Auden as Literary Evolutionist: Wordsworth's Dream and the Fate of Romanticism

Abstract

ion as well as barbaric, inchoate matter-and replaces them with a single indissoluble unity. But because of its intuitive nature, this unity is not the product of a universally logical process but rather a sacred radical of the individually creative imagination. Thus the isologous symbol paradoxically defeats rational empiricism at its own game by elevating the referential aspect of romantic poetics, yet at the same time puts that referentiality beyond understanding, hence beyond analysis or criticism. This is both defense against the inroads of irreverent inquiry and compensation for the confusion of the romantic lexicon. Romanticism's theory of emotional motivation complements the isologous symbol by replacing the concept of literature as an arrangement of conventions or devices with the concept of literature as a series of inevitable yet mysterious relations. Because of the polysemous quality of the symbol, the number of these relations is greatly increased. The actual analysis of the second lecture centers upon Auden's discussion of one particular symbol, the Pequod in Moby-Dick, and the purpose of this analysis is to show that romantic practice does not conform to romantic theory. Any symbol, Auden implies, can be naturalized; that is, the referentiality denied in isology can be re-introduced by supplying a signified for the signifier. In the case of the Pequod, Auden finds such naturalization in various elaborations of the now familiar quest of postrenaissance man for freedom from a false and trivial necessity (i.e., life on shore) and subjection to a true and meaningful one (i.e., life on ship). Auden greatly simplifies his task by taking the Pequod as his example of a symbol; the white whale eventually endures a similar fate of naturalization, but it must await that fate until the third lecture. Once the claim to isology has been dismissed through naturalization, it becomes apparent that, despite their strongly affective quality, romantic