Based on Derrida's deconstruction and other methodologies, this six-chapter thesis aims at effecting a valid re-reading of self manifested in Wordsworth's The Prelude. What the stop here introductory chapter unfolds is the motivation to pursue this research, a summary of the related scholarship to date, an overview of the poem, and a description of the theoretical approaches. The second chapter is an attempt to identify the internal instability, fluidity, and ambivalence of self that inform The Prelude. Wordsworth's language is what the third chapter concerns. It seeks to work out a way into the following questions: Does Wordsworth know that self is a trick of language and ever-changing? If he does, how profound is his knowledge? Since it is self that Wordsworth does hope to privilege, what we tend to identify as the reconciliation of nature, imagination and that self can hardly be realized and is little more than an illusion. This is the subject to which the fourth chapter is devoted. Because of his inability to get rid of the sense of confinement and insecurity even in the face of what he may call the renovating virtues, a scene that repeats more frequently in The Prelude is Wordsworth's continuous struggle against them. To do Wordsworth justice, however, to argue that he is not the only one whose subject is unstable, a history of self and its inevitable relation to other is provided in the fifth chapter. I suggest here also that if the position of self is precarious, that of autobiography, a genre that purports to articulate subjectivity, cannot be more secure. In conclusion, we have a review of the maintained dialogue between Wordsworth and Derrida. For the sake of de/construction, the thesis ends with an attempt and a hope to put everything back to what it is.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0722105-151405 |
| Date | 22 July 2005 |
| Creators | Chen, Kuo-shih |
| Contributors | Chiun-Hsiung Lai, Yu-san Yu, Patricia Haseltine, Hsiao-yu Sun, Rudolphus Teeuwen |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0722105-151405 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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