William Wordsworths Poem in The Speaker of the Prelude by Mark Reed - Article Example

Argument Analysis – Mark Reed In his article en d “The Speaker of the Prelude,” Mark Reed argues that the seemingly piecemeal compilation of William Wordsworth’s lengthy poem The Prelude is an integral aspect of the work. Throughout the article, Reed works to prove that this sporadic approach demonstrates through structure the growth and change that Wordsworth is attempting to describe in the action. The poem has long been a source of intense study by scholars because of its unsure status as a stand-alone piece or as a portion of a larger and uncompleted whole. Not only is it among the longest poems ever written, consisting of approximately 13 books (depending on the edition being used – later revised versions reached 14 books), The Prelude was also intended to serve as an introduction to a greater work Wordsworth envisioned. Throughout the work, Wordsworth changes tone, voice, tense and subject frequently, making any attempts to treat the poem as a work in and of itself nearly impossible. However, Reed, through his argument, attempts to show that this changeful nature is the unifying factor by bringing attention to the transient nature of life itself. Reed begins this argument by illustrating the various aspects of the poem that have prevented earlier scholars from attempting to develop an understanding of the work as a whole, illustrating the dissecting nature of the initial premises upon which these attempts were based. One approach taken is based on the fact that the work is essentially an autobiography of the artist and therefore follows his life story as Wordsworth remembered it rather than developing along a straightforward line of action. The extended period of time through which the poem was written is another argument scholars have used to prevent them from attempting to approach the work as a free-standing construction. The poem’s heavy revisions and obvious intention to be connected to a longer piece have further complicated the issue while the frequent shifts of character and tone indicate a need for further explanation lying outside the text. Acknowledging that all of these objections are valid to some extent, Reed indicates that while other approaches to the poem are helpful to developing an understanding of Wordsworth’s thoughts, an attempt to understand the poem as an artistic whole is necessary to truly understand Wordworth’s intentions. With this in mind, Reed justifies the importance of treating the poem as an artistic whole on the concepts that were linked to the poem by Wordsworth himself. Reed points out that both Wordsworth and his sister referred to The Prelude as a poem, complete and whole in itself, long before it was ever published and prior to some of the extensive revisions Wordsworth made in later years. This, he says, indicates more than anything that the poem was intended to be understood as an artistic work of its own rather than dependent upon a secondary source. Reed, illustrating the fastidiousness of Wordsworth regarding his art, insists Wordsworth would not have referred to The Prelude as complete, instead, he would have indicated the work as ‘started’, ‘begun’ or in some other stage of creation, appellation or development. Making a strong case on this point, Reed insists that an understanding of the poet’s intentions must necessarily take into account the artist’s impressions regarding the work, meaning that the work must be considered as a whole because Wordsworth considered it a whole. Recognizing that the changes in tone and stance present the greatest challenge to scholars attempting to read the poem as an artistic whole rather than a segment of a greater work, Reed concentrated on developing a plausible hypothesis regarding the reason Wordsworth included these seemingly out of place comments, “namely, his frequently interjected expressions of what appear to be the personal emotions or circumstances of the literal William Wordsworth either only shortly before or immediately in the act of writing: Such expressions, one might readily suppose, could not individually have made very specific parts of the poet’s settled formal intentions or ‘first conception.’” (279). These include personal messages to other writers, statements regarding Wordsworth’s own self-doubts and struggles as he wrote the work, and passing distractions that interrupt or prevent him from working for stretches of time. Rather than being examples of a lack of control on Wordsworth’s part or a complete inattentiveness to the art he was practicing, Reed argues that these comments are essential to understanding Wordsworth’s primary purpose in writing the poem, that of demonstrating the growth and development of a mature poetic mind. While the changes in character and tone have often been pointed to as evidence that Wordsworth was not conforming to the elements of poetry, Reed indicates that these seeming digressions into the present are instead Wordsworth’s attempts to demonstrate the full development of the poet’s mind, as he understood it. “Consciousness of, and efforts to draw attention to, the manifold ranges of not primarily aesthetic truths that may lie behind, and in, one’s art hardly in themselves imply indifference to its forms and techniques. The baldness that characterizes some of the Lyrical Ballads is the consequence not of carelessness but of an artistic ‘plan’ or ‘experiment.’ It was a man extremely concerned about the techniques by which he spoke to men” (277). Removing these seeming digressions and asides would remove the knowledge of hindsight and eliminate the possibility of illustrating the importance of various events and conclusions that would shape later actions and thoughts, thus reducing the understanding of the poetic mind’s true development. This final argument is further supported by a deep analysis of Book VI in which Reed illustrates that the thoughts of the literal Wordsworth are necessary to illustrate the deepened understanding and insight gained by the poet as he reflects upon the impressions and emotions felt during the actions described. In this passage of the poem, Wordsworth is describing his walking tour of Europe and the disillusionment he experiences while crossing the Alps. The commentary of the poet as he is writing become an expression of how the poet is created because it expresses his current abilities to comprehend his art and the lessons he learned as a younger man. “Just as Imagination, or its activity in the mature mind of man as represented by the speaker, apprehends the particulars of the speaker’s past personal experience within a creative vision, so the vocalization of what seem present or nearly present specifically personal facts or attitudes of the speaker is a continued expression of the ability of the imaginative mind to comprehend creatively these sorts of realities. To sum up, the Prelude is a poem that both describes the growth of Imagination and demonstrates the Imagination as a living and present mode of vision; the second function is realized not only through the creative action of the Imagination as it organizes the speaker’s past experience, including minute details, but also through its creative action as it expresses the nature of his present being, including its minute details” (280-281). Through his analysis, Reed demonstrates the importance of the literal Wordsworth to the understanding of the text as a whole. “Three main types of subject matter are synthesized: the physical realities of the original scene and action, the stretching of the overwhelmed responses of the travelers toward levels of insight beyond their present capacities, and the all-inclusive unifying force of the mature Imagination as it reveals itself in the poetic totality of the words and lines” (286). Removing one aspect of this presentation, such as the seemingly present comments of the writer as he is writing, removes this innate understanding of the growth process of the poetic mind and reduces the message of the poem as a whole. Works Cited Reed, Mark. “The Speaker of the Prelude.” Bicentenary Wordsworth Studies: In Memory of John Allen Finch. Jonathon Wordsworth (Ed.). 1970. Read More