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Generating a national sublime: Wordsworth's The River Duddon and The Guide to the Lakes.(William Wordsworth)

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From: Studies in Romanticism
Date: 20060322
Author:Kim, Benjamin

GENERALLY CONSIDERED, 1820 IS WELL PAST THE ZENITH OF WORDSWORTH'S power as a poet. Both The River Duddon and The Guide to the Lakes, appearing together in 1820, are usually read in comparison with, and in terms of, work written very close to the century mark, as narratives of self and as celebrations of Wordsworth's blessed region. In Wordsworth's Poetry, Geoffrey Hartman writes that "the distance between 'After-thought' [the closing poem in The River Duddon] and 'Tintern Abbey' is not great." (1) For Hartman, "After-thought" displays that old apocalyptic fire which is generally ...

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