“Never nearer to the goal”: Wordsworth, Sympathy, and the Wandering Jew

<p>When the second edition of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s <em>Lyrical Ballads </em>was published in 1800, it contained nearly triple the number of poems as the first volume. Wordsworth’s “Song for the Wandering Jew” was one of these newly added poems. There are a number of influences at work in the poem, chief among these is the narrative of the Wandering Jew alluded to in the poem’s title. In regards to work written on Jews in Romantic-era English literature, little scholarship has addressed the figure of the Wandering Jew. “Song for the Wandering Jew” may seem to be an outlier in <em>Lyrical Ballads </em>for its brevity, desolate tone, titular dedication, and biblical engagement. But I argue that considering the poem alongside the history and text of the Wandering Jew ballads reveals the 1800 poem as paradigmatically Wordsworthian. In “Song,” the figure of the Wandering Jew allows Wordsworth to connect Judaic thought and his own views on Nature, God, and Humanity. I argue that in so doing, Wordsworth’s poem establishes what one might call an ecosystem of sympathy that joins ideas of man and nature, Jew and Christian, isolation and connectivity, understanding and prejudice, into a work of great compassion. In turn, Wordsworth’s poem calls attention to the anti-Judaic nature of the Wandering Jew figure and subverts the stereotypes that serve as its foundation.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2020

Author dc:creator

• Germenis, Matthew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Emily Stanback
• Dr. Jonathan Barron
• Dr. Nicolle Jordan

• romanticism
• william wordsworth
• 19th-century poetry
• wandering jew
• sympathy
• Literature in English, British Isles

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/724

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1784