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Weekly Paragraphs: For Feb. 12 |
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M. H. Abrams, "On Political Interpretations of Lyrical Ballads"
In his article, "On Political Readings of Lyrical Ballads," M.H Abrams is writing in direct response to critics such as Marjorie Levinson's approach to reading Wordsworth. His two questions are clear from the outset, "What are the premises and procedures of a radically political criticism? And what does such criticism make of the poems in the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, but especially of 'Tintern Abbey'" (320). In attempting to answer the first question posed, Abrams distinguishes between new historicist political criticism and critiques based upon Marxist methods of ideology; it is this latter grouping that he focuses upon. The significant point he makes is that by imposing a mode of "Newreading" on a text, the work is forced into a more limited interpretation; "…a radically political criticism is a 'must-be,' or necessitarian theory; it brings the reading of any literary work a predetermination of the kind of meaning…that the act of reading will necessarily discover" (323). Abrams believes that this closed interpretation denies the reader any basic joy in the poetry itself. He goes on, in the bulk of the article, to refute Levinson's argument regarding "Tintern Abbey" point by point. While acknowledging the poem has some underlying revolutionary subtext, Abrams argues that it functions on a much more basic level, as a technically innovative poem that still has resonance with the reader, instead of one that is limited to the time period in which it was written. Using a variety of aspects, ranging from the title to the mention of Dorothy Wordsworth, Abrams systematically disagrees with confining "Tintern Abbey" and Wordsworth's poetry in general, to a specific political lens.
--Christine Corlies
Jonathan Barron and Kenneth Johnston, "'A Power to Virtue Friendly': The Pedlar's Guilt in Wordsworth's 'Ruined Cottage'"
According to Jonathan Barron and Kenneth R. Johnston in "'A Power to Virtue Friendly': The Pedlar's Guilt in Wordsworth's 'Ruined Cottage'" the poem under analysis leaves the reader in an "emotional vacuum." As we search for explanations for the story just recounted, we can sense the Pedlar's feelings of guilt for his role in Margaret's suffering, feelings he expiates by telling the story. A wide range of causes accounts for Margaret's sufferings, but the Pedlar's guilt stems from his failed responsibility to comfort her. He feels "truant" because his confessed detachment from one so close verges on the immoral. His guilty feelings led to his abandonment of her--and thus more guilt. The Pedlar possesses the gift of a metaphoric imagination, but he also knows the limitations of his tale and wishes to create a "memorial" for her. So he tells the tale to the narrator in order to see if the young man is worthy to turn it into history. The authors speculate that the Pedlar has just returned after hearing of her death and waits for the young narrator, who he knows is in the area and has the necessary training to compose the "memorial." The authors conclude that the two men represent Wordsworth's sense of his own development, his philosophical coming of age from an observer, who harbors guilt due to personal failure, to an "agent of change" capable of capturing the painful life stories of the poor with little commentary.
--Vic Sensenig
Don Bialostosky, from Wordsworth, Dialogics, and the Practice of Criticism.
Bialostosky opens his book by playing critics Arac and Siskin against one another in the service of proving to the reader that Wordsworth is the "founding father" of a British romantic "constitution." Constitution, to Bialostosky, is a substance with a motivation, not unlike our own US constitution. As such, the literary canon that Wordsworth and Coleridge both defined and established is a product of power and it exerts power of the culture that lead up to its production. He cites Foucault's notion that power is the precursor to knowledge which is the precursor to pleasure, claiming that Wordsworth's project is to use that cultural power to allow his own poetry and criticism, his donation to the "intellectual universe," to transcend taste and time. Wordsworth succeeds at his task, claims Bialostosky, when critics agree to engage with him and displace revise or revive his poetry and essays. The best way to achieve this, he says, is to cease viewing Wordsworth through a Romantic lens and try to understand the work in a more historically enlightened frame.
