Discussion Topic

Analysis of Book I of The Prelude

Summary:

Book I of The Prelude by William Wordsworth explores the poet's childhood and his profound connection with nature in the English Lake District. Wordsworth reflects on being chosen by nature to become a poet, emphasizing his special relationship with the divine through nature. The book recounts vivid childhood memories, such as rowing on a lake and encountering a sublime and awe-inspiring peak, symbolizing nature's beauty and power. This opening book sets the stage for Wordsworth's development into a Romantic poet.

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Describe the thought development in book 1 of The Prelude.

In the first book of The Prelude, the long autobiographical poem in which Wordsworth describes for his friend Coleridge how he became a poet-sage, Wordsworth focuses on his childhood. He often stayed in the English Lake District, a place where he became especially close to nature.

As Wordsworth reminisces about his intense relationship with nature as a child, he asserts that he was a special person chosen for the task of poet:

A favor'd Being, from his earliest dawn Of infancy doth open out the clouds, As at the touch of lightning, seeking him With gentlest visitation ...
He believes that for this reason, Nature sought him out to teach him, not only gently, but powerfully, the lesson that nature is the expression of the divine goodness in the universe. He does not suffer from undue modesty in seeing himself marked out for greatness at an early age.
As...

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the first book develops, Wordsworth describes distinct memories of childhood interactions with nature. One night, for example, he took a rowboat and rowed out to a center of a lake, where he was frightened and awed by huge cliffs. Nature seemed to him at that moment sublime, an awe-inspiring and frightening manifestation of God's power. He dwelt as a child on these experiences and what they might mean.
As memories come flooding back to him, Wordsworth decides at the end of this first book that he will write out for his friend in verse the story of his life, which is at the same time the story of his development into a great nature poet and Romantic poet.
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Explain Book I of The Prelude.

The first section of this lengthy poem, argued by some critics to be the best presentation of Wordsworth's beliefs about nature, concerns a description of the speaker's childhood and his early awareness of nature and the kind of relationship he developed with it. This opening book does contain many sections that are addressed to nature in its various guises, and in particular its spirit and wisdom, but the various reminiscences that are narrated clearly explore the sense of wonder and majesty that the youthful Wordsworth found in nature. This is most evident in a description Wordsworth includes of how he rowed out into the middle of a lake and saw a "huge peak":

I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me.

The figure of the peak is particularly interesting, because its personification, which describes it as a "living thing" striding after the guilty Wordsworth who has borrowed a boat for a row captures both the immense beauty of nature but also the way that it can produce a response of awe and fear as well. The poem develops this relationship with nature, describing how Wordsworth felt free and liberated when he was able to get out in nature and escape his schoolwork and society. He does make clear that the rebellion he experienced was only internal, and was not external, as he was a good student and worked hard. The desire for liberation was something that he experienced and pursued in his spirit.

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