From Allusion to Intertext: Reading Wordsworth in Tennyson, Browning and Hopkins

320 Pages·2015·1.35 MB·English

From Allusion to Intertext: Reading
Wordsworth in Tennyson, Browning
and Hopkins

A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Jayne Thomas
Cardiff University

September 2014
Summary

Critics have long acknowledged the allusive effect of William Wordsworth’s language in the
poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning and Gerard Manley Hopkins. This thesis
abjures allusive influence to focus on the intertextual presence of Wordsworth in poems by
each of these authors. Its methodology hinges on a separation between an intentional
authorial allusivity and an involuntary, or unbidden, intertextuality. As a result of this
heuristic, the poets are seen to be caught within a Wordsworthian web, which complicates the
way in which their poetry functions. The authorial entrapment that results is anxiety-
generating, but the thesis does not place this anxiety within a Bloomian paradigm. Its
concentration on male, canonical authors is Bloomian, however, as is its acceptance that the
meaning of the texts by Tennyson, Browning and Hopkins discussed is a Wordsworthian
poem.
Chapter One investigates the intertextual strategies of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ (1842),
which work to expose the loss attendant upon the Wordsworthian transcendent moment. The
poem’s recasting of Arthur Henry Hallam’s own unconscious Wordsworthian allegiance in
‘Timbuctoo’ (1829) leads into the analysis, in Chapter Two, of Tennyson’s In Memoriam
(1850) and its implicit reliance on the language of Wordsworthian transcendence as a means
by which both to assuage the poet’s grief at the death of Hallam and his dissatisfaction with
contemporary scientific and theological discourse. Chapter Three develops the previous
chapters’ findings by tracing how Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus’ (1860) rewrites Wordsworth’s
‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798). Chapter Four examines Wordsworth’s presence in two Browning
monologues, ‘Saul’ (1855) and ‘A Death in the Desert’ (1864), demonstrating how the poems
find a new use for the language of lyrical interiority. Chapter Five considers Hopkins’
unconscious inscription of Wordsworth’s poetry and the threat it poses to his
Incarnationalism and linguistic practice alike. The thesis finds its conclusion in the literary-
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historical effects that the after-presence of Wordsworth’s language engenders, which become
an embodiment of legacy. The depth of each poet’s literary dependency on Wordsworth is
also brought into focus, allowing the thesis to claim the earlier poet as a primary influence
upon the trinity of later figures it addresses.
iv
Acknowledgements

As ever, my greatest thanks are to my family, especially my parents, to whom this thesis is
dedicated.
I am grateful, too, to Carl Plasa for the invaluable help and support he has given me
over the past two years; to Jane Moore for her timely advice; and to Rhian Rattray for her
efficiency and professionalism.

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Contents

Introduction 1

From Allusion to Intertext: Reading Wordsworth in Tennyson, Browning and Hopkins
- Notes 16

Chapter One 27

‘All experience is an arch’: Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ and the Revision of Wordsworthian
Transcendent Loss
- ‘Ulysses’: Weaving a Rainbow 30
- Hallam’s ‘vision’ of His Own 49
- Conclusion 54
- Notes 57

Chapter Two 65

An Old Familiar Loss: Tennyson’s In Memoriam and the Return to Wordsworth
- ‘The living soul was flashed on mine’ 70
- The ‘babbling Wye’ 87
- ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’ 96
- ‘That friend of mine, who lives in God’: Endings and Beginnings 103
- Conclusion 109
- Notes 111

Chapter Three 125

Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus’ and the Reconfiguration of Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’
- Wordsworth and Tennyson 128
- ‘Tithonus’: ‘In days far-off’ 139
- ‘Tithonus’ and ‘Resolution and Independence’ 151
- Eyes and Ears: Conduits to Sublimity 154
- Conclusion 158
- Notes 160

