Wordsworth, topography, history, form Flashcards
When did Wordsworth first publish his ‘Guide to the Lakes’?
1810
When was the last version of the ‘Guide to the Lakes’ published?
1835
When was ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ published?
1798, in the ‘Lyrical Ballads’
When were the ‘River Duddon’ sonnets published?
1820
When did Wordsworth visit the Alps?
1790 and 1820
What does Wordsworth say his aim is in the ‘Guide’?
‘to reconcile a Briton to the scenery of his own country’
What does Wordsworth ask the reader of the ‘Guide’ to do in his description?
‘to place himself with me, in imagination, upon some given point’, from which ‘a number of vallies’ diverge ‘like spokes from the nave of a wheel’
What does Wordsworth say about the arrangement of his guide?
He gives ‘directions how to approach the several scenes in their best or most convenient order’
What does Wordsworth hope to reveal in his description in the ‘Guide’?
‘The delineation … will … communicate to the traveller, who has already seen the objects, new information’
What does the river Derwent do for Wordsworth in book 1 of the Prelude (1805)?
it ‘composed my thoughts’
What line in ‘Tintern Abbey’ links sensation with creation?
‘the mighty world / Of eyes and ear, both what they half-create / And what perceive’
What lines in ‘Tintern Abbey’ shows the organising power of the poet’s mind with regard to landscape?
‘Once again / Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, / Which on a wild secluded scene impress / Thoughts of more deep seclusion; / And connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky’
How does Wordsworth describe the sonnet in a letter to Alexander Dyce (1833)?
‘an orbicular body’
What does Heffernan say about Wordsworth’s conception of landscape?
‘Wordsworth trained himself to read natural phenomena with a ‘picturesque eye’, to compose landscapes in words’
How does Wordsworth reference ‘Salisbury Plain’ in book 12 of the Prelude?
‘imperfect verse’
What does Wordsworth say of the river in the first Duddon sonnet?
‘I seek the birth-place of a native stream’
What does Wordsworth say of perspective and order in the first Duddon sonnet?
‘Better to breathe upon this aery height / Than pass in needless sleep from dream to dream’
What does Wordsworth say in the last Duddon sonnet, linking poetic form with geographical form?
‘Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide; / The form remains, the Function never dies’
What metaphor in a sonnet from 1807 links water with nationalism?
‘that flood / Of British freedom’
What does Wordsworth say in the preface to his 1815 edition of poems, where he alters the order of sonnets?
He changed the order ‘to assist the attentive reader in perceiving [the poems’] connection with each another’
What does Anne Janowitz say about the picturesque aesthetic and nationalism in Wordsworth, in her book about ruins in the landscape?
‘The naturalisation of the nation helped by way of the picturesque aesthetic is the matrix within which the matter of Wordsworth’s poem translates itself from subjectivity to nationalism.’
What did Wordsworth seek to do, in the preface to the Excursion?
to produce a ‘meditated arrangement of my minor Poems, which should assist the attentive Reader in perceiving their connection with each other’
What line in the last Duddon sonnet inverts motion?
‘For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes / I see what was, and is, and will abide’
What does Daniel Robinson say about sonnets as a form?
‘the sonnet is always about its relation to other sonnets’
What does Daniel Robinson say about Wordsworth’s handling of the sonnet?
He uses it as a ‘portable’ form while travelling. It becomes indelibly linked with travel, therefore.
What was the 1820 Guide published with?
‘Sonnets from the River Duddon’
