Ww Science of Mind

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A Science of mind

in Wordsworths The Prelude

Pauline Ling-Hwai Wu

National Taiwan Normal University

ABSTRACT

Wordsworths The Prelude is a masterpiece of Romantic confession as a

conversion autobiography. It not only exposes the authentic I of the

autobiographer, but also speaks out the affinity between the self and the external

world. The author makes good use of a philosophical eye/one eye to explore and

penetrate the universal truth of things in existence, including nature and human

history, which are endowed with the profound mystery of mutability as well as

permanence. Such a touchstone-like truth, interestingly found, stems from the things

past in the casket of Wordsworths memory in recollection. Under the operation of

his imagination, the spots of time in the past eventually appear to be the instrument

for the Romantic poet/prophet/philosopher/natural being to preach for the revolution

of the human mind. This study is grounded on the imaginative or recollected

moments of the poets experience so as to examine how a poets mind makes its

progress on a true path for the infinite. Emphasis is placed on the explication of the

transformations of the mind in nature and society. In terms of the eighteenth-and

nineteenth-century philosophy, the study also aims to demonstrate the telos of theimagination: One focuses on the objectivity a poet should possess; another, the

renovated virtue of the mind which lies in the observation of itself with a

transcendental way of perceiving.

Keywords: spots of time, centrifugal consciousness, nature, human Nature, and

imagination


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As a philosophical confession whose autobiographer must self-evidently

perform a scientific experiment on two human natures, that is, body and soul as the

theme of self in terms of mechanism, The Prelude deals with the poets various

memorable spots of time as some patterns of humanity. In them the poet examines

and justified his self in time, and is eventually awakened to transcend the self.

Therefore, the spots of time function to endow some prophetic truths, as well as to

help with the growth of the poets mind. From this perspective of confessional

autobiography, the spots of time are the centrifugal force of consciousness the

poets soul produces, the very soul/cogito which collects images-of-thoughts in

continuity or discontinuity in similitude (The Two-Part Prelude 1799. II.

164)/simulacrum which deals with form is Resemblance of idea with a poets

natural power to feel outward things /So moulded, joined, abstracted, so endowed /

With interchangeable supremacy (XVI. 83-90) revealed in The Prelude. Those

centrifugal conscious memories the poets soul recollects can be divided into six

categories, such as human figures, events, objects, scenes, dreams, and four elements,

as the impressive memories in the poets mind. As The Prelude basically has three

versions (1799, 1805, and 1850), only 1799 version is the foundation of the spots of

time; however, other spots of time in 1805 and 1850 are added and revised in his

latter years. Besides, the main part ofThe Prelude only refers to the spots of time

about the positive and negative states of the poets mind city and in nature as a

pendulum structure, that is, to reveal emotionalism aroused by the outer objectswithout: each time and space represents his walking on each point of earth on the

circumference of the earth itself by radii. Here, the author would like to argue that

the circumferential movement of a natural body as the poets involves within and

without in motion is indispensible for the development of the poets cognitive mind

with a virtue in relation to nature, human nature, and imagination.

A. External Nature:

It is known that Wordsworth has often focused on the interaction between the

external nature and the human mind. In The Prelude, the spots of time suggesting

the communion between man and nature can be divided into two periods --- the period

of the child Wordsworth and that of the experienced. Wordsworth. They are all

mystic experiences about nature (Ferry 32). The former period refers to the spots

of time mentioned in Book I and II. In this period, the visionary gleam goes with

each incident.

Even then I feel

Gleams like the flashing of a shield; --- the earth

And common face of Nature spake to me

Rememberable things . (I. 585-88)


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Here an emphasis is placed on the influence of nature on human senses. The

relevant spots of time include Pacing the Level Field, The Lake of Comos,

Landing at Calais, The Circuit of the Lake, The Walk after a Party, etc.

However, the visionary gleam, which refers to a moment in life when the

self and the universe perfectly unify, gradually declines to be exchanged for a vision

on the recognition and acceptance of reality. The spots of time with such a mature

vision refer to Crossing the Alps at Simplon Pass, Return to Lifes Familiar Face,

Discovery of his Poetic Subject, Sight of a New World, A Vision on Mt.

Snowdon, etc.

All these spots of time result from Wordsworths deepest insight which

comes from memorable experiences connected with the external world. Nature and

Wordsworths self seem to form an intimate relationship between an addresser and a

receiver, or the object and the subject. Then what impact does nature have on

Wordsworth?

In Garrods words, Wordsworth starts, from the position not on that

Nature is good, but that it is from the natural goodness of the senses, operating simply

and directly (Havens 99). The senses as the media between the addresser and the

receiver deliver the unspeakable information of nature which nourishes Wordsworth

as a fostered child of beauty and fear.

Besides, in all spots of time about the communion between man and

nature, nature is related with a religious sense as Wordsworth finds Faith in themarvelous things --- / Oft in these moments such a holy calm / Would overspread my

soul, that bodily eyes / Were utterly forgotten (II. 346-49). It seems that nature as a

mirror of self makes Wordsworth see his own nature --- a man of sympathies (II.

175), morality, justice and even divinity. Nature, therefore, incarnates the House of

God (III. 407) where An auxiliary light / Came from my mind (III. 368-69) to

commune with external things. Such spots of time include, Pacing the Level

Fields, The Circuit of the Lake, The Walk After a Party, and Reading Books by

the Boarders of Derwent River.

Moreover, Geometric rules (II. 204) used to observe the orderly system

of the tars offer Wordsworth a way to explore the unknown permanent relations

between natural objects and man, and make him perceive the unity of all (II. 221),

including the cyclical circulation of the four seasons, and the four elements which

repeatedly generate objects of the universe, growing things, inferior animals, minerals,

man, etc. As Wordsworth confesses, nature is for him with its permanent traits of

order and infinite and incapable of change (VII. 222). The spots of time with

such a sense of eternity include Pacing the Level Field, The Convent of Chartreuse

as a spot of earth devoted to eternity (VI. 408-88), etc. Therefore, the scientific


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way to look into nature seems to show that all, including human figures, events,

objects, etc., are prefigurative as Gods word (IV. 222). For Wordsworth, hence,

nature is life, and change, and beauty, solitude / More active even than best society,

one of society made sweet as solitude by inward concords (II. 294-96). Nature is

for him to gain the egotistical sublime (Kant, Judgement, 98). So, such a way to

explore nature also reflects his own personality, just as he says, he must live /

Knowing that he grows wiser every day / or else not live at all (V. 324-25). He

proves to be a man of wisdom in nature.

