Public domain photo of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

A selective list of online literary criticism for British Romantic poet William Wordsworth, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Pages. Now with links to full-text first editions.

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Literary Criticism

Ahmed, Soheil. "Figures of Revision in Wordsworth's Critical Arguments." Romanticism on the Net 24 (2001). Addresses three arguments in Wordsworth's poetics: the theorization of tautology, the definition of the poet, and the relationship between thoughts and feelings.

Altieri, Charles. "Strange Affinities: A Partial Return to Wordsworthian Poetics After Modernism." Romantic Circles (2003).

Anderson, Robert. "'Enjoyments, of a more exquisite nature': Wordsworth and Commodity Culture." Romanticism on the Net 26 (2002). Anderson investigates Wordsworth's attitudes towards the consumerism, industrialism, and materialism that was emerging in England at the turn of the nineteenth-century through an examination of "The Ruined Cottage" and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

Chandler, David. "'One Consciousness', Historical Criticism and the Romantic Canon." Romanticism on the Net 17 (2000). Award-winning article covers New Historicist views of Wordsworth's centrality in the Romantic tradition.

- - - . "Wordsworth's 'Are There no Groans?': Source, Meaning, Significance." Romanticism on the Net 14 (1999). Chandler discusses a previously unpublished Wordsworth fragment in J. Butler and K. Green's recent Cornell edition of Lyrical Ballads.

- - -. "Vagrancy Smoked Out: Wordsworth 'betwixt Severn and Wye.'" Romanticism on the Net 11 (1998). On a possible allusion in "Tintern Abbey."

Faflak, Joel. "Analysis Interminable in the Other Wordsworth." Romanticism on the Net 16 (1999). Faflak relates Freud's thoughts about psychoanalysis to Wordsworth's desire for philosophical closure in The Prelude.

Farnell, Gary. "Wordsworth's The Prelude as Autobiography of an Orphan." Romanticism on the Net. The Prelude is literally the autobiography of an orphan, Farnell notes, since it records in a disjointed way the death of his mother when he was almost eight and of his father when he was thirteen. But although the poem is about Wordsworth's mental growth, the deaths of his parents are barely mentioned, which has lead many critics to speculate about the emotions that stand behind this.

Fay, Elizabeth. "Wordsworth's Balladry: Real Men Wanted." "Two Hundred Years of Lyrical Ballads," Romantic Circles (1999).

Fulford, Tim. "Cowper, Wordsworth, Clare: The Politics of Trees." The John Clare Society Journal 14 (1995). On tree imagery in John Clare, Wordsworth, and Cowper.

Graver, Bruce and Ronald Tetreault. "Editing Lyrical Ballads for the Electronic Environment." Romanticism on the Net 9 (1998).

Halmi, Nicholas. "Lucy, Lucia, and Locke." Romanticism on the Net, special issue on Opera and Nineteenth-Century Literature, 34-35 (2004). Halmi considers madness in opera and literature.

Haney, David P. "Wordsworth and the Question of 'Romantic Religion.'" Criticism (1997).

Hanley, Keith. "Wordsworth's Revolution in Poetic Language." Romanticism on the Net 9 (1998). Examines Lyrical Ballads in the light of Julia Kristeva's 1974 doctoral thesis, La Révolution du langage poétique.

Hirschfield, Lisa. "Between Memory and History: Wordsworth's Excursion." Romanticism on the Net 16 (1999). Hirschfield states that The Excursion attempts to stave off time's destructive quality by establishing memorial sites, becoming a book-length elegy for memory itself.

Jackson, H.J. "Lucy Revived." Romanticism on the Net 13 ( 1999). On the connections between Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems" and Lord Lyttelton's poems about Lucy Fortescue.

Johnston, Kenneth R. "Romantic Anti-Jacobins or Anti-Jacobin Romantics?" Romanticism on the Net 15 (1999). Johnston considers Wordsworth's and Coleridge's "anti-Jacobin" and "Romantic" credentials (taken offline).

