"... as far as words can give:" Romantic poetry as displaced mystical experience in William Wordsworth's Prelude
Date
2011-11-28
Authors
Kallenbach, Bradley Dean
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the ways in which a broad and perennial problem – ‘the problem
of dualism’ - is approached by three areas of inquiry, namely, English Romanticism, mysticism
and contemporary studies of consciousness. By comparative analysis of key passages in
Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Huxley’s survey of mystical traditions in the Perennial
Philosophy and work by contemporary philosopher Colin McGinn on the ‘mind-body
problem,’ I explain how each discipline proposes an ideal state of ‘synthesis’ or ‘coalescence’
between the subjective and objective as a solution to ‘the problem of dualism.’ In turn, each
discipline discerns a faculty or means towards such a synthesis. These are the ‘Imagination,’
‘Third Eye,’ and ‘Bridging Principle’ respectively. Thus, this dissertation has three additional
aims. First, I argue that the Romantic ‘Imagination’ and mystical ‘Third Eye’ faculty are
conceptually similar in an attempt to show that certain Romantic poets (primarily Wordsworth,
Coleridge and Shelley) sought access to a super-sensuous realm via the ‘Imagination.’
However, seminal texts such as Coleridge’s Biographia, Shelley’s Defence of Poetry and
Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy imply that the Romantic poet, unlike the mystic, is thwarted
from voluntary and veridical access to these realms: the Imagination reaches an impassable
threshold which the mystical ‘Third Eye’ traverses. This condition, coupled with an inability to
convey mystical experience in language with greater acuity, I argue, may account for the
presence of melancholy in key Romantic works such as Wordsworth’s Prelude and
Immortality Ode. I thus seek to enhance our understanding of the critical commonplace
referred to as “Romantic melancholy.” Second, I aim to illustrate this view by analysis of key
passages in Wordsworth’s Prelude and Immortality Ode. Finally, I aim to show that the early
Coleridgean understanding of ‘the problem of dualism’ as highlighted in the Biographia can be
further elucidated by contemporary theories of consciousness on the ‘mind-body’ problem.
Description
M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, 2011