Wordsworth, topography, history, form

Question 1

When did Wordsworth first publish his ‘Guide to the Lakes’?

Answer 1

1810

Question 2

When was the last version of the ‘Guide to the Lakes’ published?

Answer 2

1835

Question 3

When was ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ published?

Answer 3

1798, in the ‘Lyrical Ballads’

Question 4

When were the ‘River Duddon’ sonnets published?

Answer 4

1820

Question 5

When did Wordsworth visit the Alps?

Answer 5

1790 and 1820

Question 6

What does Wordsworth say his aim is in the ‘Guide’?

Answer 6

‘to reconcile a Briton to the scenery of his own country’

Question 7

What does Wordsworth ask the reader of the ‘Guide’ to do in his description?

Answer 7

‘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’

Question 8

What does Wordsworth say about the arrangement of his guide?

Answer 8

He gives ‘directions how to approach the several scenes in their best or most convenient order’

Question 9

What does Wordsworth hope to reveal in his description in the ‘Guide’?

Answer 9

‘The delineation … will … communicate to the traveller, who has already seen the objects, new information’

Question 10

What does the river Derwent do for Wordsworth in book 1 of the Prelude (1805)?

Answer 10

it ‘composed my thoughts’

Question 11

What line in ‘Tintern Abbey’ links sensation with creation?

Answer 11

‘the mighty world / Of eyes and ear, both what they half-create / And what perceive’

Question 12

What lines in ‘Tintern Abbey’ shows the organising power of the poet’s mind with regard to landscape?

Answer 12

‘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’

Question 13

How does Wordsworth describe the sonnet in a letter to Alexander Dyce (1833)?

Answer 13

‘an orbicular body’

Question 14

What does Heffernan say about Wordsworth’s conception of landscape?

Answer 14

‘Wordsworth trained himself to read natural phenomena with a ‘picturesque eye’, to compose landscapes in words’

Question 15

How does Wordsworth reference ‘Salisbury Plain’ in book 12 of the Prelude?

Answer 15

‘imperfect verse’

Question 16

What does Wordsworth say of the river in the first Duddon sonnet?

Answer 16

‘I seek the birth-place of a native stream’

Question 17

What does Wordsworth say of perspective and order in the first Duddon sonnet?

Answer 17

‘Better to breathe upon this aery height / Than pass in needless sleep from dream to dream’

Question 18

What does Wordsworth say in the last Duddon sonnet, linking poetic form with geographical form?

Answer 18

‘Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide; / The form remains, the Function never dies’

Question 19

What metaphor in a sonnet from 1807 links water with nationalism?

Answer 19

‘that flood / Of British freedom’

Question 20

What does Wordsworth say in the preface to his 1815 edition of poems, where he alters the order of sonnets?

Answer 20

He changed the order ‘to assist the attentive reader in perceiving [the poems’] connection with each another’

Question 21

What does Anne Janowitz say about the picturesque aesthetic and nationalism in Wordsworth, in her book about ruins in the landscape?

Answer 21

‘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.’

Question 22

What did Wordsworth seek to do, in the preface to the Excursion?

Answer 22

to produce a ‘meditated arrangement of my minor Poems, which should assist the attentive Reader in perceiving their connection with each other’

Question 23

What line in the last Duddon sonnet inverts motion?

Answer 23

‘For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes / I see what was, and is, and will abide’

Question 24

What does Daniel Robinson say about sonnets as a form?

Answer 24

‘the sonnet is always about its relation to other sonnets’

Question 25

What does Daniel Robinson say about Wordsworth’s handling of the sonnet?

Answer 25

He uses it as a ‘portable’ form while travelling. It becomes indelibly linked with travel, therefore.

Question 26

What was the 1820 Guide published with?

Answer 26

‘Sonnets from the River Duddon’