This dissertation has been 61—5131 microfilmed exactly as received WENZEL, Elizabeth Brown, 1927- THE PRELUDE AS SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1961 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by izab eth Brovm Wenzel 1962 THE PRELUDE AS SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School o f The Ohio S ta te U n iv ersity By Elizabeth Brown Wenzel, B. A., M. A. ***** The Ohio State University 1961 Approved by ^ Adviser v Department of English CONTENTS Introduction............................................................ 1 I "These Autobiographical times of ours" . 10 II "We see but darkly Even when we look • . behind us" 55 III "A linked lay of Truth" .................................................96 IV "Each man is a memory to himself". • • 128 V "Him s e lfe . .a true Poem" .... 172 VI "Ce qu'on dit de soi est toujours poesie" 212 Bibliography .................................................................................... 2J0 Autobiography .................................................................................... 2^5 ii INTRODUCTION 11 The Prelude is not an autobiography," v/rites the most recent of Wordsworth's biographers, but one hundred and forty-one pages la t e r , th e same w riter d e cla r e s th a t in th e poem, "we fin d [Wordsworth] writing what was in effect his spiritual autobiography." Mrs. Mary Moorman's seeming contradiction reflects a confusion that exists in the use of the term "autobiography" both in Wordsworth criticism and in general. Scholars have used the term more and less generically as a category for The Prelude, from de Selincourt's in ju n c tio n th a t "The Prelude i s a great poem, but i t i s a lso the frank autobiography of a great man. .[Thus] it cannot be judged solely by poetic canons, any more than a letter can be judged by the same criteria as an essay: like a letter, it owes its peculiar charm to intimate revelation of the writer," to Havens' complaint that "most criticism of the truth of the poem has been based on the misconception of its purpose, on the assumption that it was intended to be autobiography."^ Such opposing statements need clarification. Hlary Moorman, W illiam Wordsworth: The E arly Years 1770-1803 (Oxford, 1957), p. 277. 2 Ernest de Selincourt, ed., The Prelude or Growth of a Poet's Mind (Oxford, 1926), p. 1.. ^Raymond Dexter Havens, The Mind of a Poet (Baltimore, 194-1), p. 287. 1 Since Wordsworth1s time there has been an increasing volume of study and comment on autobiography as a distinct kind of writing which it is well for students of The Prelude to take into account. An exam­ ination of the tradition of autobiographical writing and of critical writing upon what is now considered a distinct genre would be of help in understanding Wordsworth’s achievement in his unique poetic example. Wordsworth scholars have ignored the growing literature on autobiography as a genre; and, as a rule, students of autobiography have ignored The Prelude. The University Library of Auto biography reprints part of the poem, but the series includes little critical commentary. 4 E. Stuart Bates i Inside Out: An Introduction to Auto­ biography has a chapter entitled "Poetry as Autobiography," but it 5 merely mentions Wordsworth in a trite and superficial discussion. Of Georg Misch's monumental history of the genre, only the volumes covering antiquity and the Middle Ages have been completed, although there are excellent general remakrs about the nineteenth century in the Introduction. Wayne Shumaker’s history and analysis of English autobiography excludes The Prelude because it is a poem, and verse lives are "a thing apart.A very recent book by Hoy Pascal differs \ew York, 1918, XI, 98-162. ^New York, 1957. ^Geschichte der Autobiographie, Erster Band: Das Alterturn (Berlin, 1907); Zweiter Band: Das Mitt el alter (Frankfurt, 1955). The first volume, Das Alterturn, has been translated from the second edition by the author and E. W. Dickes, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, 2 vols. (London, 19^8). ^E nglish Autobiography, I t s Emergence , M aterials and Form (Berkeley, 1954), p. 50• from these studies in that it discusses The Prelude at some length, although it gives no particular attention to it as a poem. Pascal notes that, while it is usually not considered in histories of autobiography, it is "a landmark as a history of a soul’s growth, „8 and as an exposition of the shaping of life by the soul." Efforts to impose some pattern on the great variety of autobiographies frequently mislead. A national focus like Shumaker's in English Autobiography is fruitless with The Prelude: as Pascal has pointed out, The Prelude belongs with the continental autobiog­ raphies of Rousseau and Goethe. A focus on historical evolution is equally misleading, for, as Prank M. Towne has suggested, in style The Prelude belongs with an autobiography far removed in time, The 9 C onfessions o f S t. A ugustine. The a lte r n a te way o f approaching a genre, the formal analysis, poses equal