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A NEW QUICKENING SHALL SUCCEED: MULTIPLICITY AND REVOLUTION IN THE PRELUDE

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Date Issued:
2010
Summary:
This project explores the ways in which William Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805) constructs a discourse in verse that challenges the conventional discourse of society. By countering this institutionalization of mankind, the poem creates a space for thought that resists the limitations of established configurations of the subject and the social body. My reading begins with an investigation of history as a discourse that produces socio-political subjection by envisioning revolution through existing, tyrannical terms. This reading then focuses on The Prelude's verse and its theorization of the social body as a multiplicity that resists systematic terms. I read the poem's treatments of London in Books VII and VIII as evidence of shift in the poet figure's relationship to the social body. The seminal point of this shift is the Arab Dream passage of Book V, which marks an apocalyptic overwhelming of the poet's consciousness and a critique of the poet's investment in social convention as the discourse through which he knows himself and his role within society. The poet figure of The Prelude only lays claim to a revolutionary discourse once he recognizes the creative potential of multiplicity and recognizes social convention as an impediment to thought and social relationships.
Title: A NEW QUICKENING SHALL SUCCEED: MULTIPLICITY AND REVOLUTION IN THE PRELUDE.
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Name(s): Carroll, Anna Jane, Author
Type of Resource: text
Date Issued: 2010
Publisher: University of West Florida
Language(s): English
Summary: This project explores the ways in which William Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805) constructs a discourse in verse that challenges the conventional discourse of society. By countering this institutionalization of mankind, the poem creates a space for thought that resists the limitations of established configurations of the subject and the social body. My reading begins with an investigation of history as a discourse that produces socio-political subjection by envisioning revolution through existing, tyrannical terms. This reading then focuses on The Prelude's verse and its theorization of the social body as a multiplicity that resists systematic terms. I read the poem's treatments of London in Books VII and VIII as evidence of shift in the poet figure's relationship to the social body. The seminal point of this shift is the Arab Dream passage of Book V, which marks an apocalyptic overwhelming of the poet's consciousness and a critique of the poet's investment in social convention as the discourse through which he knows himself and his role within society. The poet figure of The Prelude only lays claim to a revolutionary discourse once he recognizes the creative potential of multiplicity and recognizes social convention as an impediment to thought and social relationships.
Identifier: WFE0000199 (IID), uwf:60863 (fedora)
Note(s): 2010-05-01
M.A.
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Masters
Subject(s): Wordsworth, British Romanticism, Revolution
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/uwf/fd/WFE0000199
Restrictions on Access: public
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
Host Institution: UWF

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