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Chapter Four 169

Browning’s ‘Saul’ and ‘A Death in the Desert’: Half-Creating the Risen Christ
- Browning and the Invention of the Monologue 173
- Browning and Wordsworthian Poetics 176
- Pauline: A Fragment of A Confession and An Early Monologue 177
- The ‘Essay on Shelley’ 181
- Browning and the Incarnation 183
- Theophany and Wordsworthian Imaginative Transcendence: A Background 185
History
- ‘Saul’: ‘I but open my eyes’ 191
- ‘Saul’ and the Biblical Critics 205
- ‘A Death in the Desert’: Seeing is Imagining 206
- Conclusion 215
- Notes 216

Chapter Five 236

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Caught in a Wordsworthian Web
- Words and Things: Hopkins and Wordsworth 240
- ‘Winter with the Gulf Stream’ (1863 and 1871 versions) 252
- ‘God’s Grandeur’ 258
- ‘The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord’ 267
- ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’ 274
- Conclusion 278
- Notes 280

Conclusion 291

After-effects: Wordsworth’s presence in Tennyson, Browning and Hopkins
- Notes 299

Bibliography 300

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Introduction
From Allusion to Intertext: Reading Wordsworth in Tennyson, Browning and Hopkins

The poetry of William Wordsworth is much concerned with the nature of poetic language, as
the ‘Preface’ to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads attests, with its invocation for poetry to
be in the ‘real language of men’.1 Wordsworth’s poetry is absorbed, too, with the nature of
that which comes ‘after’, where ‘compounds like “after-joy”, “after-meditation”, or even
“after-vacancy” appeal to a principle of consequence and continuation’.2 This thesis engages
with both of these concerns – language and the implications of what it means to come ‘after’
– by examining the presence of Wordsworth’s language in the poems of Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, Robert Browning and Gerard Manley Hopkins, the involuntarily inscribed but
pervasive intertextual language that finds a home within the texts and exerts an influence
beyond the immediate control of the poet. In so doing, it necessarily engages with the concept
of legacy, especially in relation to Wordsworthian imaginative transcendence,3 thereby
extending the concern with ‘a principle of consequence and continuation’ beyond the
confines of Wordsworth’s own poetry.
The interface between Romantic and Victorian literature has been the subject of
sustained scholarly attention in recent years, as critics systematically dismantle the artificial
boundary created by the coronation in 1837 of the Queen who subsequently lends her name
to the latter era, by exploring the nature of literary continuity and the connections and
affiliations between literary texts from both periods.4 The thesis contributes to, but
distinguishes itself from, this critical work by focusing predominantly on the intertextual, or
unconscious, presence of Wordsworth’s language in a range of selected poems,5 which allows
for a significant contribution to be made to the analysis of Romantic and Victorian literary
and poetic continuities, and the place of Wordsworth’s poetic language therein.
1
Moreover, Wordsworth is not generally regarded as the principal poetic influence on
any of the poets studied here: Percy Bysshe Shelley is unquestionably viewed as Browning’s
main precursor,6 but also acts as the foremost influence on Tennyson, as is John Keats;
Keats, Tennyson and John Milton are long established as the major influences on Hopkins.
The thesis, therefore, provides a unique understanding of the selected poets’ indebtedness to a
writer largely overlooked by critics in terms of primary influence.7
The poems in which these poetic continuities and consequences are explored –
Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ (1842), In Memoriam (1850) and ‘Tithonus’ (1860), Browning’s ‘Saul’
(1855) and ‘A Death in the Desert’ (1864), and Hopkins’ ‘Winter with the Gulf Stream’
(1863 and 1871 versions), ‘God’s Grandeur’ (1877), ‘The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord’
(1877) and ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’ (1877) – are affiliated with Wordsworth’s poetry, either
through the way in which they attempt ostensibly to break free from his poetic lyricism in the
case of the Tennyson and Browning monologues, for instance, or in that they often simply
allude to the poetry in a self-conscious and deliberate way. The thesis teases out, through
closely read analyses, how each of the poems unconsciously inscribes Wordsworth’s
language, and the far-reaching implications of this unsanctioned presence. It does not run to
an exact chronology, but favours a thematic approach, beginning with three of Tennyson’s
poems, and ending with Hopkins’ poems of the 1870s: the Tennyson poems are linked by
personal loss, and are arranged by publication date, although the 1833 ‘Tithon’ on which the
later ‘Tithonus’ is based, was originally written as a ‘pendant’ to the 1833 ‘Ulysses’, a
dependency that is not reflected in the arrangement of chapters in the thesis;8 both of
Browning’s poems engage with the Incarnation of the risen Christ, and both are monologues,
published within a fourteen-year span; Hopkins’ poems are united by the poet’s Catholic
vision of the Incarnate Christ and, except for ‘Winter with the Gulf Stream’ and ‘God’s
Grandeur’, his experimental prosodic and linguistic techniques.
2
Throughout the thesis a separation is maintained between the intertextual and the
allusive, descriptors that have been used without proper explanation in this Introduction thus
far, on the basis that such a separation can be sustained, and that a study of the intertextual, or
unconscious, language in each of the texts illuminates hitherto unexplored and vital aspects of
the poetry. The division between the intertextual and allusive is notoriously fluid and
imprecise, although the reader’s role is instrumental in deciphering the ‘code’. Allusion is
defined by the level of authorial control at work in it, separating it from unconscious
inscription, which operates outside of the author’s direct control: Stephen Hinds describes a
process ‘whereby alluding poets exert themselves to draw attention to the fact that they are
alluding, and to reflect upon the nature of their allusive activity’.9 He also suggests that:
‘Certain allusions are so constructed as to carry a kind of built-in commentary, a kind of
reflexive annotation, which underlines or intensifies their demand to be interpreted as
allusions’.10 Intentionality, for Hinds, is a useful tool by which to separate the allusive from
the intertextual, although he acknowledges that allusivity is essentially constructed by the
reader:

Therefore, while conceding the fact that, for us as critics, the alluding poet is
ultimately and necessarily a figure whom we ourselves read out from the text, let us
continue to employ our enlarged version of “allusion”, along with its intention-
bearing author, as a discourse which is good to think with – which enables us to
conceptualize and to handle certain kinds of intertextual transaction more
economically and effectively than does any alternative.11

Sarah Annes Brown, building her argument from Hinds’, goes on to point out that allusion
‘strongly implies agency; it suggests that a later writer has deliberately referenced an earlier
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work, inviting the reader to notice and reflect on the connection. Sometimes the echo is so
unmistakable, so distinctive, that we experience no doubt in identifying a deliberate
allusion’.12 Brown uses the word echo here to imply intentionality, but later confirms that ‘An
echo is a more neutral word which doesn’t rule out the possibility of conscious borrowing but
implies that the connection isn’t strong enough to prove deliberate agency or to ensure
recognition in the majority of attentive readers’.13 This is a division which John Hollander
also maintains, suggesting that ‘one cannot […] allude unintentionally – an inadvertent
allusion is a kind of solecism’.14 Hollander, while recognising how echo functions in literary
terms as conscious allusion, also uses echo as ‘a metaphor of, and for, alluding, [that] does
not depend on conscious intention. The referential nature of poetic echo, as of dreaming (or
Coleridgean “symbol” as opposed to conscious “allegory”), may be unconscious or
inadvertent, but is no less qualified thereby’.15 Hollander insists, however, that ‘The reader of
texts, in order to overhear echoes, must have some kind of access to an earlier voice, and to
its cave of resonant signification, analogous to that of the author of the later text’.16
Intertextuality can be classified more concretely in terms of the unconscious or
involuntary, however, and has a comprehensive theoretical background. Brown says that
intertextuality:

usually implies a complex and weblike relationship between texts which goes beyond
direct influence […] Within the context of a book about allusion the word
intertextuality is usually used to connote an absence of clear allusion, as a way of
acknowledging that texts can have elements in common, that one may even seem to
allude to another, while recognising that these similarities may be entirely involuntary
and indeed be produced by a writer who has never read the work he or she seems to
reference.17
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