William Wordsworth: Intensity and Achievement

This book seeks to isolate the special factors that generate Wordsworth's greatness as a poet. Setting out from a dissatisfaction with the current trend towards New Historicism in Wordsworthian criticism, it endeavours to qualify the social and political bias of that criticism by a renewed assertion of the poetic primacy of the personal and the qualitative. Taking Marjorie Levinson's reading of `Tintern Abbey' as the book's starting point, McFarland sets forth a different way of approaching the poem, and then identifies `intensity' as the secret of Wordsworth's power. The permutations of that quality are illustrated by careful examinations of `Ruth', of the `spots of time', and of `Home at Grasmere', which is revealed as containing the incandescent centre of Wordsworth's values. There follow chapters on Wordsworth's dessication, which is seen as precisely the absence of intensity; and on the aspiration of The Recluse, which is seen to fail largely because the personal intensity necessary to complete the venture had been used up in the opening of `Home at Grasmere'. McFarland then discusses the special way in which Wordsworth assumed the prophetic stance which was essential to his poetic vision and was adopted in the intense personal confidence that he possessed the truth. The book concludes with a reading of The Borderers, not as a successful play but as a disposal chamber for the dark matter of Wordsworth's cosmos; the writing of the play is seen as necessary to clear the way for the purified current of Wordsworthian intensity to flow towards supreme poetic achievement.

Table of Contents:
The clamour of absence - reading and misreading in Wordsworthian criticism; Wordsworth's hedgerows - the infrashape of the longer Romantic lyric; "I cannot paint what I then was" - the psychological structure of Wordsworthian intensity; Wordsworth's desiccation; perfection absolute - the aspiration of "The Recluse"; the prophetic stance; the play of absence - "The Borderers" and the winds of culture.

Review :
`welcome on many counts: its lucid and readable style, eschewing jargon and striving for clarity; its intellectual independence of current, especially New Historicist, misreadings of Romanticism; above all its discriminating judiciousness ... Professor McFarland has resotred to Wordsworth studies a much-needed commonsense, as well as a selection of the language really used by men. ' A Journal of English Language and Literature, Vol 74, No 6 (Dec 1993) `By turns witty and pungently argumentative, the whole of McFarland's book is a forceful exercise in critical and cultural recuperation ... McFarland's book will stand as a prominent marker in the increasingly cluttered landscape of Romantic studies during the 1990s. ' Times Higher Education Supplement `... an important addition to any undergraduate library.' Choice No 92 `a very high assessment of Wordsworth ... his conclusions here, like those throughout the book, are justified by his own critical fervour ' Times Literary Supplement `To hear Thomas McFarland speaking his mind about nonsense is almost as enjoyable as doing oneself. In his first chapter his analysis of Marjorie Levinson's reading of 'Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey' is civilised, precise, and terminally effective ... admirable lucidity and economy. The book ... is lucid, original, and stimulting to the highest degree, for this author always has something to say that is worth listening to. ' Jeffrey Baker, St Francis Xavier University, The Charles Lamb Bulletin, January 1993, New Series No. 81 `The book is a significant contribution to the debate about Wordsworth's relationship to his society. ' J.D. Gutteridge, Notes and Queries, June 1993 `McFarland's latest publication is a splendid and solid work of traditional literary criticism. It will strengthen the position of those English scholars who, without necessarily sharing McFarland's set of values, nevertheless resists the de(con)structive deluge of and headlong gold-rush for every critical dernier cri. ' Rolf P. Lessenich, Archiv, 230.Band, 145.Jahrgang, 1.Halbjahresband 1993 `forceful ... McFarland's book possesses its own intensities and convictions ' Paul Magnuson, New York University, European Romantic Review, V.4, No. 1, Summer (1993) `it moves from things that get in the way to things which help ... It forgets - and makes us forget - the "crisis in English Studies," and speaks about Wordsworth, and about life. There is not much higher praise. ' Drummond Bone, University of Glasgow, Wordsworth Circle Annual Review Issue '93, Vol.23.4 `McFarland's virtues as a critic - provacativeness and readability - are present here in abundance, ' Duncan Wu. St Catherine's College, Oxford. Review of English Studies