Components of the imaginative process and the shift towards metaphor in Wordsworth's The Prelude.
Many critics offer discussions of the Wordsworthian spots of time, yet rarely place them in the context of the various editions of William Wordsworth's The Prelude. This thesis will examine the spot of time as a process rather than an event and then make distinctions between the central imaginative moments in the early and later editions of The Prelude. The creative process of Wordsworth's 1799 "Two-Part Prelude" may be divided into three components, called "moments" in this thesis, each associated with a particular mental and emotional state. The first, the charged moment, occurs in the real perceptual world of the poet and carries with it a high degree of emotion. The reflective moment occurs in the mental world of the poet and, therefore, results in a vicarious, emotional experience. The last, the imaginative moment, marks the point at which the mind brings the experience of the past to the present, unifying memory and consciousness to produce an affirmative, restorative, and meaningful symbol. Thus the spot of time is a composite figure. Connected to these moments are three continua representing the self-consciousness and identity of the poet and the balance of metonymy and metaphor (realism and myth) of the poetic text. The spot of time allows the poet to increase his self-awareness and consolidate his sense of identity and, therefore, may be termed meta-epiphanic. In the context of the three major editions of The Prelude, the 1799, 1805, and 1850 texts, differences may be seen between imaginative moments based on childhood memories and moments based on adult memories. The former tend to display a shift from the experience of the sublime to that of the beautiful, in contrast to the adult imaginative moments, which show more of the immediate experience of the beautiful. Furthermore, the spots of time are linked more to childhood imaginative moments whereas events like the Snowdon vision are linked to adult imaginative moments. From these distinctions, the conclusion arises that the earlier 1799 edition of The Prelude emphasizes the spots-of-time imaginative process and balances realism and myth, and that the later 1805 and 1850 editions emphasize the Snowdon epiphany and employ a greater degree of metaphor, both in smaller and larger structures of the texts. In other words, the later editions show the typological features inherent in autobiography.
Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850. Prelude., Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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