Malachuk, Daniel. "Labor, Leisure, and the Yeoman in Coleridge's and Wordsworth's 1790s Writings." Romanticism on the Net 27 (2002). On the yeoman as an ideal: "As a union of ancient opposites, the yeoman was a compelling but politically unstable character in republican theory, as suggested in the work of Jefferson and Rousseau. The same is true of the yeoman in Coleridge's and Wordsworth's early writings."

Malpas, Simon. "'I cried "Come, tell me how you live!" / And thumped him on the head': Wordsworth, Carroll and the 'Aged, Aged Man.'" Romanticism on the Net 5 (1997). Malpas compares Wordsworth's encounter with the old man in "Resolution and Independence" to Lewis Carroll's parody in Through the Looking-Glass.

Miall, David S. "Locating Wordsworth: 'Tintern Abbey' and the Community with Nature." Romanticism on the Net 20 (2000). Award-winning article about the importance of a relationship with nature for Wordsworth. The author proposes a precise location for the opening scene in "Tintern Abbey" and contends that the location of the poem is central to Wordsworth's view of man's relationship with nature.

O'Neill, Michael. "'The Words He Uttered...': A Reading of Wordsworth." Romanticism on the Net 3 (1996). An interpretation of Wordsworth's The Excursion.

Pace, Joel. "Emotion and Cognition in The Prelude." Pace contends Wordsworth shows that the soul arrives at truth through both emotion and thinking. Romanticism on the Net 1 (1996).

- - -. "'Gems of a soft and permanent lustre': The Reception and Influence of the Lyrical Ballads in America," in Romanticism on the Net.

- - -. "Wordsworth, the Lyrical Ballads, and Literary and Social Reform in Nineteenth-Century America." "Two Hundred Years of Lyrical Ballads," Romantic Circles (1999).

Page, Judith W. Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women. U of California P, 1994; California Digital Library. "Focusing on the poems of Wordsworth's 'Great Decade,' feminist critics have tended to see Wordsworth as an exploiter of women and 'feminine' perspectives. In this original and provocative book, Judith Page examines works from throughout Wordsworth's long career to offer a more nuanced feminist account of the poet's values." A book-length critical study.

Persyn, Mary. "The Sublime Turn Away from Empire: Wordsworth's Encounter with Colonial Slavery, 1802." Romanticism on the Net 26 (2002). Persyn argues that the Haitian Revolution, and Toussaint l'Ouverture's role in it, strongly influenced Wordsworth during his early years, and that the 1802 sonnet to Toussaint l'Ouverture epitomizes the development of the Wordsworthian sublime.

Roussetzki, Remy. "Aesthetics of Shock in Wordsworth." Schuylkill. On emotional and psychological forces that may have influenced Wordworth's attitude toward other people, solitude, and nature.

Rzepka, Charles J. "From Relics to Remains: Wordsworth's 'The Thorn' and the Emergence of Secular History." Rzepka notes "In their recurrent focus on the relationship between narrative and experience, 'testimony' and 'relics,' the Lyrical Ballads show Wordsworth to be our first truly archaeological poet, the first to take seriously the notion of 'pre-history' as a mode of encountering the material world in the present." Romanticism on the Net 31 (2003).

- - -. "Elizabeth Bishop and the Wordsworth of Lyrical Ballads: Sentimentalism, Straw Men, and Misprision." "Two Hundred Years of Lyrical Ballads," Romantic Circles (1999).

Setzer, Sharon M. "Precedent and Perversity in Wordsworth's Sonnets Upon the Punishment of Death." Nineteenth Century Literature 50 (1996). U of Calif. P (taken offline).

Smith, Christopher. "Robert Southey and the Emergence of Lyrical Ballads." Romanticism on the Net 9 (1998).

Tanter, Marcy L. "Introduction." "Two Hundred Years of Lyrical Ballads," Romantic Circles (1999).

Tetreault, Ronald and Bruce Graver. "The Lyrical Ballads Bicenterary Project," 1998. Presents texts from the books electronically, supplemented with images of the first editions.

Treadwell, J. "Innovation and Strangeness; or, Dialogue and Monologue in the 1798 Lyrical Ballads." Romanticism on the Net 9 (1998).

Trott, Nicola and Seamus Perry. "Lyrical Ballads 1798-1998." Romanticism on the Net 8 (1998).