--Michael Llewellyn
David Bromwich, from ch. 6 of Disowned By Memory: Wordsworth's Poetry of the 1790s
Bromwich asserts that the "translation of active feeling into picturesque sympathy" in Michael displays Wordsworth's feelings about the downtrodden of society, and that the manner in which it is written "encodes a political motive in several details." This poem (along with The Ruined Cottage) was written to protest a labor division instituted by the new factory system and the subsequent loss of property and feelings of self-worth by the affected people. Bromwich states that for Wordsworth, such a crisis would bring about personal challenges such as "Who am I, if this can happen to me? and What, or whom, am I good for?" This crisis, as outlined by Bromwich, causes a division of laborers from the result of their labor, and families from themselves -- the young no longer feel attached to the lives their parents took for granted, and their parents no longer feel affection for their daily lives as they once did. Bromwich discusses a letter from Wordsworth to Charles James Fox in which he states "the wife no longer prepares with her own hands a meal for her husband, the produce of his labour." This account, says Bromwich, is "directly evocative of Michael." The labor of Michael and Isabel is being eradicated from the land by the factories that are taking over the countryside, and Wordsworth's letter to Fox seems to say that "a generation of wanderers, bewildered and unfeeling, must follow upon the forced migration of the new system" much as Luke does. Bromwich tells us that the poem does admit this probability but manages to close without a sense of desolation.
--Melissa Posten
Marjorie Levinson, "Spiritual Economics: A Reading of 'Michael,'" from Wordsworth's Great Period Poems
As her title indicates, Marjorie Levinson utilizes an economic trope throughout her discussion of Wordsworth's "Michael," specifically focusing on the ideas of use value and exchange value. Levinson emphasizes the importance of Wordsworth's 1801 letter to Charles Fox, directing "Fox's attention to the sociopolitical meanings embedded in [Lyrical Ballads]" (58), especially in "Michael." This letter, Levinson notes, has been largely ignored by readers of the poem. Levinson discovers "the peculiar power of Wordsworth's pastoral" in the methods the poet employs to transcend the incompatibilities between the polemics of the Fox letter and the poetics of "Michael" (59). Levinson first explores "Michael"'s narrative themes, concentrating on the type of "pleasure" the poem imparts to its readers and its characters. Readers of this sad tale experience a "delight" that "educates" (61); Michael also finds pleasure in his property and in his son. Both Luke and the land are "the object of Michael's labor--the material which the shepherd works to shape into a satisfying, useful, and generative form" (62). Michael, Luke, the dog, the lamp, the "Evening Star," all receive their value through "labor that converts its agent and object, is converted or materialized, and finally, is recovered by service rendered" (65). Levinson then discusses Wordsworth's use of The Akedah, the story of Abraham's (attempted) sacrifice of Isaac, from the book of Genesis. Like Abraham and Sarah, Michael and Isabel receive Luke as a child of their old age, and, like Isaac, Luke is to be sacrificed. However, Wordsworth "blurs the boundaries" (71); the poet uses The Akedah in "Michael" as a figure for the crucifixion of Christ, continuing, in Levinson's view, to emphasize the importance of exchange value in the poem as Michael sacrifices his son. Finally, Levinson turns to the paragraphs that frame the poem's narrative. In these frames, the reader encounters Wordsworth's "'Christian,' internalizing, and . . . politically reconciled" sensibilities (74). The narrator in these sections becomes Michael's heir: through language, the narrator will enable readers to experience the shepherd's story; words, not stones, will complete Michael's sheepfold. Like Michael, the poet "increases the intrinsic use value of [the abundant raw material nature provides] through the addition of his labor" (78). Wordsworth uses "substitution" to bring into focus aesthetically his historical raw materials (79).
[Note: In this article, Levinson seems much more sympathetic to "Michael" and to "Michael"'s creator than she is to the poet of "Tintern Abbey."]
