"I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this. . . ."
      --John Stuart Mill

We begin our studies with William Wordsworth. Of his importance, Henry G. Battenhouse, in English Romantic Writers (Barron's 1958), notes that

He comes first in time and rank. The depth and the durability of his best work have earned him a place next to Shakespeare and Milton. He is an original poet whose thoughts, beginning with himself, find their ultimate expression in stately poems of objective reality--the dual yet integrated reality of the natural world and the divine spirit. (58-59)

As you read through the introductory material (219-21), you will gain a better sense of Wordsworth and his contribution to English poetry. Pay particular attention to the significance of Lyrical Ballads and to the ideas of "emotion recollected in tranquility" and "spots of time." You will find more on these and Wordsworth's poetic method in the introduction to the "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads (238-39).

Before you read "Tintern Abbey," click here for a brief explanation of the poem. (You should also review this information carefully after reading the poem.)

Because we will read only a brief selection from The Prelude, you will want to go over the themes discussed on pages 303-05. Of particular importance to an understanding of both Wordsworth and of the Romantics overall is the following:

Wordsworth's recurrent metaphor is that of a journey, whose end--as T. S. Eliot put it in Four Quartets . . . -- is in its beginning, and in which it turns out that the end of the journey is "to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." (304)

This circular metaphor is closely allied with what we now term the Hegelian dialectic, conceived by G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), a German idealist philosopher who had a major influence on nineteenth-century thought. Consider this brief summary of the dialectical method, which involves the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis:

The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. . . . The thesis . . . might be an idea or a historical movement. Such an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and the antithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the process of intellectual or historical development is continually generated. (Microsoft Encarta ^© 1993)

As we continue our study of the Romantics, and their concern with the "reconciliation of opposites," we will see just how important the dialectic is to Romantic thought.

^© Scott Foll 2000. All rights reserved.