Susan Edwards Meisenhelder - Wordsworths informed reader: structures of experience in his poetry
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Wordsworth's Informed Reader : Structures of Experience in His Poetry
author
:
Meisenhelder, Susan Edwards.
publisher
:
Vanderbilt University Press
isbn10 | asin
:
print isbn13
:
9780826512185
ebook isbn13
:
9780585131351
language
:
English
subject
Wordsworth, William,--1770-1850--Criticism and interpretation, Authors and readers--England, Reader-response criticism.
publication date
:
1988
lcc
:
PR5892.R36M4 1988eb
ddc
:
821/.7
subject
:
Wordsworth, William,--1770-1850--Criticism and interpretation, Authors and readers--England, Reader-response criticism.
Page iii
Wordsworth's Informed Reader
Structures of Experience in His Poetry
by Susan Edwards Meisenhelder
Vanderbilt University Press Nashville, Tennessee
Page iv
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Peter Mileur, John Vickery, and Dimples Kellogg for their helpful comments on my work and Nancy Gonzalez for typing the manuscript. I am especially grateful to Robert Essick and Elizabeth Casey for the time and encouragement they have freely given me. I could not have finished this book without the support of other friends, especially Margaret Doane, John Ganim, Alice Wexler, and Norma Zimmer, who provided quiet work space and sympathetic hearts.
Copyright 1988 by Susan E. Meisenhelder Published in 1988 by Vanderbilt University Press Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meisenhelder, Susan E., 1951 Wordsworth's informed reader.
Bibliography: p. 1. Wordsworth, William, 17701850Criticism and interpretation. 2. Authors and read ersEngland. 3. Reader-response criticism. I. Title. PR5892.R36M41988821'.786-28169 ISBN 0-8265-1218-6
Page v
To Tom, Greg, Al, and Candace for room of my own
Page vii
Contents
Introduction
1
Chapter 1 "A Power Like One of Nature's": Poetic Form and the Shape of Response
8
Chapter 2 "A Gentle Shock of Mild Surprise": Awakening Response to Ordinary Objects
28
Chapter 3 "Visionary Dreariness": Perceiving Power in the Human Spirit
56
Chapter 4 "Illusions of the Mind as a Process": The Faculty Sections of the 1815 Edition
96
Chapter 5 "All Shades of Consciousness": The Arrangement of the 1815 Edition
160
Chapter 6 "Discriminating Sympathy": The Wanderer as Teacher
199
Conclusion
229
Appendix
237
Notes
245
Bibliography
259
Index
265
Page 1
Introduction
Emphasis on Wordsworth as a figure in his poetry has shaped much modern criticism of his work. The resulting tendency to use his verse in assembling his philosophical system or to relate it to his biography has obscured Wordsworth's own concern with poetry's effect on an audience. Despite some discussion of language as reenactment and poetic structures as recreations of experience, relatively little has been done to tie these issues to the reader's experience of Wordsworth's poetry.1 Most of the studies supporting a reader-based view of his work remain generalized arguments for the need of such a method with minimal attention to specific ways such an approach can be applied to the study of the poetry.2
I ground my use of this interpretive strategy not, as most reader-response critics do, on a theory about the nature of all texts but on the belief that because the tenets of this approach underlie Wordsworth's poetic theory, the method is a useful tool for reviewing authorial intention. His conception of aesthetics invites, and his biography supports, a study of the means by which he shapes his reader's response. Discussing the sublime and the beautiful, he places philosophy not in abstract conceptual schemes but in the meticulous study of the laws of response:
The true province of the philosopher is not to grope about in the external world and, when he has perceived or detected in an object such or such a quality or power, to set himself to the task of persuading the world that such is a sublime or beautiful object, but to look into his own mind and determine the law by which he is affected.3
For Wordsworth, this private investigation is a preparation for writing poetry, not an end in itself. By examining his own development, he discovers strategies for educating his audience. His desire to use his life, the experiences important to him and his mental progress, as a model for the benefit of his readers is his avowed purpose in writing the
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1988