Theme of William Wordsworth as a Prophet in Tintern Abbey Essay

Poet as Prophet When I spoke last, I kiboshed with the image of Wordsworth as a monk or priest- same(p) bet zealously converting Dorothy and, by extension, the reader into a position within his spate of the world. But even more than priest, Wordsworth often depicts the romantic poet as prophet. This icon is demonstrated 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 old Sought in the Atlantic Main -- why should they be A history only of departed things, Or a guileless fiction of what never was? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly humankind In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple expose of the common day. (47-55) Similar to his vision in Tintern where perceptions are both fractional created by the imaginat ion and half perceived by the senses, here Wordsworth declares that for those who concede its power, the human mind, or imagination, can meld with nature, can heal the expose between nature and mankind, the sublime and the beautiful, to re-create an edenic heaven on Earth. Wordsworth and so goes on to assert -- I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation -- and by talking to Which speak of nothing more than what we are, Would arouse the sensual from their sleep Of Death, and take the vacant and the vain To noble raptures (56 - 62) Wordsworth, as the romantic poet-prophet, has a lagger of ... ...e romantic era ends with the sublimated subject removed from any get laid outside 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, General Ed. The Norton Anthology of face Literature. 4th ed. Vol. 2. New York Norton and Company, 1979. Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and different essays. Translated from the French by Ben Brewster. London New Left Books, 1971. 121-173. Wordsworth, William. Lines Composed a Few 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 increment of a Poets Mind. Abrams, Gen. Ed. 257-313.