Wordsworth and the World: Teaching Postsecular Romanticism in the Humanities

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on William Wordsworth’s sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us’, as a case study, I consider the ways that the longstanding assumptions of the secularisation thesis from M.H. Abrams and elsewhere have framed anthologies and syllabi of Romantic literary studies. Such structural constraints have limited the theological readings of Romanticism that can be plausible in the classroom, regardless of the nuance and complexity of postsecular research and theory emerging across 19th-century scholarship. Departing from a disciplinary literature classroom as its default, I discuss the broader and more vibrant possibilities for rereading Wordsworth’s sonnet within Villanova University’s innovative Humanities department, whose interdisciplinary and question-driven curriculum keeps theological and philosophical inquiries open and alive. Further, its syllabi pair Wordsworth with voices ranging from St Augustine to Howard Thurman to Abraham Heschel. Such an educational setting allows for attunement to possible ways that the frustrated lyric voice still feels a spiritual call towards the supernatural in nature despite the imminent discourses of the age—a romantic revision that reopens horizons for both teaching and scholarship.