Wordsworth's often chose a model for his narrative structure that resembled a river. This allowed him to emphasize the differences between his text and retrospectively processed narratives. When looking at a river, the flow happens in the opposite direction as in a forking path, which changes the suggestion of the model and makes a river a more apt metaphor for prospective texts. In a path model, the possible options are ever increasing when looking to the future, but only one option can be followed. This gives the person traveling a series of choices that decide an otherwise indeterminate future. A river highlights the simultaneous contributions of many small tributaries, all of which travel unavoidably toward the same predetermined end. In a text with a plot that is structured like a river, there is no guesswork involved about which path the plot might take. There is always one point toward which all the plot elements will come together (Morgan, 2008).
In one scene of Wordsworth's Prelude, the personified Nature encourages the young Wordsworth to steal a boat and then admonishes him for failing to resist the urge. Even though in this scene the young Wordsworth only focused on the method that Nature used to correct him, the adult Wordsworth saw the contradiction and believed that Nature used this event to guide him and help him understand and control his human desires. Also in the process, it demonstrated that the relationship between an individual and nature is the same as that of parent and child (Wordsworth's "Prelude," 2007). This scene emphasized the contrast between the nature of an individual person and Nature, along with the experience and the perception of the child and adult. It is through these contrasts that Wordsworth demonstrates that his awareness of his surroundings was influenced by...
Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic conception. Here we must, to a certain degree, accept Harold Bloom's thesis that Victorian poetry represents a revisionary response to the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism, and particularly that of Wordsworth. The
Thompson "Disenchantment or Default?: A Lay Sermon," The Romantics. In the article "Disenchantment or Default?: A Lay Sermon," author E.P. Thompson explores the restoration of literary works by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Specifically, Thompson is interested in the moment when the poet became politically aware and disenchanted with the environs around him, turning his distaste into pieces of literature. While making his argument, Thompson delves heavily into the possible psychological profile of
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