difficulties because of the uncommon variety and individuality inherent in autobiographies. The formal sections of Shumaker's study and the brief analytic remarks incidental to Miss Dorothy Sayers' thesis in The Mind of the Maker^ are instances of modal and logical oversimplifications; and the ^Design and Truth in Auto biography (London, I960), p.h6. Pascal's study appeared after I had completed the major portion of my work, but, since much of his material corroborates my own, I have frequently cited him in revising my text. ^"Wordsworth1s Spiritual Autobiography," Research Studies of the State College of Washington. XXV (1957)» 62. *®(New York, 19^1)» PP» 89-95* Since Miss Sayers is using the analogy of writing autobiography to explain the theological doctrine of the Incarnation—"God wrote His own autobiography"—she posits the perfect autobiography. various essays in Formen der Selbstdarstel1ung**—admittedly a series of preliminary studies—dramatically illustrate the shapelessness of many attempts to bring order into what seems like chaos. Only a very general approach like that of Georges Gusdorf in the last-mentioned volume, which discusses the metaphysical presuppositions of autobiog­ raphy in the light of contemporary anthropological knowledge, seems to say something important concerning the genre without doing a gross 12 injustice to individual autobiographies. However, to point out the 15 limitations of these studies is not to deny their usefulness. I hope to avoid the obvious oversimplifications of both historical and formal methods—although I employ both—in the present study by focus­ ing on a single autobiography. In its normal sense an autobiography implies two things, that the writer's own life is the principal theme and that the work is a fairly continuous unified history. Like St. Augustine's Con­ fessions. which it greatly resembles in tone, spirit, and scope, The Prelude is much more than a simple recital of events, much more even than a narrative of inner experience; but, also like the Confessions. *11 »• Gunter Reichenkron and Erich Haase, edd., Formen der Selbst- dars tell rang. Ahalekten zu einer Geschichte des literarischen Selbst- portraits. Festgabe fur Fritz Neubert (Berlin, 1956). ^"Conditions et lim ites de 11 autobiographic,11 Formen der Selbstdarstellung. pp. 105-28. 15of the many books and essays on autobiography, Misch's his­ tory and the items cited in this paragraph have been of most help in this study. A complete list of works consulted may be found in the Bibliography. 5 it is recognizably autobiographical at the most direct level, that of the writer speaking in his own person of his own extended experi­ ence in a basically chronological narrative. The span of life which the writer chooses to cover may vary. Some writers concentrate on the adult years, recording events and achievements; other emphasize childhood and development, an emphasis usually considered typical of the Romantics even though the fourth-century autobiography of Augustine ignores the achievements of the Bishop of Hippo and con­ centrates, like Wordsworth, on formative years and experiences. Yet, whether it is the formative or the achieving one, autobiog­ raphy must cover a significant span of time. This The Prelude certainly does. Thus I assume that—whatever more it is—Wordsworth's poem is an autobiography. While many Wordsworth scholars have taken this fact for granted, they have not noticed that the writing of, and thinking about, autobiography had reached a significant stage in the age of the Romantics. The most recent writer on autobiography considers the period from 1782 to 1851—from Rousseau's Confessions to the last volume of Dichtung und Wahrheit—the "classical age of auto- biography,"tt decisive in the history of the genre.i 4 He is general­ izing from the autobiographies—including Wordsworth's—written in the period, but there are substantiating aspects of the intellectual milieu which have not been systematically presented. The word ^Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, pp. 6-b9,5 50• "autobiography” itse lf was first used in 1809; contemporary auto­ biographies proliferated and earlier ones were issued, many for the first time; critical comments reflect the general interest; and three essays in particular discuss autobiographical writing in and for itself, as far as I know for the first time. The assumptions concerning autobiography im plicit and explicit in these essays throw significant light on the kind of autobiography we find in The Prelude. Chapter I presents this historical material as a background for the analyses that follow. Once I have shown how pervasive was the interest in auto­ biography during the years Wordsworth was at work writing and revis­ ing _The Prelude, and how strikingly the period's conception of autobiography is reflected in the type of autobiography the poem represents, I analyze direct and metaphorical statements in the 1805 version in an effort to determine just how conscious Wordsworth was of writing an autobiography.