Theme of William Wordsworth as a Prophet in Tintern Abbey Essay

Poet as Prophet When I spoke last, I end with the image of Wordsworth as a monk or priest-like figure zealously converting Dorothy and, by extension, the reader into a position within his vision of the world. that even more than priest, Wordsworth often depicts the romanticistic poet as prophet. This depiction is demonstrate more clearly in The Prospectus to the Recluse than in Tintern Abbey. In the 1814 version of the Prospectus he writes Paradise, and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields -- like those of senile Sought in the Atlantic Main -- why should they be A history only of departed things, Or a mere legend of what never was? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the jet day. (47-55) Similar to his vision in Tintern where perceptions are both half created by the imagination and h alf perceived by the senses, here Wordsworth declares that for those who recognize its power, the valet de chambre mind, or imagination, can meld with nature, can heal the split between nature and mankind, the sublime and the beautiful, to re-create an edenic heaven on Earth. Wordsworth then goes on to assert -- I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in unfrequented peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation -- and by words Which declaim of nothing more than what we are, Would arouse the sensual from their sleep Of Death, and win the slothful and the vain To noble raptures (56 - 62) Wordsworth, as the romantic poet-prophet, has a preview of ... ...e romantic era ends with the sublimated subject removed from any experience distant that reflected by the romantic centre -- an ironically alienating end to a movement that began in an attempt to unite with the universe. Bibliography Abrams, M.H, Gen eral Ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. quaternate ed. Vol. 2. New York Norton and Company, 1979. Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and other essays. Translated from the French by Ben Brewster. London New Left Books, 1971. 121-173. Wordsworth, William. Lines Composed a fewer Miles Above Tintern Abbey. Abrams, Gen. Ed. 155-158. ---. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Abrams, Gen. Ed. 160-175. ---. Prospectus to The Recluse. Abrams, Gen. Ed. 227-230. ---. The Prelude, or Growth of a Poets Mind. Abrams, Gen. Ed. 257-313.