Description
Book SynopsisThis book considers William Wordsworth’s use of iconography in his long poem
The Excursion. Through the iconographical approach, the author steers a middle course between
The Excursion’s two very different interpretive traditions, one focusing upon the poem’s philosophical abstraction, the other upon its touristic realism. Fresh readings are also offered of Wordsworth’s other major works, including
The Prelude.
Yen explores Wordsworth’s iconography in
The Excursion by tracing allusions and correspondences in an abundance of post-1789 and earlier verbal and pictorial sources, as well as in Wordsworth’s prose and poetry. He analyses how the iconographical images in
The Excursion contribute to, and impose limitations on, the overarching preoccupations of Wordsworth’s writings, particularly the themes of paradise lost and paradise regained in the post-revolutionary context. Shedding light on a vital aspect of Wordsworth’s poetic method, this study reveals the visual etymologies – together with the nuances and rhetorical capacities – of five categories of apparently ‘collateral’ images: envisioning, rooting, dwelling, flowing, and reflecting.
Trade Review'Yen’s rich and fascinating study of
The Excursion builds on Fiona Stafford’s recent revaluing of the local to focus on “the quiet functioning of local detail” at a linguistic and metaphorical level through mediated images of rural landscape. Yen works sensitively within the form of the long poem, with its extended passages of argument and reflection, to tease out “intratextual and intertextual recurrences” that resonate across the whole. Across five categories of “envisioning”; “rooting”, “dwelling”, “flowing”, and “reflecting” Yen pulls out the threads of allusion that link the language of the text into larger political events of the time, arguing for an iconographic power held in the figurative language of landscape. Methodologically sophisticated, the work both draws on and challenges the tenets of New Historicism so that, rather than displacing history, it seeks to awaken the history inherent within the allusive force of landscape imagery through a process of iconological interpretation. The writing is characterised by a remarkable attention to nuances of meaning, whilst the interpretation of political cartoons and symbols of the French Revolution grounds the argument in visual evidence. Brandon Yen’s study treats
The Excursion with the respect it deserves as a major work of the late Revolutionary period.'
Sally Bushell, Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature, Lancaster University.
‘It is a crucial book for students of
The Excursion, but its positioning of that poem will also revitalize study of Wordsworth more generally… Yen’s impressively researched book should prompt critics to return to
The Excursion with fresh eyes.’
David Stewart,
European Romantic Review‘An outstanding and persistent feature of the book is Yen’s seamless integration of the poetry into his prose. This creates a hybrid voice, at once presenting the poetry for reconsideration and providing an enlightening interpretation of it. Ultimately, through this hybrid voice, Yen emerges as an advocate for renewed and increased scholarly attention to
The Excursion.’
Brandon Wernette,
The BARS Review'The most ambitious, learned, wide-ranging, and important book on
The Excursion to date, one that firmly establishes the poem as the central text in Wordsworth’s re-imagining of British iconographic tradition and his reconfiguring of the post-revolutionary landscape.'
Alison Hickey,
The Review of English Studies‘Yen matches the number and complexity of Wordsworth’s local details with his own. I found the iconographical lens most productive in chapter 4, where Yen explicates a political tension within the iconography of rural cottages.’ Lawrence Evalyn, Eighteenth-Century Fiction
'Yen takes a risk in downplaying the literal in Wordsworth and in locating a “new direction” not in new materials but in new modes of reading.' Lawrence Evalyn, Northeastern University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
IntroductionPart 1: Themes and Iconography
The Excursion, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained
Wordsworth's IconographyPart 2: Envisioning
Introduction
Castles in the Air
Light and Ascent
‘Speculative Height’
The Wanderer's RevisitingPart 3: Rooting
Introduction
Oak, Mountain Ash, the Liberty Tree
Two Ironic Images
A Cosmopolitan VisionPart 4: Dwelling
Introduction
The Devon Cottage and the Lakeland Cottage
The Cottage of the ‘Wedded Pair’
The Widower’s Cottage
The ‘Cabinet for Sages Built’Part 5: Flowing and Reflecting
Introduction
Flowing
ReflectingBibliographyIndex
