Book review - Jeffrey C. Robinson Poetic Innovation in Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1825–1833: Fibres of These Thoughts

In the conclusion to his ground-breaking Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787 − 1814 (1964), Geoffrey Hartman set out an influential critique of Wordsworth’s late poetry as a steady retreat from the ‘apocalyptic’ tendencies of the visionary imagination. While this claim has since been criticised as an instance of a-historical and a-political idealism—and, indeed, has been qualified by the critic himself—Hartman’s account of Wordsworth’s poetic decline has continued to influence readings of the later works, preventing readers from understanding their distinctive literary, political and philosophical preoccupations and from appreciating their artistic qualities. Two books published in 2019 have sought to challenge this view. As its title indicates, Tim Fulford’s Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1815-1845 (reviewed in RES. 70.297, pp. 982–84) responds directly to Hartman’s thesis, rejecting the imposition of a rigid, theoretical framework in favour of detailed, historically attuned close readings that recast the later poetry as ‘varied and surprising, rather than desiccated and reactionary’. In Poetic Innovation in Wordsworth, 1825-1833: Fibres of These Thoughts, Jeffrey C. Robinson undertakes an examination of an overlooked facing-page manuscript, linking it to other manuscripts and poems from the late 1820s and early 1830s, to ‘question the tenacity of the two shibboleths of the late Wordsworth’s reputation, his increasing political conservatism and religious orthodoxy’. [Opening paragraph]