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Play Anxiety in the Romantic Poets City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 "Fits of Vulgar Joy": Play Anxiety in the Romantic Poets Alison Powell Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/460 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] ! ! ! ! ! ! “Fits of Vulgar Joy”: Play Anxiety in the Romantic Poets ! ! ! by! Alison W. Powell ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York ! 2014! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 2014 Alison W. Powell All Rights Reserved ! ! ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the! degree of Doctor of Philosophy ! ! Nancy Yousef ___________________________ _________________________ Date ____________________________ Chair of Examining Committee ! Mario DiGangi ___________________________ _________________________ Date ____________________________ Executive Officer ! ! Alan Vardy ___________________________ Joshua Wilner _________________________ Supervisory Committee ! ! The City University of New York ! iii Abstract ! “Fits of Vulgar Joy”: Play Anxiety in the Romantic Poets by Alison W. Powell ! Advisor: Nancy Yousef “Fits of Vulgar Joy”: Play Anxiety in the Romantic Poets considers the crucial but neglected role of play as a component of the imaginative faculty and as related to the development of moral sensibility in the Romantic era. It examines the Spieltrieb (“play drive”) in the works of Coleridge, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Shelley, and John Clare to explore the tension between what is explicitly stated about the relationship between play, intersubjectivity, and aesthetics, and how play is actually depicted in the poetry and essays of the Romantic era. It works to identify how and with what objective the Romantics differentiated so minutely between play, fancy, imagination, and art, investigating the gravity with which the authors worked to parse these variances. Although the Romantics generally emphasized the influence of childhood on the development of poetic sensibility and heralded the role of “free play” in the imagination, I demonstrate that representations of ludic activity in Wordsworth’s Prelude (1805), for example, indicates a deep ambivalence about the spontaneous, chaotic creative impulse typically called “play.” The approach I use is fundamentally interdisciplinary and utilizes play theory, object relations, and the work of Kant, Gadamer, Plato, and Schiller. I also draw from a myriad of primary texts: in addition to readings of The Prelude (1805) and Shelley’s “Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation,” for example, I examine Rousseau’s Emile, in which the destructive potential of play originates in childish vanity— a paradigm which eerily parallels the English response to Rousseau’s infamous reputation. Child’s play within nature is acted out in John Clare’s “The iv Progress of Ryhme” and Wordsworth’s Boy of Winander through the mimicry of nightingale song and owls’ hoots, respectively. Wordsworth uses the eventual death of the boy to mark the end of play and the beginning of poetry. In Clare’s work, the poet is paralyzed in grief over his inability to retain that undirected creativity, that harmonious existence within the Helpston fields which marked his childhood. Finally, Shelley’s “Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation” offers a departure from these more perplexed examples. Maddalo’s daughter reveals the profundity of silent play, but to the comparative denigration of poetics. The Romantic paradox of play reveals itself in patterns in which effortless frivolity gives way to something more subversive or melancholy. Most often the ludic is inextricably tied to the adult poet’s acknowledgement of his exile from nature and his own former, creative, aimless self. These changes are depicted as necessarily accompanying maturation, making possible one’s entrance into society and the development of responsible citizenship. The Romantic texts which preoccupy this project collapse those elements which are determined antithetical to the process of maturation — that which is hedonistic, chaotic, selfish, myopic, excessive— and deliver it to the reader in the form of child’s play. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! v Acknowledgements ! I am deeply indebted to my readers, Alan Vardy, Alexander Schultz, and Joshua Wilner, who have been generous with their time and suggestions and whose encouragement has been invaluable. My director Nancy Yousef made this project possible with her enthusiasm and her demonstration of deep scholarly integrity and passion for the period, and I am especially grateful to her mentorship both within the realm of the dissertation and beyond. My work at the Graduate Center was continuously supported, first by the Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship and later the Dissertation Year Fellowship. This latter support made my work possible while I navigated the icy waters of the job market. An initial version of the chapter on Clare and Wordsworth was presented at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR). Fellow graduate students Leila Walker, Andrew Statum, Emily Raabe, Kate Broad, Anne McCarthy, and others have been provided much needed camaraderie and inspiration. My parents, Ron and Frona Powell, my brother Aaron, my aunt Grace Hamilton, and dear friend Jennifer Scaife have been especially supportive throughout my academic career. Friend Dr. Heather Warren-Crow has offered a graceful example of how to travel the winding path of the scholar and artist, and I indebted to her model. The completion of this project would have been absolutely impossible without my close friend and fellow Graduate Center student Rachel Gurstein. Her humor and steady encouragement have been my touchstone. Finally I must thank my husband and Graduate Center alumni Alex Zamalin. I cannot imagine having completed this project without his good humor, encouragement, and devoted parenting to our son Samuel. As for my dear Sam: this project and person came to being at the same time. What better model of imaginative play can one imagine, than that of an eager toddler? How lucky I have been to watch him play over the past year and a half: imitating dogs, balancing blocks, catching bubbles, sorting crayons, being carried in dance, and—above all—hiding and being found. vi Table of Contents ! Introduction 1 Playing Romantically: Mimicry, Thievery, Destruction ! ! Chapter 1 13 “Fits of Vulgar Joy”: Impulse, Illusion, and Idleness in the early books of The Prelude (1805) ! ! Chapter 2 Birdsong Mimicry and Repetitious Play in John Clare and Wordsworth 61 ! ! Chapter 3 “Incessantly Beneath (Our) Gaze”: The Spectacle of Vain Rousseau 102 ! ! ! Chapter 4 145 The Ethics of Play and Silence: Lying Fallow in Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo ! ! Works Cited 185 ! vii Introduction Playing Romantically: Mimicry, Thievery, Destruction ! Thus, often in those fits of vulgar joy Which, through all seasons, on a child’s pursuits Are prompt attendants, ‘mid that giddy bliss Which, like a tempest, works along the blood And is forgotten; even then I felt Gleams like the flashing of a shield; the earth !And common face of Nature . .1 What does it mean to play Romantically? How does play manifest in Romantic poetry, and what might we learn about its appearance in eighteenth century writing on the imagination? How might we understand the tension between what is explicitly stated about the relationship between play, morality and aesthetics, and how play is actually used or depicted in the poetry and essays of the era? For despite their heralding of the importance of childhood in the development of the poetic imagination, when the Romantic poets actually represent play in markedly ambivalent terms. This project explores the significance of that paradox—an explicit heralding of the potential of “free play” troubled by ambivalent representations of it—by examining patterns of peripherality and exile where play is often only momentarily engaged before being circumvented, qualified, or mourned. It also considers the role of play as related to the management of the child’s imagination and development of poetic sensibility in works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and John Clare, and in Rousseau’s educational novel Emile. Searching for the Spieltrieb ("the play drive") in the works of these authors in order to unearth the relationship between play and the cultivation of sympathy especially, I identify a recurrent anxiety about the subversive potential of play. In other words, below its surface frivolity play is frequently, if tacitly, represented as an irritant in the Romantic trajectory of the aesthetic experience as developing moral sensibility. A primary aim Romantic criticism has been to trace the ways that German philosophers of the post-Enlightenment influenced the British Romantic poets, especially in their articulation that 1 William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). 1: 613-619. "1 art and poetry is integral to the development of moral sensibility; for Kant, as for Schiller, the imaginative faculty also helps balance reason and emotion.
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