Wordsworth's 'The Haunted Tree': a political and dialogical reading

Abstract

When located in the times and circumstances of composition and publication, a poem may have a different meaning from the one conventionally associated with it, either because of its appearances in other locations, or in light of traditional or common themes and ideas in the work of the poet. Thus a poem, even when it seems to be an imaginative, meditative nature poem, may be seen as entering a disguised dialogue with contemporary poets, companions, politics and political figures, and as such presenting an internalised response through a personalised or domestic setting to contemporary socio-political issues. This is especially true during Wordsworth's later years when his political and public activism was at its height, and when he used his poetry as a vehicle to express his Burkean political conservatism. This article is an attempt to read the present poem, a relatively unknown poem, precisely in these terms.