Home at Grasmere

We've now reached the point in Wordsworth's career when he is firmly ensconced in the Lake District.  Found here:

The vale of Grasmere:

The Wordsworth reside at Dove Cottage until 1808:
http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/history/index.asp?pageid=36

Clips from Pandaemonium, Film on Wordy and Coleridge

Frost at Midnight and Coleridge and the Wordsworth talk poetics:

The Historical Development of Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads has a complex publication history.  Notice that the above title page of the first edition lacks the names of its authors.  As we'll discuss in class today, the subsequent editions are not so coy.  The later editions, too, offer increasing signs that Wordsworth means this book to mark a turning point in the history of poetics.

More on these issues can be found in this excellent electronic edition: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/preface.html

Gilpin's Observations on the River Wye

For tourists visiting Tintern Abbey, including Wordsworth, Gilpin's Observations was the travel book.  Here's a selection dealing with the approach to and visit within the abbey:


Such is the situation of Tintern-abbey. It occupies a great eminence in the middle of a circular valley, beautifully screened on all sides by woody hills, through which the river winds its course; and the hills, closing on its entrance and on its exit, leave no room for inclement blasts to enter. A more pleasing retreat could not easily be found. The woods and glades intermixed; the winding of the river; the variety of the ground; the splendid ruin, contrasted with the objects of nature; and the elegant line formed by the summits of the hills which include the whole, make all together a very enchanting piece of scenery. Every thing around breathes an air so calm and tranquil, so sequestered from the commerce of life, that it is easy to conceive a man of warm imagination, in monkish times, might have been allured by such a scene to become an inhabitant of it.
[…]
But if Tintern-abbey be less striking as a distant object, it exhibits, on a nearer view (when the whole together cannot be seen) a very enchanting piece of ruin. The eye settles upon some of its nobler parts. Nature has now made it her own. Time has worn off all traces of the chisel: it has blunted the sharp edges of the rule and compass, and broken the regularity of opposing parts. The figured ornaments of the east-window are gone; those of the west-window are left. Most of the other windows, with their principal ornaments, remain.
To these were superadded the ornaments of time. Ivy, in masses uncommonly large, had taken possession of many parts of the wall; and given a happy contrast to the grey-coloured stone of which the building is composed: nor was this undecorated. Mosses of various hues, with lichens, maiden-hair, penny-leaf, and other humble plants, had over-spread the surface, or hung from every joint and crevice. Some of them were in flower, others only in leaf; but all together gave those full-blown tints which add the richest finishing to a ruin.
[…]
When we stood at one end of this awful piece of ruin, and surveyed the whole in one view — the elements of air and earth, its only covering and pavement; and the grand and venerable remains which terminated both; perfect enough to form the perspective, yet broken enough to destroy the regularity — the eye was above measure delighted with the beauty, the greatness, and the novelty of the scene. More picturesque it certainly would have been, if the area, unadorned, had been left with all its rough fragments of ruin scattered round; and bold was the hand that removed them: yet as the outside of the ruin, which is the chief object of picturesque curiosity, is still left in all its wild and native rudeness, we excuse, perhaps we approve, the neatness that is introduced within: it may add to the beauty of the scene; to its novelty it undoubtedly does.


You can read more on Gilpin here: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_1/riverwye.htm

J. M. W. Turner and Tourism, Tintern Abbey ca. 1795

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/j/jmw_turner,_tintern_abbey.aspx

When Wordsworth composes his "Lines" a few miles from Tintern Abbey, he's noting a spot that many readers will know either by first-hand experience or through pictures and accounts transmitted by tourists.  Turner is arguably the most important British artist of the early nineteenth century (if not the century as a whole).  Notice that Turner depicts Tintern Abbey as a not only a fascinating blend of light, life, and history but also a tourist attraction.

There's a nice Norton website about the tourist culture of the later eighteenth century found here: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_1/welcome.htm

Context for Lyrical Ballads: Percy's Reliques (+short reading assignment)

In the eighteenth century, the English evince a rising interest in their own literary past.  Antiquaries gathered old songs from various provinces, effectively converting local oral culture into a national literate one.  No publication was more important in this development than The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (also called "Percy's Reliques"), edited by Bishop Thomas Percy (1st ed., 1765).  The book was celebrated, reprinted several times during the remainder of the century.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were both profoundly impacted by this book, particularly by its manifold displays of the ballad form (more on this form this week).  Prior to reading Coleridge's "Rime," please read "Sir Patrick Spens" (printed as "Sir Patrick Spence" in Percy) a very popular poem that appeared in Percy's book: http://www.exclassics.com/percy/perc15.htm