Circle, Torsion, Virtue, and the Zero Point of Gravity in Wordsworth's Optic World: A Study of The Prelude and Lyrical Ballads as Cartesian Mechanism

• Main Authors: Wu Ling-Hui, 吳玲慧
• Other Authors: Frank W. Stevenson
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89816662842913677623

博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 98 === Unlike most Wordsworthian studies, this dissertation aims to investigate Wordsworth in the perspective of physis/physics/physiology. It looks into Wordsworth’s world as an optic world (in which imagination is seen as “visionary gleam” and life is found to be full of “spots of time”) and as a mechanical world (in which circle, torsion, gravity, etc., are working entities for natural or human beings). It takes for its scope of study two main works of Wordsworth’s, namely, The Prelude and the Lyrical Ballads. And it refers to several Western thinkers, especially Descartes, for the physical investigation of the works. In addition, both The Prelude and the Lyrical Ballads are considered to be confessional works, explicitly and implicitly. To confess is to recognize “truth” and “virtue” (in the sense of power, force, or strength as well as in the sense of moral goodness). What Wordsworth recognizes, as expressed in both works, are the dark and light “spots of time,” which are the critical moments that foster the poet’s soul with fear and beauty, that stop life’s temporary motion or torsion with its centrifugal and centripetal forces, that make possible the replacement of the x axis of space and the y axis of time with the z axis of universal eternity, and that lead the poet to go through a full circle and enter the zero point of gravity, where mechanical motion becomes everlasting rest and “renovated virtue” becomes pure soul. In order to explicate the optical and mechanical views on Wordsworth, the dissertation traces philosophical ideas from Plato to Deleuze besides reviewing some modern Wordsworthian studies on the “spots of time.” Furthermore, it explains such technical terms as torsion, virtue, circle, and 0 of gravity, in consideration of the dual aspects of quantity and quality, motion and rest, centrifugal and centripetal forces, nature and society, fact and imagination, space and time, x axis and y axis, body and soul, etc. The dissertation concludes that Wordsworth’s confessional literature is closely related to Descartes’ mechanical versus mental ideas, especially in the sense that to “virtualize” the “spots of time” is to idealistically make them both “virtual” by subordinating physical nature and actual fact to the mind’s imaginative creation, and “virtuous” by elevating the temporary deeds and names to the permanent truth and fame.