The Revolutionary 'i' - (Romanticism in Perspective: Texts, Cultures, Histories) by A Nichols (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In the winter of 1798-99, shut up in the freezing German town of Goslar, William Wordsworth began producing a series of lyrical fragments that appeared first in letters written to Coleridge and emerged eventually as source texts for The Prelude . These lyrics are revolutionary because they construct a new version of the autobiographical 'I'. The Revolutionary 'I' explores the numerous voices of the poetic speaker 'Wordsworth' and their relationship to the historical figure who shared the same name.

Review Quotes

Ashton Nichols's The Revolutionary 'I ' trawls through versions of The Prelude up to and including the 1805 text in search of a fundamental Wordsworthian orgininality, which he believes is a generative source of most subsequent imaginative literature in English...he believes that Prelude breaks new autobiographical ground with its presentation of the I as a dramatized cultural self rather merely a mimetic revelation of identity.' - James Treadwell, The Wordsworth Circle

About the Author

Ashton Nichols is Associate Professor of English at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.