Nature intends Wordsworth for poet (Wordsworth, The Prelude, 598)

because things that teach as / Nature teaches (V. 231). He inherits one part of its

ministry, beauty, and decides to minister to works of high attempt (III. 389-390)

since his very early life. On the other hand, another part of natures ministry is fear

or awe which may also serve as a stimulus for the poets imagination. In fact, fear as

a dark shadow always obsesses him in life. For example, he fears drift in the

world unknown (V. 239), while he is doomed to loiter mentally due to the loss of his

parents. Once facing problems of the self in time, he gets used to shrinking back to

nature as his temporary spiritual home without end. Henceforth, the ministry of

nature affects the physically homeless child positively as well as negatively.

As far as the above five traits are concerned, nature is a symbol of eternity

or immortality, beauty, truth, hope and faith though it still has a negative influence on

Wordsworth. Therefore, for the mortal being, nature seems to play a crucial role as ashelter for escape from the self in time and space. Regarding this motif, two points

have to be clarified. Firstly, Wordsworth escapes from the self in time and space

only to seek for some transient repose in nature. We may show that Wordsworths

sense of time lies in his awareness of his changing state of mind. Immanuel Kant

supposes that time and space are the two pure forms of sense inherent in our faculty

which enable us to have temporal and spatial experiences; time is the inner sense

and space, the outer sense (Kant, Reason, 68). For Kant, space, as the pure form

of all outer intuition, is so far limited; it serves as an a priori condition only of outer

appearances. But since all representations, whether they have for their objects

outer images or not, belong, in themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our inner

state; and since this inner state stands under the formal condition of inner intuition,

and so belongs to time, time is an a priori condition of all appearances whatever (Kant,

Reason, 77). Therefore, we might figure out that the spots of time in childhood

are a gaining of transcendental vision; the spots of time with a mature vision are at

once a gaining and a losing of time; gaining the secular socially-structured sense of

time but losing the transcendental one.

Secondly, nature is eternity or immortality that lies at both ends of life, and


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the sequence of life is circulous without end: eternity mortality eternity.

However, mans mortality is truly moments in the being / Of the eternal silence

(Ode: Intimations of Immortality, 155-56).1 Therefore, the temporal self in time

and space continuously seeks for eternity since the loss of the vision is the loss of the

feeling of immortality, and thus also an entering into an awareness of death. That is

why he has no fear when he encounters death in such incidents as The Drowned Man

and There Was a Boy. Such incidents all end in mysterious deaths and can be read

as epitaphs, which unquestionably signify continuity: Death is a way of conquering

time and not yielding to time. Nevertheless, it is interesting to find that the device of

arranging the scenes of death in the beautiful landscape serves to eternalize the

time-space-limited idea of death. Nature, henceforth, is endowed with immortality

and death. Nature is no longer an ordinary entity, but what Wordsworth half

perceives and half creates with imagination.

B. Human nature

As the theme of Book VIII is love of nature leading to love of man,

human nature is therein well expounded. In books I and II, it is nature that reflects

Wordsworths nature as sympathetic, just and moral and his personality as fond of

inquiring into the truth of nature. He seems to perfectly understand the eternal

essence of nature and therefore can elevate his mind above the lowest class of the

Chain of Being.

2

The spots of time with a vision on human nature are bestexemplified by The Shepherd in the Mist, from which Wordsworth recognizes the

moral goodness of humanity in nature, and by An Adventure to a Huge Cave where

Wordsworth envisions good and evil hearts (III. 670) in society.

The subject matter of the two incidents deals with different human beings in

nature or society, that is, human life. The Shepherd in the Mist is associated with

his real identity: a man / With the most common; husband, father; learned, / Could

teach, admonish; suffered with the rest / From vice and folly wretchedness and fear

(VIII. 288-91). An Adventure to a Huge Cave, provides Wordsworth with more

elevated view of human nature: Neither vice or guilt (VIII. 645) and Nor all the

misery forced upon my sight (VIII. 647) but the ignorance of human beings. He

also imagines himself to be a solitary with the mind of Adam (VIII. 659) in the Lost

Paradise and has to suffer from and undergo the sad life with everything divine, if

only for the Paradise Regained. Besides, he envisions the huge city where the unity

of man shares One spirit over ignorance and vice / Predominant, in good and evil

hearts (VIII. 669-79). Interesting is it here that he distinguishes himself from others

in society as if the self is the subject and the other are the objects or the mass.

Nevertheless, no matter what nature Wordsworth digs out, the two spots of time


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about human nature are respectively expressive of the general humanity of suffering.

For Wordsworth, the two incidents happening in Grasmere, the chosen vale,

seem to become the standard of human nature when he practices it in the real world,

where he finds some truths about human life. The events of massacres taking place

during the French Revolution, e.g., The September Massacres, reveal the truth of

recurrent history. Concerning this, Wordsworth makes a figurative comparison in

Book X:

The horse is taught his manage, and no star

Of wildest course but treads back his own steps;

For the spent hurricane the air provides

As fierce a successor; the tide retreats

But to return out of its hiding-place

In the great deep: all things have second birth. (X. 76-83)

This passage explicates the developments of human history related to time. J.

Robert Barth evaluates The Prelude from two contrary attitudes toward time: One is a

traditional way of seeing time as a line consisting of an infinite number of points, a

temporal view which constantly produces in one a negative feeling as it often reveals

the emptiness of life. The other attitude, a more positive one, regards time as a sense

of being as one lives through life from one phase to the next (139-50). Time is made

meaningful in this view of life, and it provides on with the opportunity of having an

insight into life. Barth distinguishes between cyclic time and linear time andconcludes that the lattter can be further divided into personal or internal time and

historical time. For Wordsworth, the historical moment to know the events of

massacres, e.g., The September Massacres, refers to not only his personal time but

also the cyclical time. He retrospects the transformation of the French history from

1788 to 1794: Thousands of years of imperialism The Republican Establishment

(1788-1792) The Great Terror (1792-1794). The progress of human history

seems to develop from the dictatorship through democracy and back to dictatorship.

Thus, history proves to be cyclical. Besides, in terms of his personal time,

Wordsworth, sleepless at a night in a hotel, realizes that human sufferings, e.g, The

September Massacres, result from the uncertain change of history. He ascribes the

errors of history to the rulers, such as Louis XVI, Roberpierre, and William Pitt, who

implemented wrong politics against human longing for equity and reason (X. 206).

