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Discuss Wordsworth's rejection of the French Revolution in The Prelude.

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The Prelude is not an epic poem, but we could understand the important strand of Wordsworth's enthusiasm for and then rejection of the French Revolution as similar to an epic hero facing a harsh blow or defeat on his journey but managing to come back stronger. Wordsworth ultimately rejected direct political action but committed himself to a poetry that would exalt and dignify the common person, one of the underlying goals of the French Revolution.

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The Prelude is a long autobiographical poem, and Wordsworth's relation to the French Revolution could be understood as an important and even epic narrative arc (the poem itself is not an epic, however). In any case, the revolution plays a significant role in The Prelude, a poem crucially important in understanding how Wordsworth conceived of his role as a poet.

The young Wordsworth, a recent college graduate, sailed to France in late 1791, during the French Revolution. Initially, he was stirred by the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. He was a true believer in the aims of the revolution and was hopeful that he was standing at the cusp of a new and more just world. As he writes in The Prelude, he wanted to:

see the people having a strong hand
In framing their own laws; whence better days
To all mankind.

In a famous passage,...

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Wordsworth, walking in France with a friend, writes of seeing a starving girl and hoping the revolution would end that kind of suffering:

and at the sight my friend
In agitation said, "Tis against that
Which we are fighting," I with him believed
Devoutly that a spirit was abroad
Which could not be withstood, that poverty,
At least like this, would in a little time
Be found no more.

As Wordsworth writes at the start of book 10 in yet another famous line,

bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

However, while in France, he witnessed the bloodbath brought on by revolutionaries trying to purify France. He was badly disillusioned:

I thought of those September Massacres,
Divided from me by a little month,
And felt and touched them, a substantial dread.

Wordsworth, as he records in The Prelude, returned home to the Lake District badly depressed and at loose ends over what he had seen in France. He didn't know how to find his place in the world. But it finally came to him that while political action might not be possible for him, he could contribute to a revision in people's understanding of the poor. Poetry of his time usually cast the poor and common people as "clowns" and fools, but his verses would elevate them as dignified and admirable people.

In the sense of an epic framing, the hero Wordsworth faces his demons as he witnesses the French Revolution go bad. This brings him to a paralyzed low point as a hero, but he is able to learn, grow, and come back with a new conception of his destiny.

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