wordsworthian imagination merely as a narrative strategy that enables the poet to displace or elide socio-historical realities. However, "The Prelude" does not entirely support such a reading. On the basis of Wordsworth's autobiography and related prose works, it is asserted that the poet's consciousness of creative decline and mortality potently informs his sense of imagination, and eventuates in a mode of self-perception that precludes subjective autonomy and socio-historical displacement.