Book contents
- Wordsworth After War
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Wordsworth After War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Conscripting ‘The Recluse’
- Chapter 2 Peace Out of Time
- Chapter 3 Thanksgiving after War
- Chapter 4 ‘Returning, Like a Ghost Unlaid’
- Chapter 5 Violent Waters
- Chapter 6 Wordsworth after Byron
- After Wordsworth
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies In Romanticism
Chapter 6 - Wordsworth after Byron
Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2023
- Wordsworth After War
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Wordsworth After War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Conscripting ‘The Recluse’
- Chapter 2 Peace Out of Time
- Chapter 3 Thanksgiving after War
- Chapter 4 ‘Returning, Like a Ghost Unlaid’
- Chapter 5 Violent Waters
- Chapter 6 Wordsworth after Byron
- After Wordsworth
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies In Romanticism
Summary
Memorials of a Tour of the Continent, 1820 follows the poet’s course down the Rhine and the Rhône, revisiting scenes that, thirty years earlier, had provided a setting for dreams of radical rebirth. Wordsworth’s battle with the past is intensified by another, more pressing conflict: a spat with Lord Byron, who in Canto 3 of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage had forged an impression of post-war Europe heavily indebted to Wordsworth. In many respects the Memorials can be read as an effort to defend a reputation that, in Wordsworth’s eyes, had been traduced by Byron, while attempting at the same time to correct the pro-Napoleonic sentiments that, on account of the popularity of Childe Harold, had been allowed to cast a pall on the legitimacy of the post-war settlement. The Memorials make clear that Wordsworth’s efforts to make peace with his own history, a history informed by the conflicted history of Europe, remained unresolved and that by returning to the restorative channels of youth the poet had, in fact, merely reinitiated the repetitive cycle in which peace is coupled with war.
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- Wordsworth After WarRecovering Peace in the Later Poetry, pp. 174 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023