Wordswrth's Prelude and the Sublime and Beautiful

Abstract

<p>The categories of the Sublime and the Beautiful, popularized during the eighteenth century, are central to Wordswordth's major poem The Prelude. In this poem, phrases which pair off fear or terror and love obviously recall Burke's theory of the Sublime as having to do with ideas of self-preservation and the beautiful with ideas of love and society. In book 1 of The Prelude Wrdsworth interprets his formative experiences in terms of solitude and society. experiences of fear and friendship. This interpretation governs the entire poem, though in the final books Wordsworth deprecates his tendency to respond excessively to the sublime. Other ideas of the sublime than Burke's also affected his powerfully. The theme of the mind's steady acquisition of power through The Prelude; it is stated at the conclusion of book VII and in the "Climbing of snowdom" episode of book XIII. This there is a modification of the 17th and 18th century, which examines the mind's attributes to the mind's activities when it confronts grand and wast forms, and attributes to the mind capacities of expansion and elevation. In this own essay, "The Sublime and the Beautiful", belonging to the same period as his Guide to the Lakes, Wordsworth elaborated this idea, claiming that the mind is likely to respond in terms of either awe or elevation when it confronts forms combining "individuality of form" with "duration" and "power". In The Prelude significant experience, involving the arousal and excersie of imagination, generally arises from some combination of simplicity, duration and power in phenomena. Wordsworth's interest in the sublime and beautiful developed through conventional, sensationalist response to the mountaous Lake district environment of his boyhood, and to the alpine regon he visited in 1790. But gradually he evolved a series of laws, stated in "The Sublime and the Beautiful" and implied in The Prelude, which accounted for the imaginative significance of sublime phenomena in terms of their ability to suggest unity, infinity and power. These qualities, once precieved, provided emblems of the imagination, explores its powers, and links it with sublimity. At the end of the poem, however, Wordsworth attaches equal importance to love and beauty. After the crisis of the French Revolution his sister Dorthy, Marry Hutchinson and Coleridge helped to restore his faith in man and nature by directing his attention to the beautiful. The Prelude therefore suggests that the beautiful is fundamentally important in promoting moral and spiritual health. But the poem's major theme is the growth of a poet's mind and imagination, and it is the sublime that is consistently yoked with imaginative vitality.</p>