They are The Shepherds in Societies but Societys unreasoning herd (X. 168)

who, with A domineering instinct, serves at once /Fro way and guide that is mind,

whose it ought to be, in self-restraint, / In circumspection and simplicity, Falls /

Below its aim, or meets with, form without, A treachery (X. 168-178). The

revelation leads Wordsworth to cry out with the human will of revolution (X. 272)


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--- Man has a natural right to defy against the old institutionism, i.e., the civil policy

should be made by man, and tyrannicide is allowed, if necessary.

Wordsworth further attempts to justify the ways of nature (God) to man by

revealing the first cause of human sufferings. Dreams of Imprisonment and Long

Orations is concluded interestingly with Wordsworths traditional thinking of human

original sin as a terrific reservoir of guilt / And ignorance filled up form age to age, /

that could no longer hold its loathsome charge, / But Burst and spread in deluge

through the land (X. 477-80).

However, the cause of human sufferings is not convincing until Wordsworth

anatomizes the frame of social life, as in it he finds the fact that human nature is not

guilty and ignorant but Misguided and Misguiding (XI. 293) by those social beings

in cities.

And the errors into which I fell, betrayed

By present objects, and by reasoning false

From their beginnings, inasmuch as drawn

Out of a heart that had been turned aside

From Natures way by outward accidents,

And which was thus confounded more and more,

Misguided and misguiding. So I feared,

Dragging all percepts, judgments, maxims, and creeds,

Like culprits to the bar . (XI. 287-95)In this passage, we are likely to inter that human sufferings, as we previously

mentioned, spring from the historical experiments of wrong politics the rulers have

adopted, while those rulers are also misguided by some false reasonings, e.g.,

Godwinism, thus misleading their people to suffer more than they deserve. It seems

to conform to the Hegelian theory of history that consciousness of the rulers

determines life (Selden 136). The point may be exemplified in the events about

the political expansionism and the foreign invasions, e.g., The Declaration of War of

France against Holland and England in 1793 or The ancien regime Failed in 1793

with foreign interventions of Prussia and Austria.

Wordsworths distinguish the human heart of the vulgar men (VIII. 545) in

social and in nature: the vulgar as the inferior creatures are characteristic of different

vulgar forms/bodies (XIII. 356) with vulgar eyes as the bodily eyes (X. 444).

The vulgar humans in city have vulgar nature (XIII. 189), both good and evil

hearts (VIII. 670) due to different vulgar passions (VIII. 320) or desire and

ensuing actions of doing evils or being misguided and misled as he says that in a huge

city a unity of man, / One spirit over ignorance and vice / Predominant, in good an

devil hearts; (VIII. 668-70), just as they have different oppressive idea or ignorance


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to be oppressed so that they are lost of their primary nature of universal heart (XIII.

220), living with the deformities of crowded life (VIII. 332), and suffering from a

historical process of collective consciousness, the revolutionary wars taking place

between nations, whose societys unreasoning herd makes the loud distractions of the

world; the city in the same perpetual whirl of trivial objects is reduced to one identity,

by difference and oppression (VII. 725-77): difference makes the world turbulent.

Wordsworths anatomy of the whole body/frame of social life unfolds the absolute

quality of those people in city as sin-and-cosin triangles or a rectangle:

spieces/specimens of man (VII. 221) on earth as the expression of the

mathematical equation of transmuting ratio of the vulgar in city. They are

transitory things (VII. 771) as images-of-thought in motion in similitude and in

continuity and discontinuity present to the poets mind. However, he explicates the

vulgar in nature in the positive goodness of human nature though they still suffer from

their different relative effect of their absolute cause according to objective reality

(Meditation III, 169). As in the chosen Grasmere Vale as the domes of pleasure

(VIII. 84-85), the paradise / Where I was reared; in Natures primitive gifts/

Delicious, seeing that the sun and the sky, / The elements, and seasons as they change

/ Do find a worthy fellow-labourer there --- / Man free, man working for himself, with

choice / Of time, and place, and object; by his wants, / His comforts, native

occupations, cares, / Cheerfully led to individual ends (VIII. 98-108). In the Vale,

the vulgar with less desire live carefree with blisses; therefore, they never lose theirprimary nature of simplicity / And beauty, and inevitable grace (VIII. 110) in the

poets train / unwooed, unthought mind (VIII. 109-110). Those plaintive human

figures include The Old Dame, The Old Man, the solitary figures, the shepherds,

women and children --- all conform to nature in every way and live with content to

work by day and rest at night though they live in meanness and humbleness, and

sometimes may suffer from the unexpected deluge of nature. The establishment of

the Wordsworthian utopia seems to show a-historical sense, a transcendental overturn

of the relation between the subject and the object in society by his distinction of the

vulgar in city and nature in The Prelude.

C. The ImaginationAs far as we have known, the spots of time in nature and society reveal

the truth of nature and human nature. Therefore, we may say that nature and society

serve as the media through which Wordsworth gradually becomes aware of the

metamorphasis within himself in time. Nevertheless, through the imagination that

unifies associations of the spots of time in nature and society, Wordsworth gains his


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poetic power. Who are the spots of time related to the imagination as a theme he

confesses in The Prelude? What is the imagination? Here we want to adopt Kants

idea of time to explore the progress of the imagination in Wordsworths mind.

The 18th-century philosophers, like Hume, share the idea that time is relevant to

an outer object in the external world. The sense of time is still empirical and must be

rooted in sense-perception experience according to the associative connection of

stimulus by an object, motions of the brain, the muscles, ideas, and actions. The

mind itself has associative ideas like time in contiguity, succession, and so forth.

However, Kant against Humes passive mind assumes the automatic mind which

consists of time and space as a priori condition: time, involving a sense of space, is

analyzed as something inherent in our faculties. In Kants philosophy, time is not

even a concept: Time is not a discursive, or what is called a general concept, but a

pure form of sensible intuition (Kant, Reason, 75). For Kant, time is no longer an

object of our knowledge as English Empiricists assume, but a subjective prerequisite

of knowledge; and time is not only independent of external things but independent of

experiences as well. That is, it does not form empirical sources as his predecessors

assume, but is required in evoking a temporal experience. According to Kants

concept of time as a pure form of intuition, we may explicate the fact that our sense of

time is actually not a sense of time but a personal time. Namely, dependent on ones

personal needs and individual sensibility, the imaginative mind as the subject play an

active role to view the object, including human figures, events, objects, etc., fromwhich the subject gains a spiritual relation. That is, as Wordsworth says, The mind

is lord and master (XII. 222). Nevertheless, the concept of the mind-oriental

provides a context in which to interpret the supremacy of the Wordsworthian mind or

imagination. Then, what is the process of the growth of a poets mind? I argue

here that the poets mind grows from passivity since his childhood to automatics after

IX in The Prelude.

