(Download) "J.H. Reynolds Re-Echoes the Wordsworthian Reputation: "Peter Bell," Remaking the Work and Mocking the Man (William Wordsworth) (Critical Essay)" by Studies in Romanticism " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: J.H. Reynolds Re-Echoes the Wordsworthian Reputation: "Peter Bell," Remaking the Work and Mocking the Man (William Wordsworth) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Studies in Romanticism
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 264 KB
Description
FOLLOWING THE PUBLICATION OF THE EXCURSION (1814) AND HIS COLLECTED Poems (1815), several of Wordsworth's reviewing critics and parodists became acutely wary of and satirically invested in how Wordsworth's poems were "bound each to each." (1) More specifically, along with J. H. Reynolds' parody "Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad" (1819), a handful of other Regency parodies call direct attention to the laborious and repetitious construction of Wordsworth's poetic oeuvre by singling out a particular Wordsworth poem as a pathetic, simplistic, and even ridiculous microcosm of his entire poetic works. (2) Undoubtedly, they developed this satirical part/whole focus in direct response to Wordsworth's own prose remarks about reading his poetry in his "Preface to The Excursion" (1814) and in the supplementary prose surrounding and connecting together his collected poetic works (1815). Most troubling for many of Wordsworth's contemporary readers was his claim in the "Preface to The Excursion" that The Excursion acts as the completed centerpiece for his fragmentary--and unpublished--epic The Recluse as well as the link connecting together all of his minor poetic pieces. (3) Responding to this poetic system, Wordsworth's parodists sought to effect a wholesale revision of the relationship between the part (a particular poem) and the whole (the entire projected Wordsworthian oeuvre). (4) Reynolds' "Peter Bell" certainly was neither the first, nor the last parody attempting to undermine Wordsworth's poetic authority. From the appearance of Lyrical Ballads (1800) to the first half of the 1830s, Wordsworth was, arguably, the most parodied poet of his age, inviting responses that critiqued his subject matter, poetic diction, uses of genres, political inclinations, and choice of poetic associates. Most prominently, the business of parodying Wordsworth's poetry took off after the publication of Poems of William Wordsworth (1807)--his first major collection solely made up of his own poetry. (5) This two-volume edition was met with a surge of negative publicity, erupting from the review culture, contemporary poets, and the general reading public. (6) Although Wordsworth suffered emotionally and economically at the hands of his critics, ironically, this concentrated opposition to and denigration of his Poems solidified a symbiotic, albeit antagonistic, relationship between a New School of Poetry (nominally headed by Wordsworth) and a New School of Criticism (headed by Francis Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review).