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William Wordsworth |
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Autobiography and personal history have become dominant modes in contemporary writing, but when Wordsworth began The Prelude two hundred years ago, such detailed attention to oneself and one's own formative experiences was largely unheard of, especially in verse. In consequence, one direct avenue of access to Wordsworth is provided by a combination of the BIOGRAPHICAL approach and the PSYCHOLOGICAL.
Wordsworth's HISTORICAL significance has often been noted, not only through analysis of the impact of Lyrical Ballads upon the course of English poetry, but also in attempts to come to terms with him as a crucial poet of the Romantic period (as well as to determine just what components of that Protean term "Romantic" are most applicable to him). When combined with the SOCIOLOGICAL, the historical approach is also relevant to discussion of Wordsworth's evolving political and social opinions, as well as to the presentation of representative rural figures in his narrative and other poems.
Traditionally, of course, much FORMALIST scrutiny has been given to Wordsworth's major (and other) poems, with a view toward analysis of poetic strategies and structures and of articulation of theme. Recent times have also seen some interesting work in the mode of READER-RESPONSE criticism, with one entire book being devoted to an instance of student engagement of a single Wordsworth poem--Jeffrey C. Robinson's Radical Literary Education: A Classroom Experiment with Wordsworth's "Ode" (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
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