Radcliffe and Wordsworth: Nature, Travel, and Memory
In preparation for my presentation on the character of M. St. Aubert in Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, I examined various passages from the novel's first few chapters which described St. Aubert's responses to nature in terms of the picturesque, the sublime, and sensibility. One passage which especially attracted my attention, but which ultimately fell outside the coverage of our group's presentation, is Radcliffe's account of St. Aubert's feelings about the "small estate in Gascony" (Radcliffe 6) where he and his family lived:
To this spot he had been attached from his infancy. He had often made excursions to it when he was a boy, and the impressions of delight given to his mind . . . had not been obliterated by succeeding circumstances. The green pastures along which he had so often bounded in the exultation of health, and youthful freedom - the woods, under whose refreshing shade he had first indulged that pensive melancholy . . . the wild walks of the mountains, the river, on whose waves he had floated, and the distant plains, which seemed boundless as his early hopes - were never after remembered by St. Aubert but with enthusiasm and regret. (Radcliffe 6)
This passage was interesting to me because many of the travel writings we have read so far tend to focus more on the travellers' immediate responses to relatively new and unfamiliar environments which they are visiting for the first time, rather than on a return to a familiar place or the memories evoked by those familiar places. However, St. Aubert's emotional responses to familiar places - as well as his responses to less familiar places he sees on his travels - form a significant part of his characte...
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...remembered them when we had been there before - in a similar manner to the way in which Wordsworth does this in Tintern Abbey. As well, though on the more recent trips I have been more acutely aware of the ways in which my relationships with my family have changed over the years - perhaps a side effect of travelling with three other people in a small space for a period of ten days - it is still easy for me to sympathize with Radcliffe's evocation of "the memory of those we love . . . all tender and harmonious as this landscape" (47).
Works Cited
Radcliffe, Ann. The Mysteries of Udolpho. 1794. Ed. Jacqueline Howard. London: Penguin, 2001.
Wordsworth, William. "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, 13 July 1798." 1798. Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 265-269.
Memories can in a way define who we are and how we progress through life. Memories can be a pathway to either follow the straight and narrow or to have us decide which fork of the road to take. Past memories can help to identify a person and can effect the future that follows. Through the journy of self discovery, Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow and Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory suggest one must relive past and present memories to find their true identity in the future.
The life of a man is fulfilled without the aid of his mind, with its backward and forward movements, at one and the same time its solitude and its presences. To see these men of Belcourt working, protecting their wives and children, and often without a reproach, I think one can feel a secret shame. To be sure, I have no illusions about it. There is not much love in the lives I am speaking of. I ought to say that not much remains. But at least they have evaded nothing. (p. 153)
3. Maureen, Cutajar. "Poetry analysis: The Prelude, by William Wordsworth." Helium. N.p., 2009. Web. 4 Mar 2012.
In “Tintern Abbey”, the poem circles back to the speaker’s past by addressing his “dear Sister! (Wordsworth 121)”, saying, “I behold in thee what I once was (Wordsworth 120)”, from which we can imagine his sister is playing among the trees as he once did during his childhood. He hopes that his value will not fade, but live on through her, and that her memory of it shall also be “a dwelling place / For all sweet sounds and harmonies (Wordsworth 141-142)”, demonstrating a revival of memory that reflects upon nature’s cyclic processes as presented in “Ode to the West Wind”. Wordsworth poem also alludes to the social miseries in urban cities and resulting unrest across Europe around the French revolution as the speaker mourns the loss of his and his sister’s childhood and the change time brings.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamounix." 1816. Romanticism: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 845-849.
There are many thoughts and memories that I still retain from my childhood. Many have given me new experiences and taught me lessons that have helped me grow. My great Auntie Anne has provided me with several memories, which I still recall occasionally. What are most difficult to forget are the memories of the times in her home. I have never found a home like hers. The memories I obtained outside of the cottage, in the main entrance, in the old library, and in the secret room are the memories most difficult to forget.
