The Prelude: Revolution Flashcards
Quote at beginning of book 9 about a river:
“Turns, and will measure back his course, far back,
Seeking the very regions which he crossed
In his first outset”
Proof that W was a little bit rogue in France
he carried a British flag at a Jacobin demonstration
French revolution made human nature seem “born again.” The Anti-Jacobin lampooned him by presenting him as a Revolutionary
Two quotes that make the revolution seem lit AND naive
Crit: W’s is a classically English journey of response
“…’Twas in truth an hour
Of universal ferment…
The common soil of life, was at that time/
Too hot to tread…”
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven”
Everest
“The quintessential articulation of English response in its decisive retrospective form; headiness pervaded by the sobriety of subsequent disillusionment”
Show that retrospectively the ‘tide’ of revolution was not favourable
Crit about how water isn’t an image of a material change
“I saw the Revolutionary Power
Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms”
“clumsy desperation brought / Rivers of blood . . .”
water imagery
Hodgeson: In the prelude, revolution is “everywhere and nowhere”, no concrete left by water
Had revolutionary perspective: French court
French Court
“… voluptuous life
Unfeeling, where the man who is of soul
The meanest thrives the most…
A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off
From the natural inlets of just sentiment,
From lowly sympathy and chastening truth”
Passionate political discussion between W and ____ about the value of the common man
Rev= fail, but poetry made important
Beaupuy
Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men,
Self-sacrifice the firmest; generous love,
And continence of mind, and sense of right
Abrams: French revolution was a stage in the “evolution of the poet’s mind”
How he transferred his revolutionary views from social revolutionary failure into poetic revolution
Crit saying this is revolutionary:
embodies the “spirit of the passions of men”
“poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”
writes in the “real language of men”
KIRSCH:
his claims had revolutionary scope
“He demanded for the ordinary and the damaged not a grudging pity but the full sympathy that recognizes “that we have all of us one human heart.”
Seems basic to us, but his lyrical style introduced many of the parameters of modern poetry