In Book II of The Prelude, Wordsworth says, the soul [imagination] ---/

Remembering how she felt, but what she felt / Remembering not --- retains an

obscure sense / of possible sublimity (II. 334-37). From the past tense of felt and

the present tense of retains, we may feel that, through time and space, the sense

sublimity implies love, for Wordsworth says, To fear and love, / To love as prime

and chief, for there fear ends --- By love subsists / All lasting grandeur, by pervading

love (XI. 162-69). Here we may sense that the imagination purposes to reach the

telos of egotistical sublime by confessing all excited negative emotions, like fear,

languish, etc., in those spots of time since childhood from I to IX in The Prelude

where he undergoes experiences in society and in nature and experiences arouse the

subjects different states of mind with different emotions expressed in the spots of


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time as the outer world. Similar to Kants idea of the sublimity, Wordsworths is

the reflective judgement on the object, not the object itself (Kant, Judgement, 97),

through a particular representation of the soul [imagination]. As Descartes in Rules

has already suggested that to think/confess not language but a space of time or

image in motion is to erase itself for perceptions or thoughts, because the

image-of-thought in motion is the hindrance to the innate light primary per se. In

this respect, Wordsworths concept of sublimity results from the automatic mind as it

is expounded in his essay The Sublime and the Beautiful: Power awakens the

sublime when it rouses us to a sympathetic energy & calls upon the mind to grasp

at something towards which it can make approaches but which it is incapable of

attaining (Wordsworth, Prose Works, 354).

Wordsworth in The Prelude points out the automatic mind which originates in

two natures (XIV. 346) as a duality: one is body and another, soul. In Book III,

he says, Nor was I Master of my eyes (III. 11) when looking at a student, clothed

in Gown and tasseled Cap, / Striding along (III. 8-9). Later in Book XII, the two

natures logically develop into the idea that The mind is lord and master --- outward

sense / The Obedient Servant of her will (XII. 222-23). In other works, the relation

of the automatic mind to two natures takes on the process from discordance to

concordance or from passiveness to activeness.

Therefore, the spots of time in nature and society offer the mind a media for

their interchangeable reconciliation to reach the telos of egotistical sublime by settingWordsworth free from a negative sense of fear. To be digression here, what

characteristics the imaginative spots of time can display in The Prelude? Let s

to go further to dig into them respectively.

The spots of time in childhood are what Kant calls subreption ---

substitution of a respect for the Object in place of one for the idea of humanity in our

own self the Subject (Kant, Judgement, 106).

In the childhood experiences of Books I and II, Wordsworth is fostered by

beauty and fear in nature in that he credits genii loci or spirits of nature as the agent of

the childhood incidents, e.g;, Stealing a Boat, Playing by Derwent River a

Playmate, etc.

In The Penrich Beacon and One Christmas Day incidents of Book XII, the

visionary dreariness or the dreary time, seen in the light of the principle of

association and the transfer of emotions, is derivative of the child Wordsworths

anxiety, feverishness, tiredness or restlessness. The poets mind in childhood is

passive because the associative ideas and emotions are derivative of the excitement of

outer objects to sense-perceptions. Descartes calls this stage passivity when the

subject only has a common sense (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 37).


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Hume assumes that the associative ideas of the subject must be ensuing after seeing

the object so that idea cannot be prior to objects. The crux of the transformation of

these feelings into the visionary dreariness or the dreary time lies in the

imagination in the childs blank misgivings and high instinct (Ode: Intimations

of Immortality, 9.141-46). In the two childhood incidents, Wordsworth seems to

emphasize that the sight or the outward eye is in truth an ordinary one. Nevertheless,

through the working of the imagination from the child, the landscape is expressive of

the childs feelings.

From these childhood events, we may feel that in living a world of life,3 the

subject is destined to be bounded by the outward eye, the outward, potentially

listening to (Hartman 182) the sounds and senses of the external nature ---

subservient strictly to external things / With which is communed (II. 368-69). The

mind of the poet, thus, appears passive to observe the affinities / in objects (II.

385-86). That is, the genii loci or the landscape arouses the poetic imagination.

The child Wordsworth externalizes the internal act of imagination with only a

passionate belief in the influence of genii loci or nature as the agent of the childhood

spots of time.

Therefore, in the first two books, the spots of time are expressive of four

elements of the imagination. At first, the imagination results from Rememberable

thing (Il.588). In recollection, all their forms / And changeful colours by invisible

links / Were fatened to the affection (I. 611-12).Secondly, the imagination results from meditation when A tranquilizing spirit

may press to make Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself / And of same other

Being II, 31-32) conversant with one another.

Thirdly, the imagination, the one great Mind (II. 257), is combined with

imparted power through the growing faculties of sense (II. 256), as the Poetic

spirit of our human life looms up (II. 262).

At last, the imagination results from nature. To unorganic Natures were

transferred / My own enjoyments; or the Power of truth, / Coming in revelation (II.

392-93). That is, the imagination is ever accompanied with the principle of

[intellectual] joy / And purest passion of the soul (II. 451 -520) so as to observe the

affinities / in objects (II. 385-86).

