Hidden Mothers in Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode
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This paper addresses the recurring critical issue of the Immortality Ode: the contradiction between the first eight stanzas and the last three in terms of tone and assertion. Unlike many critics who, despite the contradiction, still try to find unity between the two parts, this paper offers a biographical explanation in suggesting the poem as a two-part structure. The first part is argued to have been written at the time of the guilt-ridden and not necessarily autonomous decision about the poet’s future spouse between Annette and Mary. Under the circumstances, the poet’s latent psychological protestation or regret takes the form of exalting childhood. The second part, on the other hand, was written when the poet was psychologically stable because he had come to some sort of understanding with Annette, now settled comfortably to his new married life. As such, the poet, no longer resisting his life as a man, exalts his memory of both beautiful and sad moments of his past life whose true or “philosophic” meaning is finally understood. Thus, the second part of the poem becomes the focus of the Ode as a devotional expression of a lost and hence all the more unforgettable young days of “splendor” and “glory,” with beauty and resonance unparalleled in literary history.
Abstract
This paper addresses the recurring critical issue of the Immortality Ode: the contradiction between the first eight stanzas and the last three in terms of tone and assertion. Unlike many critics who, despite the contradiction, still try to find unity between the two parts, this paper offers a biographical explanation in suggesting the poem as a two-part structure. The first part is argued to have been written at the time of the guilt-ridden and not necessarily autonomous decision about the poet’s future spouse between Annette and Mary. Under the circumstances, the poet’s latent psychological protestation or regret takes the form of exalting childhood. The second part, on the other hand, was written when the poet was psychologically stable because he had come to some sort of understanding with Annette, now settled comfortably to his new married life. As such, the poet, no longer resisting his life as a man, exalts his memory of both beautiful and sad moments of his past life whose true or “philosophic” meaning is finally understood. Thus, the second part of the poem becomes the focus of the Ode as a devotional expression of a lost and hence all the more unforgettable young days of “splendor” and “glory,” with beauty and resonance unparalleled in literary history.
참고문헌 (18)
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