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A Dialogic Study of a Poet and His Audience by Steven Mark Lane BA

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A Dialogic Study of a Poet and His Audience by Steven Mark Lane BA How Wordsworth became Wordsworth: A Dialogic Study of a Poet and his Audience by Steven Mark Lane B.A., Simon Fraser University M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Department of English Steven Mark Lane, 2007 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author. ii How Wordsworth became Wordsworth: A Dialogic Study of a Poet and his Audience By Steven Mark Lane B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1978 M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1982 Supervisory Committee Supervisor: Dr. G. Kim Blank (Department of English) Departmental Member: Dr. Thomas Cleary (Department of English) Departmental Member: Dr. Eric Miller (Department of English) Outside Member: Dr. Harald Krebs (School of Music) Additional Member: Dr. Jared Curtis (Department of English, S.F.U.) iii Supervisory Committee Supervisor: Dr. G. Kim Blank Departmental Member: Dr. Thomas Cleary Departmental Member: Dr. Eric Miller Outside Member: Dr. Harald Krebs Additional Member: Dr. Jared Curtis ABSTRACT This is a study of the emergence of William Wordsworth’s literary reputation during his lifetime. It is constructed as a variety of biography, organized chronologically in order to attempt a fuller sense of the negotiation of public image and reputation that went on between Wordsworth and his audiences. Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism structures the study as a series of “conversations,” interconnected and moving outward from self, to intimate group or coterie, to public, reviewers, and culture at large. The coterie and members of it have a large part to play in Wordsworth’s emerging style. The evidence drawn upon for each “conversation” moves from biography to letters to published poems and to published reviews of those works, again roughly describing a movement outward from self to coterie to culture at large. The “conversations” appeal to two or more different kinds of audience, however, because of a “multi-voiced” feature of Wordsworth’s published collections, especially noticeable in the critical success of the sonnet form. Further, members of the coterie, notably Coleridge, later emerge as important interpreters, advocates, and critics themselves, adding to the critical success of William Wordsworth in the larger cultural conversation. Ultimately, Wordsworth is recognized for his contribution – a triumph of his confidence in his own style, as well as the education of a new kind of reader that now engages with Wordsworth’s poetry at a level of intimacy that makes the reader feel like a member of the coterie. iv Table of Contents Title Page i Supervisory Committee ii Abstract iii Table of Contents iv List of Tables v Acknowledgements vi Dedication vii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: The Reading and Publishing Context 22 Chapter 3: The Poet Imagined 34 I: Dialogue with Self 34 II: Dialogue with Tradition 42 III: Dialogue with Self and Intimates 66 IV: Dialogue with Readers, Real and Imagined 90 Chapter 4: German Interlude 1799 116 Chapter 5: Lyric Poems/ Disputed Poetics: 1800-1814 128 Chapter 6: Modest Popularity/ Guaranteed Posterity: 1814-1820 209 Chapter 7: The Poet Confirmed: 1820-1850 273 Chapter 8: Epilogue 299 Notes 307 Works Cited 315 Appendix I 325 v List of Tables Table 1. Poems from the first edition of Lyrical Ballads as reordered for 1800. 145 Table 2. 1836 revisions to Descriptive Sketches. 286 Table 3. Revisions to Excursion in 1845 edition. 294 vi Acknowledgements This project has taken me so long, I have many to acknowledge. During the entire time I was pursuing my doctoral studies, I was fully employed at Malaspina University-College. I received support from two Deans during that time: Ross Fraser and John Lepage. The Vice-president, Academic at Malaspina, David Thomas, has been a strong supporter as well. I must also acknowledge Malaspina University-College for granting me three separate leaves of differing duration that allowed me to get various parts of the project completed. My doctoral supervisor, Dr. Kim Blank, has been a patient guide for all this time, treating me more like a colleague than a student. At the University of Victoria, Ms. Colleen Donnelly, the English Graduate Secretary, has been an invaluable help, coming up with remote solutions for me from all over Canada and Europe. My faculty colleagues at Malaspina University-College have provided me with nothing but encouragement over the years, artfully knowing when to ask how my progress was going, and when to be silent on the subject. I must also acknowledge the many students over the years who took the time to get to know me and what I was up to, and who asked me how I was getting along. Finally, let me acknowledge the patience of my family, whose support has kept me going. vii Dedication I