In Book I, the ministry of nature, through beauty and fear, nourishes

Wordsworths nature and his extreme personality as well. This seems to loom up as

a trace that he, since childhood, has had an unknown complex of both positive beauty

and negative fear in the unconscious abyss. In My Heart Leaps Wordsworth

elucidates a theme: The child is father of the Man (Adams 160). If the landscape

or nature which helps delineate the growth of the min, is gradually internalized and


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turned into a sublime image of the imagination, yet society, which might help with the

growth of mind, is also gradually internalized and turned into a fearful image of the

imagination. These two forces of beauty and fear may always oscillate in

Wordsworths mind when he starts to get in touch with society. Edmund Burke, in

analyzing the feeling of the sublime, writes, Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite

the idea of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is

conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror (fear), is

a source of the sublime (39). For Wordsworth the quality of the external, including

human figures, events, objects, or scenes, eventually gives rise to his feeling of the

sublime, while the eternal which may arouse negativism will be gradually clarified by

the automation of his willing mind to procure a sense of sublimity. From Book III to

Book XI, it is clear that the mind is still passive though the truth of life is gained

gradually as a recompense to the poet. This is so partly because the mind of the

subject involves itself so much in the external everywhere in London and France that

it is able to imagine intensely and comprehensively, and partly because the external

spots of time, good or evil, bright or dark, are all gradually internalized to form

imbalance of a fearful sense over a sublime sense in the subjects mind. It can be

proved that before Book VIII, the spots of time in fear only take place eight times,

but most spots of time in France are full of fear to Wordsworth, e.g., The

September Massacres, etc. What these indicate is that with a sense of fear over joy,

the inspired spirit begins to decline due to those spots of time in cities as ahindrance which involves the negative emotions of the soul --- the imaginative gentle

breeze (joy and delight) in the opening book ofThe Prelude is intensified to become

a storm (indignation and fear) in France (Jonathan Wordsworth, The Prelude, 644).

It is very interesting to find that the epic-like poem begins as a search for poetic

identity by bringing together nature, society, memory and the imagination.

Nevertheless, as soon as each spots of time is confessed in it, the inspiration of the

poet is already on decline. The Prelude appears that it is merely a feeble shadow of

the original concept of the poet (Adams 527).

Wordsworth has probably intended to solve the problem concerning the remote

relation between the poet himself and his confessional poem. In the end of Book XI,

a short intimate confession of Wordsworth to Coleridge (XI. 395-460) --- talking

about the ancient poets in Sicily and Etnas summit which survive for inspiration

(XI. 462) --- seems to function as a dues ex machine to save Wordsworth from being

trapped in the loss of his past. Anyway, from Book III to Book XI, the crucial spots

of time are expressive of some characteristics of the imagination.

For Wordsworth, the imagination derives from a sympathetic mind of the poet

while Shellys concept of sympathetic imagination is usually based on morality.


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In Pacing the Level Field, Wordsworth gives a moral life to the in-animated stone

(III. 30). Most critics, like Raymond Dexter Havens, might describe the poets

attitude toward natural bodies or things as a device of animism/personification (68)

of the imagination to represent the poets equal mind towards the external. He is

sympathetic with the Military Soldier as the poor friendless man, saying in pity,

Come with me (V. 426). The similar spots of time include: The Blind Beggar,

Some Unhappy Woman, The Hunger-Bitten Crept Girl, A Father Eyes a Sickly

Babe in His Arms with love unutterable, etc.

The imagination is related to the external objects which display different traits.

The poets mind in creation is compared to an inconstant wind as in Pacing the Level

Field Wordsworth says, I was obedient as a lute / That waits upon the touches of the

win (III. 141-42).

Besides, some spots of time show that the imagination is something divine.

They include The Circuit of the Lake, the Walk after a Party, The Dream of the

Arab, The Convent of Chartreuse, The Lake of Comos, etc. Especially, in The

Dream of the Arab, the shell, which articulate sounds / A loud prophetic blast of

harmony (V. 95-96), seems to suggest that the imagination is the fountain of all

thoughts and knowledge.

In There Was a Boy, the imagination is described in a figurative term as the

steady lake which is associated with memory. That is, once a poet starts to recollect

the past, some ripples are evoked in the bosom of the steady lake.The Walks with his Terror has the idea that the imagination may spring from

an intimate animal with stormy joy (IV. 416).

These spots of time are likely to suggest that the external objects exist in the

mind the poet, which is itself the image of all other minds. In arousing the

Visionary Power a poet is able to perpetuate them in a metaphorical way of writing

Embodied in the mystery of words (V. 599).

Moreover, the imagination may also have nothing to do with great nature, The

Drowned Man in a beautiful landscape does not evoke Wordsworths emotion in that

he is preoccupied with the Greco-Roman classics at the first spot. In addition, the

imagination is like a mirror which makes something distorted and then beautiful.

Such spots of time as The Shepherd in the Mist and Adventure to a Huge Cave

mirror the good and the evil of human nature. This seems to show that the

immediate fancy, arising from the real shepherd n a distance and the art on the cave,

turns out to be imaginative infinity.

Apart from the above-mentioned four traits, the imagination may result from an

unexpected immediacy which may be found at that transient moment. In Crossing

the Alps at Simplon Pass, the poet is ambitious to climb the Alps and feels lost on the


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emergence of the imagination. When crying out, I recognize thy glory (VI. 600),

Wordsworth realizes that the reality failed to live up to Wordsworths anticipation.4

On the other hand, in A vision on Mt. Snowdon, he at once feels that the moonlight

is like a flash (XIV. 38) of the imagination.

Book XII and Book XIII deal with how the imagination is impaired and

restored. The most vital factor of it lies in the measure of recollection which helps

the mind of the subject review the spots of time respectively as expressive images.

In recollection, his mind seems to go back to the first spots, good and evil, bright or

dark, positive or negative, but form them he finds the roof of its sick confusion. As

Descartes says in The Passions of the Soul where he inquiries into the root of desire

from the desiring machine of the body once unified to the soul, he assumes that due to

animal spirits strongest to be forced to enter the soul, desire not only comes from

sense-perceptions on the outer objects, but also from the impressions of the

perceptions within because of the mind intoxicate / With present object (XIII. 30)

and latter their images wanderings deeply or impressions within from the soul or the

quantity of spirits: the one has the soul as a cause and the other the body; those which

have the soul as a cause are the perceptions of our desires, and of all the imaginations

or other thoughts which depend on them (340), since the imagination of children as

a tabula rasa on which our ideas, which resemble portraits of each object taken from

nature, should depict themselves and all imperfect senses, blind instinct are the

first to mingle themselves with our intelligence (The Search after Truth, 311-12).Desire comes from the quantity of spirits toward the brain, the soul, and the body to

fortify the idea of the wish, that is, through the organs of the senses and all the

muscles to be employed in obtaining that which one desires (The Passions of the

Soul, 378) since any memory of things past remaining and imprint on a childs brain

in a mothers womb to the end of his life (391). Therefore, the outer and the inner

perceptions must arouse different emotions or passions, in referring to desire, which

involve the actions to be good or evil: as the cause of the good or evil, present as

well as past; the good which has been done give an internal satisfaction which is the

sweetest of all the passions; while the evil excite repentance, which is the most bitter

(The Passions of the Soul, 360). However, Descartes also assumes that pains

might be suffered with joy or pleasurable sensations received to cause displeasure.

