The main contention of this chronological study covering Wordsworth's poetical career is that solitude as a condition remains a viable source of nourishment for the soul throughout the poetry. Solitude as a defined condition undergoes alterations in character as the poetry develops but is never abandoned and is always regarded by Wordsworth as a benevolent state in its final outcome. / After Wordworth's initial character of solitude, an isolation in nature which enables the narrator of such early poems as An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches to exercise conventional sensibility toward rural nature and its inhabitants, the poet developed the dark and fearsome solitude of Adventures on Salisbury Plain and The Borderers, a condition of the soul through which crimes are exposed and eventually expiated, a painful punishment but eventually benevolent, leading to a cleansing of the spirit. However, Wordsworth of the 1798 lyrical ballads vacillates in his attitude toward solitude, finally arriving at the profound character of solitude seen in such poems as "Tintern Abbey" and the 1798-99 Prelude, a solitude providing a spiritual medium through which individual man or child holds a mysterious communion with the eternal spirit of the universe. / Wordsworth's middle and later years produced poetry redefining and modifying the character of solitude and the vision it proliferates. As the years progressed, solitude became the medium in the poetry through which endurance and humility is taught, Wordsworth defining the spirit communed with as that of God. This is the lesson taught through the solitary experience of The Excursion and later poems. Nature is reduced in emphasis as the communication between man and God is focused upon. Having arrived at the stage of spiritual definition, Wordsworth not unpredictably endorses and feels a kinship in his last poetry with monastic life, the ascetic existence that strives through solitary meditation for a communion with the presence of God, though several of his late poems show that Wordsworth had not recanted his earlier faith that the common man feels the eternal spirit through solitude in nature. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-11, Section: A, page: 4831. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74698 |
| Contributors | DELOTTO, JEFFREY DANIEL., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 256 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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