--Ellen Massey
David Simpson, "By conflicting passions pressed': 'Michael' and 'Simon Lee,'" from Wordsworth's Historical Imagination
In the introduction to this chapter, Simpson considers the perspective from which Wordsworth writes his poems. That is, Simpson addresses Wordsworth's seeming "displacement" from the lifestyles that the poet reflects in his poems. Often Wordsworth writes from the experience of an observer and it is this displacement that allows for an at least semi-objective and logical argument. Simpson then goes on to regard Michael and its intricate father/son and property relations. Simpson suggests possible property situations that the family could be in: under mortgage obligation, simple tenants, or part of their land could have been tenured and part could have been under freehold. He then goes on to discuss Luke and his decline into "ignominy and shame," which seems to foreshadow the "rural decline" of Michael. Simpson is careful to point out that the probably complicated property/financial situation of the family and the ensuing decline is only discussed in terms of their own self-conviction. No blame is placed elsewhere. Simpson identifies the shepherd as a usually unrecognized and all but extinct figure and notes that no other shepherds, aside from Michael, are mentioned in the poem. That Wordsworth uses the term "verily" when discussing the speaker's love for them seems to be a pun given that shepherds were usually disliked, a class element that dates back to Biblical times. Finally, Simpson intimates that Wordsworth poems are like his children and he makes the parallel between Wordsworth leaving his poems behind to be his "second self" and Michael leaving Luke as his claim to immortality.
--Amanda DoranDavid Simpson's chapter "By Conflicting Passions Pressed: 'Michael' and 'Simon Lee'" examines the subjective and objective modes of description in 'Gipsies,' 'Michael,' and 'Simon Lee.' Simpson primarily focuses on Wordsworth's mournful tone as he witnesses the erosion of agrarian life. Similarly, Simpson points out that 'Michael' illustrates the widening gap in the economical structure, which also affected the Wordsworth family. This poem highlights the conflicting sense of distance and control between the poet, the subject, and the relationship between the poet and the subject. Simpson asserts that Wordsworth has a parallel relationship with new, young poets as Michael does with Luke. The intimacy of the description connotes Wordsworth's complex notion of subjective and objective narration.
--Sarah KellyDavid Simpson's "Wordsworth's Historical Imagination and the Poetry of Displacement" examines the poet's commentary on the pastoral condition. The essay juxtaposes Wordsworth's urban lyrics with his rural-minded Michael and Simon Lee. Simpson begins his argument by stating that the futility of the harsh labor described in aforementioned poems proves tragic on several levels. For instance, Michael's efforts to free his land earn him debt and further obligation. Moreover, Wordsworth obscures the concept of ownership and introduces "unseen misfortune" in shifting his focus to human imperfection. The scholar affirms that "Michael's burdens are self-incurred" in the poem based on an actual event that the poet distorted to "stress the corruption inherent in any urban environment." The underlying idea is that a rural society fosters the discipline and domesticity necessary for the proper development of its participants. By contrast, an urban setting hones its attention to individuals and carelessly promotes the sense that every person is destined to his or her lot. Simpson points out that Wordsworth downplays the "economic complexity" expressed in his lyrics to accentuate his theme of self-determination. The essay also investigates this relation between self and other in terms of Simon Lee. Herein, Simpson insinuates, the poem and poet are inextricably linked. Wordsworth relies on the reader to "find a tale in every thing ordinary." The critic justifies the lyric's "lack of aesthetic and moral control" by suggesting that Wordsworth enlists the reader's abilities to analyze the poem and treat it with an appealing sympathy. This sets into motion an entire debate concerning the interactive nature of poetry that Simpson restricts to a Wordsworthian context wherein the aesthetic is primarily ideological and the political is deliberately unadorned.
--Jillian BrunelliSimpson focuses this chapter on three poems: "Gipsies", "Simon Lee" and "Michael". He first looks at the poems as "The poetry of property" which is also the first section title (141). Simpson thinks that Wordsworth ignores unpleasant situations dealing with property and family that were issues at that time. For example, he says that Luke, who may have been patterned on a boy who had "become dissolute and run away from his parents" changes the way we look at Luke in the poem. If Luke was dissolute before he left home, this tarnishes "the image of perfect familial harmony" (143). In "The poet as patron" Simpson looks at influences that might have inspired the writing of "Simon Lee". He says that Simon is modeled after Christopher Tricky who was a neighbor of Wordsworth. He points out that Wordsworth's relationship with Tricky was uncomfortable as was his place in the town where he resided. He thinks that Cardigan was used as place only because of the "shared syllabic patterning" and that Wordsworth might also have been borrowing from the poem of Evan Evans about Ifor Hael (151-152). This book chapter was useful in providing some interesting background information on " 'the great years' before 1815", how this information helped to shape the poems and how Wordsworth the poet fit in to that time frame (141).
--Laura Hutelmyer