Language and Imagery of Harmony in Wordsworth's Prelude
Wordsworth’s long poem, The Prelude, repays the kind of close study which our age likes to look upon as being peculiar­ly its own, the deep probing of a text for new or enriched mean­ings on successive levels0 This study will discuss one such enrichment of meaning, the language and imagery of harmony, especially as it is related to the structure of meaning of the poem The Prelude. The structure of the poem suggests the topic. In Books I to VIII and III to XIV, there are numerous instances in which Wordsworth uses the word harmony, a derivative, or a related term to implement the meaning of the narrative. The word harmony does not occur, however, in Books II to XI, those concerned with the spiritual crisis which the poet underwent as a result of the frustration of his hopes in the French Revolution and, thereafter, England's declaration of war on France further, in these books, words which indicate a lack of harmonious relationship are frequently used, as are words with which the poet has already established an association of harmony but in these Books uses instead to indicate discord. In her chapter on Wordsworth's theory of Imagery, Florence Marsh states that "...Wordsworth seldom if ever clearly differentiated figurative Imagery from language." Neither is there an attempt to make such a differentiation in this study, since his could have little apparent bearing on the relationship of this language and imagery to the structure of meaning. Nor have I followed the painstaking method of Josephine Miles, which consists in counting ".certain words or types of words in a poetic work, to discover predominances. One may observe the contexts of these words to find recurring types of connection and alliance." Miss Miles has done this with Wordsworth’s vocabulary of emotion; the relationship of this topic to the characteristics of the Romantic period as a whole undoubtedly justifies such an exhaustive statistical study. However, the abstract quality of the word harmony; the difficulties involved in selecting and rejecting related words, an arbitrary process at best; and the initial emphasis on structure of meaning, make such a method impracticable for this study.
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