William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey As students, we are taught that William Wordsworth's basic tenets of poetry are succinct: the use of common language as a medium, common man as a subject, and organic form as an inherent style. Yet beyond these rudimentary teachings, it should be considered that it was the intimacy with nature that was imperative to the realization of Wordsworth's goals set forth in the "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads. In his "Preface," Wordsworth states, "Poetry is the image of man and nature" (Norton 247). A study of "Tintern Abbey," the intended finale and last impression of the Lyrical Ballads, reveals Wordsworth's conviction that the role of nature is the force and connection that binds mankind not only to the past and the future, but to other human beings as well. Regardless of the language employed, the subject used, or the method of delivery, it was the primal connection with nature that fueled Wordsworth's poetic genius.
In his poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” Wordsworth recaptures his admiration for Tintern Abbey, a place on the banks of the River Wye in Southeast Wakes. He discusses how he hasn’t visited Tintern Abbey in five years, yet he remembers every detail of the landscape and every feeling he experienced when he was younger. Wordsworth writes, “These beauteous forms, / Through a long absence, have not been to me /As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:” (23-25). Wordsworth is telling the audience that this is not a new unfamiliar scene to him, as it would be for a blind man, but instead a beautiful familiar picture and though it has been a long time he remembers it vividly. As he describes the landscape, he uses words such as “tranquil” and “pleasures” to emphasize the beauty and joy he receives from the land. With such description, Wordsworth conveys to the audience a tone of appreciation and fondness. The reader knows that Wordsworth has a great love for this place.
Romantic poetry conjures in the mind of many people images of sweet, pastoral landscapes populated by picturesque citizens who live in quaint houses in rustic villages, with sheep grazing on green-swathed hills, while a young swain plights his troth to his fair young maiden, who reclines demurely amidst the clover and smiles sunnily. William Wordsworth is perhaps the archetypal Romantic poet; his most famous poem, "I wandered lonely as a cloud", would seem on first reading to support the traditional, one could say stereotypical, image of a Romantic poet. Even his name, Words-worth, reinforces that image. And yet, upon looking more closely and carefully at his works, it becomes clear that the emotions which motivate his creativity are not solely a love of nature and pastorality.
Wordsworth, William. "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads." Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 357-366.
At the end of the 18th century, after founding the Romantic movement, William Wordsworth wrote the poem " I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud".
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge spearheaded a philosophical writing movement in England in the late 18th and early 19th century. Although Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge are often considered the fathers of the English Romantic movement, their collective theologies and philosophies were often criticized but rarely taken serious by the pair of writers due to their illustrious prestige as poets. The combined effort in the Lyrical Ballads catapulted their names into the mainstream of writers in 1798 and with this work; they solidified their place in English literature. Although, most people fail to note that the majority of Coleridge's and Wordsworth's work was him simply bending and breaking particular rules of poetry that were in place during his time and in order to fully understand his work, one must fully understand his views of poetry itself.
Wordsworth, William. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. London, 1888. Bartleby.com. 18 May 2006 .
In the story of Alice in Wonderland we follow Alice down a rabbit hole into a land of pure wonder, where the logic of a little girl holds no sway. In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, we witness exactly the opposite as Emma Bovary, a most romantic creature, is purposely cast into a harshly realistic world. In either case, a creature is put into an environment unnatural to her disposition, yet in Flaubert’s example, Emma shares the world we inhabit, and thus the message her story brings is much more pertinent. To convey this message, Flaubert replicates not a world of fantasy, but rather the real world, with all its joy, sadness, and occasional monotony intact. Then he proceeds to dump an exaggeratedly sentimental woman, Bovary, with the training, appearance, and expectations of an heiress, into the common mire and leave her there to flounder in the reality of middle class life as a farmer’s daughter. From Madame Bovary’s reactions within this realistic situation, and from the novel’s outcome, a message is rendered concerning romanticism itself, and its misplacement in a cacophonous and uncomplimentary world.
The author has attempted to present to the readers a number of poets and their contribution to the traditional theme of nature and landscape. In this critical analysis however, a lot more discussion should have been centered around our main poet of study, Wordsworth and the poem Tintern Abbey.