Positive and negative passions are not so distinctive but due to any arousal of the idea

in immediacy. Like Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Book XII and Book XIII

emphasize the fact that the subject is elevated to be a transcendental being Nor Man

nor Boy (George, 209. 158) because truths that wake, / To perish never; (George,

208. 155-56). In this respect, we find that recollection is a way of psychological

treatment. General patients need narcosis for a treatment of mental obsessions


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(Wolman 71). The main basis of the treatment aims to search for the cause of the

patients sick history. Recollection offers a similar way to recover the fearful mind

of the subject. But the case is different here in that the poet himself is his patent and

his own doctor as well. He first cures himself by means of the confessional

composition of his spots of time in the poem. Nevertheless, through recollection,

he finds back his soul: a storm is appeased to go back to ye breezes and soft airs

(XII. 10) so as to envision his future with hope.

Actually, nature as a positive power can overturn the negative power in the

society. The relation between the former and the latter seems to take on a mental

stormy war between the extreme passion ad the extreme reason in the mind of the

poet. However, it is at the moment of mental crisis that the subjects original nature

(sympathy, wisdom and even divinity) is reborn to arbitrate and harmonize the mental

battle. As in Return to a Familiar Face, the imagination of the subject levels down

the Chain of Being: Present objects --- a temperate shew / Of objects that endure

(XIII. 31-32) and In Man, in the frame of social life --- desirable and good / Of

kindred permanence, unchanged in form / And function, or through strict vicissitude /

Of life and death revolving (XIII. 35-39). Therefore, in the illuminative spot of

time the horizon of this mind enlarges because his intellectual love overflows to gain

an insight into the equalitarianism between external objects and man as an object of

delight, / Of imagination, and love (XIII. 49-50). This may imply that as he

acquires self-understanding and self-confidence, fear in mind no longer exists. Hismind starts to become its own master, as Descartes assumes that the infinitude of

innate ideas of natural things only from the mind by nature because those ideas of

nature which accords with my nature (Meditation V, 179). At Sight of a New

World, the mind the subject no longer drifts but abides by the fixed laws (XIII. 371)

of nature to interact with the outward eye.

By those fixed laws

Whence spiritual dignity originates,

Which do both give it being and maintain

A balance, an ennobling interchange

Of action from within, and from without;

The excellence, pure function, and best power

Both of the object seen, and eye that sees. (XIII. 371-77).

Therefore, in A Vision of Mt. Snowdon, Wordsworth speaks of the

imagination which can not be divided with the intellectual love (XIV. 207) as the

higher mind (XIV. 90) which emphasizes the importance of the synthesis between

the he extreme passions and extreme reason. As Descartes says in The Passions of

the Soul, the soul has two parts: one is the inferior, the sensuous [the irrational];


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another, the superior which is rational (The Passions of the Souls, 353), between

the natural appetites and the will of the soul itself. He also indicates the origin of

desire coming from spirits, The passion of desire is an agitation of the soul caused by

the spirits which dispose it to wish for the future the things which it represents to itself

as agreeable (The Passions of the Soul, 369). Only in a composed and moderate

state to synthesize both can the mind be a master to dominate the outward eyes

(sense-perceptions) and to operate faculties of the subject because sense-perceptions

of the outer objects must arouse the fancy of the imagination which the body with

nerves must excite. Thus, the mind finds out its spiritual home, that is, a sublime,

composed and poetic mind, but it does not depend on nature for its external home.

What is the spiritual home?

One thing needs to be clarified here. Wordsworth believes that there is a

certain healing power lying in nature and the imagination. Crossing the Alps at

Simplon Pass and A Vision on Mt. Snowdon show that the telos of the imagination:

The poet involves himself in nature, the eternal, the infinite, and even identifies

himself with the one life. The two spots of nature display the progress of the mind.

The former event only shows that the mind is still dominated by the outward eyed;

therefore, it is merely has a quasi-apocalyptic vision of the exterior (Harman 242).

However, the latter event takes place after Wordsworths being a very down of life so

that it further gives a full vision of man, nature and human life. In The Prospectus

to The Recluse, Wordsworth remain Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, love and Hope,/ And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith (767-68). It is implied here that there

exists some relations among them. For Wordsworth, impressive natural scenes

conceal some truths about man and human life: human nature is based on goodness as

the Shepherd in the Mist and human life in society is good or evil as An Adventure

to a Huge Cave. Thomas Mcfarland points out: Wordsworths On Man

corresponds to Coleridges idea of having first to mediate the faculties of Man in the

abstract --- On Human Life corresponds to Coleridges understanding that You

would take the Human Race in the concrete --- And the middle term of Wordsworths

progression, On Nature, is rendered by Coleridges plan for Reconciliation from

this Enmity with Nature (McFarland 609). Actually, this critique might lose an

angle to know what and how the aesthetic experience is formed and penetrated

through the pure/ spiritual mind, including archetype, rectangle triangle, or other

absolute truth of natural things.

Henceforth, Wordsworth seems to expound that once returning to nature, man

becomes a primitive native or The transitory Being with genuine insight (The

Prospectus to The Recluse, 95). In nature, one may have a Heart in genuine

freedom: --- all pure thoughts --- so shall they unfailing love / Guide, and support, and


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cheer me to the end (The Prospectus to The Recluse, 105-08). Therefore, nature

is a healing power for the man of mind. So in I Wander Lonely as a Cloud, a

vision of the beautiful daffodils immediately bestows the perceivers inward eye with

a sense of joy and beauty. Such a benevolent power from nature seems to prove

Keats maxim, Beauty is truth, truth beauty (Ode to the Nightingale, V. 49). 5 In

Tintern Abbey Wordsworth says that in nature he can hear the still, sad music of

humanity; in the mind of man: / A motion of a spirit, that impels /All thinking

things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls through all things (Tinern Abbey,

92-103). In this regard, nature or the landscape is internalized through the

imagination which then externalizes the perfect image of a might mind (XIII. 69) as

suggested in the Prelude: In Natures presence stood, as I stand now, / A sensitive,

and a creative soul (XI. 255-56). In The Prelude, Wordsworth creates a heroic

argument --- the autonomy of the imaginative mind. For him the triumph of the

mind is at the same time an affirmation of his poetic identity.

