The Revolutionary 'I' : Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation

In The Winter Of 1798-99, Shut Up In The Freezing German Town Of Goslar, William Wordsworth Began Producing A Series Of Lyrical Fragments That Appeared First In Letters Written To Coleridge And Emerged Eventually As Source Texts For The Prelude . These Lyrics Are Revolutionary Because They Construct A New Version Of The Autobiographical 'i'. The Revolutionary 'i' Explores The Numerous Voices Of The Poetic Speaker 'wordsworth' And Their Relationship To The Historical Figure Who Shared The Same Name. In the winter of 1798-99, shut up in the freezing German town of Goslar, William Wordsworth began producing lyrical fragments that appeared first in letters written to Coleridge and emerged eventually as source texts for The Prelude. These lyrics are revolutionary because they construct a new version of the autobiographical 'I'. The Wordsworthian first person, which becomes the prototype for so much subsequent writing about the self, emerges out of an interplay among complementary and conflicting questions: How could a struggling 28-year-old author write a 'great' poem? How might he satisfy the expectations of his imagined, as well as actual, readers? How should he fashion his own life into and out of poetry? The constant writing and rewriting of a poem with many titles over many decades was a textual act designed, at least in part, to answer such questions. The Revolutionary 'I' explores the numerous voices of the poetic speaker 'Wordsworth' and their relationship to the historical figure who shared the same name, offering the first sustained analysis of the complex autobiographical voice in Wordsworth's poetry Front Matter....Pages i-xx Silencing the (Other) Self: Wordsworth as ‘Wordsworth!’ in ‘There was a boy’....Pages 1-28 The Politics of Self-Presentation: Wordsworth as Revolutionary Actor in a Literary Drama....Pages 29-55 Sounds into Speech: the Two-Part Prelude of 1799 as Dialogic Dramatic Monologue....Pages 56-77 Coleridge as Catalyst to Autobiography: the Wordsworthian Self as Therapeutic Gift, 1804–5....Pages 78-101 Dialogizing Dorothy: Voicing the Feminine as Spousal Sister in The Prelude....Pages 102-131 Colonizing Consciousness: Culture as Identity in Wordsworth’s Prelude and Walcott’s Another Life....Pages 132-150 Back Matter....Pages 151-187