Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey" (221)
A kind of Conversation Poem, although not realized until line 115 onwards
Partly in response to Coleridge's "Frost": continuity and change -- see temporal references: "Five years"; "when first" 69; "boyish days" 76; "What then I was" 79; "after years" 141
Written July 1798; title; location of scene
See "Tintern" commentaries online, for annotated version of poem
Reality - daydream/memory - transcendence - [return]
-- students; poem is in dialogue with Coleridge's "Frost"; show how
"Argument" of poem:
1 W sees Wye valley scene again after five years
23 Has remembered Wye and been restored by remembrances
50 Has felt the power of Joy, seen into the life of things
58 Has turned to memory of Wye amidst distractions of world
68 Hope for future; changed now from what he was then (1793)
86 Visual appetite for Nature then; now recompensed by other gifts
97 Now a sense of presence that impels all things
106 So a lover of Nature still, educated through senses
121 Sees in Dorothy now what he was then (1793)
126 Faith in Nature will preserve us against evils of world
149 In Dorothy's future enjoyment of Nature will recollect hisSome issues:
- Shifts in mode of response to nature: boyish pleasure / appetite from eye / sublime
- Progressiveness: a presence that disturbs and impels
- Attribution of educative, moral role to nature, ll. 110-14
- Dorothy becomes a part of community with nature against hostile world
- What happened in 1793?
- Hedgerows, l. 16 (symbol of looking again)
Document created January 24th 2008 / Updated September 22nd, 2011