dedicate this study to My parents, who gave me a thirst for knowledge My sons, who have given my life purpose My grandchildren, who keep me young And my wife, who makes me happy. Chapter 1: Introduction This study argues that William Wordsworth’s perceptive ear for varieties of language and his democratic spirit inform his work and his editing practices and are the most distinctive features of his entire career. By examining his career and work through the framework of M. M. Bakhtin’s lexicon of dialogism, we can see that Wordsworth never completely lost his early idealism but rather presented it in different ways at different points in his career, maintaining a heterogeneous variety of social dialects or “voices” in his works. Further, I argue that Wordsworth’s greatest accomplishment was the development of a unique style that incorporated these varieties of language in several ways, and the negotiation of that style through a sustained conversation with his publics. When I began this project, two ideas guided my initial thinking. At the time, I was influenced by Jerome J. McGann’s work on social editing theory, and I thought his chronological arrangement of poems and other works in his 1994 New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse was a provocative way of presenting the material. It challenged me to think about how these works would strike a reader living through the years of this most exciting literary period. It also seemed a way to trace the emergence of a “Romantic ideology” rather than simply view the period through the lens of that ideology. The second influence was the basic structure of dialogism from Bakhtin. So many things in my own experience I could see in terms of dialogue, and the more Bakhtin I read, the more I could see the applicability of Bakhtin’s theories to the work and career of Wordsworth. Now, years later, as I look at this study, I can see how these two ideas informed my work: one in organizing the overall structure of the piece and attempting to 2 reconstruct a point of view that was an alternative to the established critical ideology; the other providing a framework for exploring the career and compositions of William Wordsworth along the lines of dialogue or conversation. Proceeding chronologically seemed to be a very revealing approach, and something that has affected my teaching of Romanticism. The broad notion of dialogism, too, is useful and applicable to the classroom. What follows is a study of William Wordsworth’s public reception as it emerged, in effect suggesting an alternative narrative to the totalizing, unifying, and selective critical project that takes into account all documentary evidence, both literary and biographical, discovered since Wordsworth’s death in 1850. According to this narrative, Wordsworth developed a clear idea of what he thought a poet was, but this idea was complicated by the realities of making a living, and subject to the judgment of critics. Wordsworth’s style engaged the reader on an intimate level, but not all readers were receptive to that intimacy. Wordsworth tried by various prose statements, in addition to his poetry, to influence the critics’ judgment, and got himself into years’ worth of trouble because his theories did not always align with his practice. Still, he always had a faithful and supportive coterie group around him, consisting largely of family. Some of his coterie had a public presence, too, and their contribution to the “cultural conversation” on Wordsworth’s poetry helped establish his reputation. There is a small joke in Wordsworth studies suggesting that, given the prominence of one particular dwelling at the edge of Grasmere, the Wordsworth promotion exercise was a “cottage industry.” While this is in large part true, my study has brought me to another analogy: working on Wordsworth’s poetry and its promotion was a family business, with some members of the 3 coterie (Coleridge, de Quincey, Arnold, for example) being “adopted” into (or simply adopting?) the Wordsworth family. The ultimate triumph of Wordsworth’s style was achieved with the support of the “family” members who were convinced of his worth, and his canon expanded from 1815 on with recursive publishing gestures that brought intimate conversations before the public. And finally, a significant readership responded to that intimacy of address and became, in effect, members of a huge coterie. I Scholarship on William Wordsworth, as with scholarship on most other writers, builds towards a conceptually unified assessment of a conceptually unified body of work. Indeed, Wordsworth himself argues in the “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads for assessing the whole, not the part, in the case where, having been pleased by one or some of an author’s works, we must give him some benefit of the doubt because, as one editor puts it, “on other occasions where we have been displeased, he nevertheless may not have written ill or absurdly” (Prose I:154).
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