The Christian Wordsworth, 1798-1805 - Softcover

Ulmer, William Andrew

9780791451540: The Christian Wordsworth, 1798-1805

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791451542 ISBN 13: 9780791451540

Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr, 2001

Traces the evolution of Wordsworth's religious attitudes from his revisions of The Ruined Cottage to the completion of The Prelude.

Recent scholarship on the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth usually depicts him as a secular humanist during the years of his creative ascendancy. In The Christian Wordsworth, 1798–1805, William A. Ulmer challenges this consensus by arguing that Wordsworth never abandoned his faith in a supernatural Deity and that the poet’s theism included important Christian sympathies as early as 1798. By tracing the changes in Wordsworth’s religious beliefs―from the early secular period to the later Anglican period―Ulmer reconstructs the strategic indirections by which the poet’s faith shapes his major poems. In readings of The Ruined Cottage, the Pedlar narrative, “Tintern Abbey,” the Prospectus, the Ode, The Prelude, and other texts, Ulmer presents a poet increasingly determined to stage the prophetic revelations of his poems against carefully established Christian backgrounds. Through this revisionary traditionalism, Wordsworth attempts to preserve England’s Christian heritage by adapting it to modern needs. Revisionary in its own right, Ulmer’s book provides an innovative perspective on Romantic natural supernaturalism and on William Wordsworth’s religious poetics and intellectual development.

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From the Back Cover:

Recent scholarship on the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth usually depicts him as a secular humanist during the years of his creative ascendancy. In The Christian Wordsworth, 1798-1805, William A. Ulmer challenges this consensus by arguing that Wordsworth never abandoned his faith in a supernatural Deity and that the poet's theism included important Christian sympathies as early as 1798. By tracing the changes in Wordsworth's religious beliefs-from the early secular period to the later Anglican period-Ulmer reconstructs the strategic indirections by which the poet's faith shapes his major poems. In readings of The Ruined Cottage, the Pedlar narrative, "Tintern Abbey," the Prospectus, the Ode, The Prelude, and other texts, Ulmer presents a poet increasingly determined to stage the prophetic revelations of his poems against carefully established Christian backgrounds. Through this revisionary traditionalism, Wordsworth attempts to preserve England's Christian heritage by adapting it to modern needs. Revisionary in its own right, Ulmer's book provides an innovative perspective on Romantic natural supernaturalism and on William Wordsworth's religious poetics and intellectual development.

About the Author:

William A. Ulmer is Professor of English at the University of Alabama and the author of Shelleyan Eros: The Rhetoric of Romantic Love.

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