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Wordsworth's Descriptive Sketches and The Prelude, Book VI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Janette Harrington
Janette Harrington*
Affiliation:
University of Arkansas
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Extract

In the summer of 1790 William Wordsworth and his friend, Robert Jones, spent their summer vacation in France and Switzerland. The record of this memorable journey has been left to us in two of Wordsworth's poems: Descriptive Sketches written in 1792 and The Prelude, Book VI, written probably in 1804. The journey described in each is, of course, the same, yet variations in the accounts are quite marked. The immediate reaction as to the causes of the differences, no doubt, is that Wordsworth had forgotten many of the details of the journey. Yet this explanation cannot be true, as a careful analysis shows. Garrod, in his paragraph concerning Wordsworth's poetical theory that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity,” hints at the real reason for the discrepancies:

The question [he says] is interesting, not only in connection with Descriptive Sketches, but also as affecting the problem of the essential truthfulness of large parts of The Prelude.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1144 - 1158
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 1144 H. G. Garrod, Wordsworth, p. 46.

Note 2 in page 1145 Prose Works of William Wordsworth, III, 230.

Note 3 in page 1145 Descriptive Sketches, lines 81, 82.

Note 4 in page 1145 Prelude, VI, 525.

Note 5 in page 1145 Prelude, VI, 528.

Note 6 in page 1146 As traced in the Keswill letter, in Wordsworth's Prose Works, III, 222, 226-7

Note 7 in page 1146 Harper, William Wordsworth, I, 139.

Note 8 in page 1146 Poems of William Wordsworth, ed. Knight, III, 128.

Note 9 in page 1146 Ibid., II, 137.

Note 10 in page 1146 Ibid., II, 137.

Note 11 in page 1146 Descriptive Sketches, line 118.

Note 12 in page 1147 Knight, Op. cit., vol. II, p. 137.

Note 13 in page 1147 Ibid., II, 203.

Note 14 in page 1147 Knight, Poems of William Wordsworth, II, 215.

Note 15 in page 1147 Ibid., p. 233.

Note 16 in page 1148 Garrod, Wordsworth, p. 46.

Note 17 in page 1148 Prelude, VI, 423-428.

Note 18 in page 1149 Poems of Wordsworth, ed. Knight, I, 312, lines 53-56.

Note 19 in page 1149 Prelude, VI, 762-769.

Note 20 in page 1149 Harper, op. cit., I, 96.

Note 21 in page 1150 Descriptive Sketches, lines 775-785.

Note 22 in page 1151 Prose Works, III, 225.

Note 23 in page 1151 Legouis, Youth of William Wordsworth, p. 152.

Note 24 in page 1152 Tintern Abbey, lines 75-83.

Note 25 in page 1152 Garrod, op. cit., p. 52.

Note 26 in page 1152 Prelude, VI, 748-'53.

Note 27 in page 1153 Ibid., line 597.

Note 28 in page 1153 Prelude, VI, 595-6.

Note 29 in page 1153 Tintern Abbey, lines 46-48.

Note 30 in page 1153 Prelude, VI, 598-'99.

Note 31 in page 1153 Harper, op. cit., I, 97.

Note 32 in page 1153 Descriptive Sketches, line 706.

Note 33 in page 1154 Ibid., lines 756-'58.

Note 34 in page 1154 Ibid., Lines 760-771.

Note 35 in page 1154 Prelude, VI, 528-'33.

Note 36 in page 1154 Prelude, VI, 663-7.

Note 37 in page 1155 Ibid., VI, 703-713.

Note 38 in page 1155 Garrod, Wordsworth, page 51.

Note 39 in page 1155 Descriptive Sketches, lines 676-679.

Note 40 in page 1156 Prose Works, III, 226.

Note 41 in page 1156 Prelude, VI, 685.

Note 42 in page 1156 Prelude, VI, 663-755.

Note 43 in page 1157 Ibid., 773-778.

Note 44 in page 1157 Prose Works, III, 230.

Note 45 in page 1157 Prelude, VI, 364-367.

Note 46 in page 1158 Descriptive Sketches, lines 622-23.

Note 47 in page 1158 Legouis, Early Life of William Wordsworth, p. 157.