Generating a National Sublime: Wordsworth's "The River Duddon" and "The Guide to the Lakes"

Abstract

GENERALLY CONSIDERED, 1820 IS WELL PAST THE ZENITH OF WORDSWORTH'S power as a poet. Both The River Duddon and The Guide to Lakes, appearing together in 1820, are usually read in comparison with, and in terms of, work written very close to century mark, as narratives of self and as celebrations of Wordsworth's blessed region. In Wordsworth's Poetry, Geoffrey Hartman writes that the 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 quenched in late work by a conventional religion that serves to quiet process of self-questioning. Hartman is generous toward After-thought, but poem's worth is nevertheless defined by a distance to work two-decades old, effectively portraying much of intervening time as a period of stagnation. James K. Chandler makes a similar appraisal when he opines that ideas of After-thought are essentially unchanged from those expressed in lines added to The Ruined Cottage between January and March of 1798. (2) Chandler's interest lies in Wordsworth's apostasy; once conversion has been made, Nature is Burkean, wisdom reflection. (3) Although central concerns of both critics' work are different, Chandler's reflection is something very close to Hartman's, tied to rupture of boundaries, not guarding of them. How else could nature in The River Duddon fit Chandler's characterization, as without reflection, when work's central trope is identification between poet, reader, and river? Daniel Robinson has recently summarized critical views of The River Duddon: ... critics still dismiss sequence as a conventionally didactic loco-descriptive poem of Wordsworth's later years. (4) There is something about Wordsworth's conservatism that invites one to take it on its own terms, as non-evolving and defensive. In September 1819, month following Peterloo, Wordsworth chose to write a sentimental poem noteworthy only for its deliberate exclusion of recent events: Yet will I temperately rejoice; / Wide is range, and free choice / Of undiscordant themes. (5) The late poetry is conventional in that it idealizes past and argues against social change, and it is didactic in its moralizing tone. But Wordsworth's choice to stress continuity and harmony does not necessarily mean that late work is unthinking, or that it is a watered-down repetition of earlier poetry. The effort to present an idealized Britain discord is a reaction that Wordsworth developed in response to domestic and international conflict, and this surface harmony is, I will argue, ideologically and philosophically complex. Contrary to their critical reception, The River Duddon and The Guide to Lakes are not simply celebrations of local. As expressions of nationalism, their burden is to encompass national through local, and they achieve this aim through an aesthetic that is highly theoretical. The River Duddon and The Guide have roots in times of Wordsworth's most sustained political activity, Peninsular War and Westmorland election of 1818, documented by three key prose works: Regarding Convention of Cintra (1809), (6) and Two Addresses to Freeholders of Westmorland (1818). The Guide to Lakes started from Wordsworth's introduction to Wilkinson's Select Views in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire (1810), but Theresa Kelley argues that Wordsworth began planning a guide to Lake District much earlier, in 1806. (7) As for Duddon sonnets, nineteen were written in 1818, year of Westmorland election. Two sonnets were recycled from an even earlier time and rewritten, including one previously entitled, Composed While Author Was Engaged in Writing a Tract Occasioned by Convention of Cintra. The grouping of The River Duddon and The Guide was more than arbitrary, despite their myriad origins. …