Although most critics have stressed William Blake's “mystical” disdain for the phenomena of objective reality, his responses to nature are both frequent and varied. While not following any lineal order of development, these responses may be said to assume a hierarchical order once we examine them in their overall context. The hierarchy langes from mere description of nature in a manner reminiscent of the eighteenth-century physico-theological poets through a consideration of nature as an aspect of human perception and an aspect of human will. Finally, nature may be transmuted into art through the shaping power of the imagination, or in Blakean terms, through an inward confluence of Los and Christ.

Poets writing in English frequently use the simple present form of action verbs where the progressive form would be more natural in speech. Probably they do so in order to take advantage of overtones resident in the simple form, overtones that permit a physical action to seem timeless yet permanent, pastlike yet edging toward the future, repeatable yet provisional, urgent yet distant, ceremonious and archaic. Never quite a stage direction, and different in feeling even from temporally unlocated past tense verbs, the action verb cast in the lyric present tense serves every epoch of English literary history differently but is always expressive of the poets' deepest perceptions and fears. An appendix reports and comments on an extensive survey of the frequency with which British and American poets have used progressive forms.

Wordsworth's “Home at Grasmere,” the one completed book of The Recluse, expresses a conception of home as a territorial sanctuary. The holiness of Grasmere Vale as a dwelling place consists in the possibility for ecological wholeness which it provides. The enclosure of the valley liberates the poet's psychic potency, because there he is encouraged to be receptive to multiple dimensions of experience. Through such openness he is consciously able to reintegrate his being into the enduring rhythms of natural existence, thereby articulating his unique individuality. “Home at Grasmere,” then, embodies Wordsworth's ideal of what poetry should be, namely, the realization through language of the intrinsic poeticalness of commonplace actuality. This true poetry, which is characterized by interplay between physical “fact” and mental “fancy,” liberates man from the prison of mere perception, revealing how individuals'—by fitting themselves to nature and fitting nature to themselves—can give unique expression to the unified, interdependent wholeness which is life, the expression being a fulfillment rather than a negation of fundamental inherent tendencies of natural process. In so celebrating such interaction of art and nature, Wordsworth raises questions about some current presuppositions of what constitutes basic interrelations among literature, civilization, and the physical environment.

Forum Policy: Members of the Association are invited to submit letters commenting on any article published in PMLA, or on matters of scholarly and critical interest to readers generally. Such letters, if accepted by the Editor, will be sent to the author of the work commented on, who will be invited to reply. The usual rules regarding courtesy and avoidance of personalities will be enforced, and the Editor reserves complete discretion in deciding whether or not to publish any letter. Letters should not exceed 1,000 words of text. Footnotes are discouraged and should be included only when absolutely necessary.

Forum Policy: Members of the Association are invited to submit letters commenting on any article published in PMLA, or on matters of scholarly and critical interest to readers generally. Such letters, if accepted by the Editor, will be sent to the author of the work commented on, who will be invited to reply. The usual rules regarding courtesy and avoidance of personalities will be enforced, and the Editor reserves complete discretion in deciding whether or not to publish any letter. Letters should not exceed 1,000 words of text. Footnotes are discouraged and should be included only when absolutely necessary.

Although regarded as a philosopher rather than an artist, John Stuart Mill employs artistry as well as rational argument to enlighten his reader. Mill's “Bentham,” for example, demonstrates how Mill operates as a sage using both logic and art to awaken the reader to a new perception of reality. In “Bentham” Mill creates a sense of disappointment arising from Bentham's great promise and limited performance, both as thinker and as man. Constructing an image of himself as a whole thinker, Mill thereby underscores Bentham's position as half-thinker. Mill also creates an elaborate portrait of Bentham as a great father-teacher-hero-God figure, only to reveal Bentham's inability to perform these roles adequately. By heavy use of negatives, Mill suggests that Bentham's thought has little positive value. And, finally, the essay's structure undermines all of Bentham's philosophical contributions. Deriving from Carlyle's “Boswell's Life of Johnson,” Mill's earlier writings on Bentham show him refashioning Carlyle's language and developing the ironic techniques used in “Bentham.” Like other Victorian sages, Mill has no clear-cut theory of prose artistry; he often regards poetry and prose as antithetical media. Nevertheless, in practice he writes as a complex logician-artist, using prose as an imaginative medium.

R. D. Laing's concept of ontological insecurity and Erik Erikson's analysis of identity confusion contribute to an understanding of Lawrence's characterization in The Rainbow and Women in Love. Will Brangwen's fear in The Rainbow that he will dissolve into nothingness without Anna is typical of individuals suffering from ontological insecurity. This anxiety ramifies into webs of mutually contradictory feelings. For example, Will's fantasy of merging with Anna clashes with his fear of losing his identity through absorption into hers. Anna embodies for Will an unconscious fantasy of his mother; this displacement is the root of the contradictions and conflicts in which he becomes entangled. As Anna fights against Will's unconscious desire to maintain a mother-son symbiosis in his marriage, Will rages against her because she represents the mother from whom he unconsciously wishes to be free, even while clinging to her. This fantasy system proliferates into role and identity confusions. Will wishes to be absolute master of his home and child-servant of his wife's matriarchy. Simultaneously in his relationship with his little girl, Ursula, he is an affectionate father, a sadistically destructive sensualist, and a child seeking parental support. These dissonant impulses and roles exacerbate Will's sense of his unreality, incoherence, and general impotence.