It is interesting that in The Prelude, Wordsworth attempts to escape himself in

time from the world of Poor human vanity (V. 329), but he sees the transformation

of his mind in the face of it. He does not, thus, succeed in is escape but succeeds in

communing with all in love. It is likely to show a dialectical view of the growth of

Wordsworthian mental history: positivism (nature) negativism (society)

imaginative synthesis of both to go beyond; passive mind active mind; gain of

inspiration (in nature)

loss of inspiration (in society)

gain of a transcendentalinspiration (in nature). The negativism in society is therefore indispensable for the

chosen son to search the truths of the fallen earth and the truth of inner state

(Lindenberger 142). The philosophical development of the poets mind results, as

Keith G. Thomas assumes, from an oscillating tension between that hard-won

transcendentalism and a reemergent, reenergized, atavistic empiricism (15).

So far, in The Prelude, it is seen that a progress of the poets thought is achieved

from sensing, imagining, thinking, perceiving, understanding, cognitive intuition,

without intuition the innate light appear as a virtue is repaired (XII. 215). However,

imagination is just an aid of a process of thoughts. Imagination comes from

passivity in the poets childhood due to the stimulus of the outer objects present to

the poets mind: the imagination is produced due to illusion of my heart (George,

Elegiac Stanzas, 189. 29). His adultlescent age to be framed by body in those

spots of time in city, his loss of imagination is that of the gleam of light endowed

by nature since the poets birth in relation to the theory of gravity. The lost as dark

folds of the soul, after confession, become most active (XIII. 259) to read the

invisible soul (XIII.. 256) for the impaired virtue as the nourishment of a good taste

of the poets body and a good sense of his mind, as heart and mind / Renighted: but,


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the dawn beginning now / To re-appear and the mind intoxicate / With present

objects, and the busy dance / Of things that pass away (XIII. 17-31). The

imagination is accompanied with spiritual Love (XVI. 188-89) and the light of

right reason (XVI. 92-93) With an absolute power and clear insight, the higher

mind is a spiritual mind to have a pure understanding of the platonic ideas of forms,

as the emblem of a mind / That feeds upon infinity that broods/ Over the dark

abyss, intent to hear / Its voices issuing froth to silent light / In one continuous stream;

a mindsustained/ In [good] sense conducting to ideas form, / In soul of more than

mortal [body] privilege (XIII. 70-77). It is image-deleting/confessing makes the

poets virtue renovated and the condition of renovated health in his physics (XVI.

26-28) through the whole spots of time revealed in The Prelude.

Moreover, we also verified the progress of the poets mind coming from the

spots of time functioning as a circumferential movement of the Romantic poet as a

natural being on earth by a radii; simultaneously as a renovating virtue (XII. 210) of

his mind: a virtue is without fear by deleting all emotional or desiring spots of time

in motion within due to without as absolute presence of reality (VII. 234). Such a

virtue is a natural power of just, courageous, moderate as Descartes defines (The

Principle of Philosophy, 217) in this chapter. Nevertheless, the spots of time in

confessional recollection reveals a subjective time of the poet through the operation

of his imagination in terms of Kants aesthetic theory because all spots of time

involve the poets different emotions, positive or negative, distinction, distraction,errors of false reasoning until the last two chapters (XIII and XIV) he starts to explain

the higher/automatic mind from the passive one. Even from natural spots of time

the mind of the poet is renovated with a virtue so that the higher mind can be

endowed with the intellectual beauty without fear and can have the understanding

faculty of the epistemology of natural things, like the external heaven as the other

Being of consciousness (1805. The Prelude XVI. 119). However, in the end ofThe

Prelude he is still in the worldly states of mind even he chooses to live a moderated,

thus composed/disinterested (XIII. 48) state of mind an objet of delight / Of pure

imagination, and of love (XIII. 49-50) without fear and emotions as desire though he

has already confessed all errors he has made as self-anniallation he has made since

childhood (frame of the mind, including body and soul or heart as I-image, social

life, external things, the schemes for revolutionary wars, as images-of-thought); under

the circumstance it means that the cosmopolitan poet walking on the earth is just at a

fixed point of circumference as a moderate point in relation to the theory of gravity

according to the principle of mechanism; the moderate point is the only fixing point to

the central point as 1/absolute motion rather than 2/relative motion, in referring to the

circumferential movement of the poet walking on the surface of the earth; that is, he


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has become a saint or a natural being with a virtue of brevity (without fear) in face of

human destiny of transference which attracted to the good or the evil path as The

end of life (VIII. 529) he might go to. It means that his virtue is not completely

recovered still in the end ofThe Prelude, as in the Snowdon where he confesses he

is still A meditative, oft a suffering man (XVI. 143) though the poets spiritual mind

can deal with the compass of the universe (XVI. 92) and penetrate the innate ideas

of things, In one continuous streams; a mind sustained / By recognitions of

transcendent power, / In sense conducting to ideal form, / In soul of more than mortal

privilege (XVI. 14. 74-77) in the awful and sublime circumstances. In Snowdon

where the poets nature, the sea of mist by analogous to the power of the human

imagination, has transformed the Snowdon landscape, the revolutionary poet is still a

subject who falls in and feels his own suffering state of mind, which is emotions as

desire does not really enter the central point of absolute motion/1, the point beyond

duality (good and evil, right and wrong, positive and negative) because dualism is

produced by the poets spiritual mind due to the arousal of imagination as fancy; his

lost in fancy on images-of-thought might be correspondence with different regions of

the material world, the earth, the infernal or any state of mind the poet is in and

presents without truly transcendence of his spiritual mind.

Love object and beauteous form of architecture are also images-of-thought as a

hindrance to the poets mind. A love object as a sexual-image might arouse

illusions of heart and feelings in the spots of time about Lucy Gray, like in ITravelled Among Unknown Men where he reveals his love more and more to her as

joy of desire; / And she I cherished turned her wheel (George, 34. 10-11). In Three

Years She Grew in Sun and Shower where he confesses that he wishes to live with

her While she and I together live / Here in his happy dell (George, 36. 35-36),

however, She died, and left to me / This hearth, this calm and quiet scene; / The

memory of what has be, / And never more will be (George, 36. 39-42). The love

object, Lucy Gray, as a sexual image of thought, is deleted so that the poets spirit

within commences to be in motion. The absolute motion is 1 rather 2/relative, as in

