William Wordsworth
The Prelude (1799, 1804, 1805, 1850)

• Intended as introduction/prologue to a three-part magnum opus, The Recluse or views of Nature, Man, and Society.
• "On Man, on Nature, on human Life, / Musing in Solitude" ("Prospectus" / "Home at Grasmere" 959-60).
• Part One, Book One: "Home at Grasmere" (ca. 1800, unpublished)
• Part Two: The Excursion (1814)
• Part Three: Unfinished
• "If WW had finished the project as planned, The Recluse would have totalled about 33,000 lines (Paradise Lost is only 10,500)" (Mandell--see source ).
• In the Preface to The Excursion, WW "likened the design implicit in all his writings to the structural plan of a 'gothic church,' in which the 'preparatory poem' we now call The Prelude [a name given the work by his widow after his death] is 'the ante-chapel,' the tripartite Recluse is 'the body,' and all his 'minor Pieces,' when 'properly arranged,' are equivalent to 'little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices'" (Abrams 20).
• Thus, WW "envisaged all his poems as one immense work, a poem made up of poems, written in accordance with a single comprehensive design" (Abrams 20).
• Ideas to Consider:
• Love of Nature leads to Love of Man (from headnote to Book 8)
• "French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars:
• "Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense / For one of conquest, losing sight of all / Which they had struggled for" (10.792-94).
• Leads to tremendous disillusionment for WW.
• Godwinian rationalism offers temporary alternative, but lacks emotional foundation.
• Dorothy WW, STC, help him return to the restorative "bosom" of Nature.