Underwood, Ted. "How to Save "Tintern Abbey" from New-Critical Pedagogy (in Three Minutes Fifty-Six Seconds)" On teaching Wordsworth's lyrics using comparisons with contemporary and rock music. Romantic Circles (2002).

Ward, J.P. "An Anxiety of No Influence: Walter Pater on William Wordsworth." From a collection of essays on Pater from the second international Pater conference held at Queen's College, Oxford in 1988.

Wu, Duncan. "Tautology and Imaginative Vision in Wordsworth." Romanticism on the Net 2 (1996). Wu contends that tautology is integral to Wordsworth's "spots of time."

Introduction

Williams, John R. "William Wordsworth." Literary Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to Wordsworth, from a well-edited online database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription.

Barnet, Mary. "William Wordsworth." Poetry Magazine. A biographical introduction, which notes that "critics have made much of Wordsworth's early maternal loss and his subsequent use of Nature as a 'surrogate mother.'" Includes the text of "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and other familiar poems.

Miall, David S. Syllabus for The Prelude. A summary of some of the critical issues surrounding the poem, including Wordsworth's extensive revision process, the extent of his true interest in history and/or nature in the poem, and his self-presentation.

Biography of Wordsworth from the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

A (UK) Guardian profile of Wordsworth, with links to additional articles on his poetry.

"Tintern Abbey," Tourism, and Romantic Landscape; The French Revolution; Literary Gothicism; and Romantic Orientalism. Norton Anthology of Literature Topics Online. Extended discussion of four topics of interest in Romanticism.

"William Wordsworth." A very brief introduction. Academy of American Poets.

A rev. of William Wordsworth: A Poetic Life by John Mahoney. "Instead of a conventional depiction of Wordsworth's career as a 'Golden Decade' of creativity in the early 1800s followed by years of decline, Mahoney focuses on what he sees as a continuity in Wordsworth's evolution from a 'passionate, radical poet of nature and imagination' to a 'patriarchal, didactic Tory humanist.' Boston College Chronicle.

Photos of Wordsworth's homes in the Lake District, with interiors and country views. Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount.

Web Sites & Bibliography

Mead, Ruth. A review of An Annotated Critical Bibliography of William Wordsworth, by Keith Hanley. Romanticism on the Net 8 (1997).

Tetreault, Ronald and Bruce Graver. "Selected Studies of Lyrical Ballads. A bibliography.

Romanticism on the Net. Ed. Michael Eberle-Sinatra. An international, peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to British Romantic studies, an impressive scholarly enterprise that has been making essays freely available since 1996.

Romantic Circles. Eds. Neil Fraistat, Steven E. Jones, and Carl Stahmer. "A refereed scholarly website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture." An innovative publication on topics in Romanticism.

The Wordworth Circle. Ed. Marilyn Gaull. Information about subscribing.

"A Romantic Natural History." Ed. Ashton Nichols. The relationships between literary works and natural history in the century before Darwin, with articles on Wordsworth and other Romantics.

The John Clare Page. Ed. Simon Kövesi. Contains links to articles from the John Clare Society Journal and additional resources on poet John Clare.

Reed, Mark L., ed. "Revisionary Wordsworth." A review of The Thirteen-Book "Prelude" by William Wordsworth. The Cornell Wordsworth. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1991. Reviewed in Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship, Vol. 9, by Theresa M. Kelley (taken offline from http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/TEXT/vol9/prelude.html).

Primary material for Wordsworth

Wordsworth Editions. Full-text first editions of Wordsworth's poety.

Tetreault, Ronald and Bruce Graver. The Lyrical Ballads Bicenterary Project, 1998. Ed. Ronald Tetreault and Bruce Graver. Electronic texts from the books, which have been transcribed and encoded using sgml, supplemented with images of the printed pages of the first edition.

The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. The complete text of The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, by Dorothy Wordsworth, edited by William Angus Knight, published by Macmillan in 1904. A facsimile online edition from Google Books.

"Lucy Gray of Allendale," by Robert Andersen, 1798. A poem by the "Cumberland Bard," which may have inspired Wordsworth's Lucy Gray. In Andersen's Poems on Various Subjects, 1798. Facsimile of this edition at Google Books.

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