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal as the innate space/spot of time out of the mind,

the poet confesses the absolute motion within, the spirit No motion has she now, no

force; / She neither hears nor sees; / Rolled round in earths diurnal course, / With

rocks and stones and trees (George, 36. 5-8). The illusion of the poets heart also

comes from the beauteous form of the rugged and hoary Pile as a castle which

aroused a trembled passion of the poet without passing away; however, after the soul

of truth penetrates its every part with steadfast peace and he has submitted to a

new control in Elegiac Stanzas (George, 188-89). The image of Pile as a picture

he makes produces a power which now is gone, which nothing can restore and


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deleted so that he is not hindered by the any outer object/image of thought with its

form to arouse any emotions as desire, he becomes a Character of the Happy Warrior

where he affirms the quality of virtue as best / Does seldom on a right foundation

rest, / He labors good on good to fix (George, 195. 31-34). From the illustrative

above, it is deduced that the circumferential movement of the poet on the surface of

the earth involves the relative motion with-out contaminates the poets mind as an

absolute motion within due to A balance, an ennobling interchange / Of action from

without and from within; The excellence, pure function, and best power / Both the

object seen, and eye that sees (XIII. 75-78). Actually, Wordsworth does not wheel

about the clock or nature as he reveals in the beginning ofThe Prelude until he is able

to confess/delete all images-of-thought so that his renovated/evolutionary/progressive

cognitive mind with a virtue is a divine quality of a peaceful, pure, and more

beautiful than the earth (XIIII. 451) so that such a spiritual mind of the poet is able

to wheel all as The village clock tolled six; I wheeled about /Proud and exulting, like

an untried horse / That cares not for its home (Two-Part Prelude 1799, I. 154-55)

because of those spots of time as spots in the poets life presence, time limited,

make his humanity a dark (XVI. 73) mist (The Prelude 462) as a hindrance to his

innate light as a primary and existing per se: the emblem of the mind / That feeds

upon infinity that broods / Over the dark abyss, intent to hear / Its voices issuing forth

to silent light (XVI. 71-74).


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Notes1. In this thesis, references to My Heart Leaps Up, The Prospectus to the Recluse,

and Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood are

from Jack Shillinger, William Wordsworth: Selected Poems and Prefaces (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), pp.160 and 186-90.)2. Raymond Dexter Havens offers a clue that Wordsworth did theorize about nature

until he met Coleridge at twenty three. See his The Mind of The Poet, p.107.3. Havens, p. 234. The word is cited form W.R.ingos Studies of Englsih Mystics,

1967, p.174.4. See William Wordsworths The Prelude: 1790, 1805, 1850, p.656. The idea is

from Herbert Lindenberger, On Wordsworths Prelude (Princeton: Princeton UP,

1963) chapter III, pp. 69-98).

5. See John Keats Ode to the Nightingale in Bennett a. Cerf, John Keats and Percy

Bysshe Shelley: Complete Poetical Works (New York: Random House, 1820), pp.

185-86)


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Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1986.

Adams, Hazard. Critical Theory Since Plato. Rev. Ed. Irvine: California UP,

1992.

Barth, J. Robert. The Temporal Imagination in Wordsworths Prelude: Time and

the Timeless. Thought66 (1991): 139-50.

Bennett a Cerf, John Keats and Percy Byssche Shelley. Complete Poetical Works.

New York: Random House, 1820.

Descartes. Descartes, Rene. Rules for the Direction of the Mind. The

Philosophical Works: Descartes. Vol. 1. Ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R.

T. Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1968. 1-78.

-----. Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducing the Reason. Vol. 1. The

Philosophical Works: Descartes. Ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T.

Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge Up, 1968. 79-130.

-----. Meditations on First Philosophy. Vol. 1. The Philosophical Works:

Descartes. Ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1968. 131-200.

-----. The Principles of Philosophy. Vol. 1. The Philosophical Works:

Descartes. Ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1968. 203-302.-----. The Passion of the Soul. Vol. 1. The Philosophical Works: Descartes.

Ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,

1968. 329-428.

-----. The Search after Truth. Vol. 1. The Philosophical Works: Descartes.

Ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,

1968. 303-28.

Ferry, David. The Limits of Mortality: An Essay on Wordsworths Major Poems.

Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978.

George, A. J. Selections from Wordsworth. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co.; 1889.

Harman, Geoffrey H. Wordsworths Poetry: 1787-1814. New Haven and London:

Yale UP, 1977.

Havens, Raymond Dexter. The Mind of a Poet: A Study of Wordsworths Thought.

Baltimore: John Hoking Press, 1979

Shillinger, Jack. William Wordsworth: Selected Poems and Preface. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965.

Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgement. trans. James Creed Meredith.

Oxford: Clarendon, 1952.


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-----, ed. Critique of Pure Reason. trans. Norman Kempt Smith. London:

Macmillan, 1929.

Lindenberger, Her bert. On Wordsworths Prelude. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1963.

McFarland, Thomas. Wordsworth on Man, on Nature, and on Human Life.

Studies in Romanticism 21 (1982): 609.

-----, ed. William Wordsworth: Intensity and Achievement. Oxford: Clarendon,

1992.

-----, ed. Romanticism and the Heritage of Rousseau. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.

Selden, Raman. Practicing Theory and Reading Literature: An Introduction. New

York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.

Thomas, Keith G. Wordsworth and Philosophy: Empiricism and Transcendentalism

in The Poetry. London: UMI, 1989.

Wolman, Banjamin B, comp. and ed. Dictionary of Behavioral Science. 2nd Ed.

New York: Academic Press, 1989.

Wordsworth, Jonathan. William Wordsworth: Borders of Vision. Oxford:

Clarenden, 1982.

-----, et. al., eds. Waiting for the Palfreys: The Great Prelude Debate. The

Wordsworth Circle 17(1986): 19.

Wordsworth, William. The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Ed. Jonathan Wordsworth,

M. H. Abrams and Stephen Gill. London: Norton, 1979.

-----. Prose Works. 3 Vols. Ed. W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser.Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.


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About the Author

Miss Pauline Ling-Hwai Wu was once a lecturer at Tatung Senior High School and at

the branch of Taiwan Normal University, and is now a graduate student in the Ph. D

program in the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University. Her

research interests are confessional autobiography, Romanticism, the philosophy of

science (Rationalism, English Empiricism, and so forth), globalization, cultural

studies, and specific education. Her works include Wordsworths Plaintive and

Gratulant Voice: A Study of the Prelude as Confessional Literature (1997), The

Development of Quasi-Conversation Poetry (2000), Mind As a Pendulum: Poetic

Mind and Human Mind(October 2000), andBakhtins Existence as Dialogue and

Wordsworths Confession (2002).

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