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Reading idiocy: Wordsworth's "The Idiot Boy".(William Wordsworth)

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From: Wordsworth Circle
Date: 20070622
Author:Gonsalves, Joshua

Wordsworth loved writing and re-reading "The Idiot Boy": "I wrote the poem with exceeding delight and pleasure, and whenever I read it I read it with pleasure" (ed. Hill, 52). I shall investigate this "exceeding delight and pleasure" in the light of three contexts--the Enlightenment understanding of idiocy, Platonic philosophy and Robert Southey--insofar as all three pose a challenge to the psychoanalytic assumption that Wordsworth, in loving this poem, was regressing to a frustrated desire for his dead mother. (1) Among other things, this reading overlooks how the simple ...

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