Dwelling upon Time: Memory's changing function in the poetry of Wordsworth

Abstract

Wordsworth is widely and justly characterized as a poet of recollection. Few writers have been more consistently preoccupied with the workings and signification of remembering.1 Not only is memory often the matter of Wordsworth's song, but it is also intimately involved with the genesis of that song, as the famous description of poetical composition as feeding upon "emotion recollected in tranquillity" makes clear. This side of Wordsworth's singular involvement with the phenomenon of memory has been minutely scrutinized, especially in its connection with The Prelude and the early poetry, but the subsequent development of the same problematic has been neglected. How does memory function in his later poetry, and does it diverge there in any significant respect from the celebrated instances of recollection in The Prelude.