School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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The theme of melancholy in Wordsworth's poetry

Brady, Louise ( 1974)

My concern in this essay is to focus attention on an aspect of Wordsworth's work to which I have given the general name of a "theme of melancholy". I wish to suggest by this not some habitual melancholy of attitude, or an elegiac note, though both of these are involved in the theme, but rather something which is inherent in all his work, present as one of the shaping conditions of his poetry. We speak of Wordsworth as a revolutionary, poet above all as one who was concerned with the release of feeling, and who achieved that release in great and lasting modes; yet I believe that, if we are to say this, we must also take account of the pervasiveness of this "melancholy" in his work. The considerations involved in such an account must have an important bearing on our sense of his work as a whole, and they seem to me also to offer terms in which we may explore the reasons for the extreme difference in quality which is manifested in it.(From Introduction)