NATURE, MEMORY, AND THE SUBLIME: A STUDY OF WORDSWORTH’S PHILOSOPHICAL VISION IN TINTERN ABBEY

Abstract

The present paper analyzes Wordsworth, in his poem Tintern Abbey, as how he dealt with nature, memory, and the Sublime in the Romantic tradition.  Based on the notions of the Sublime, as proposed by Burke and Kant, the analysis explains how Wordsworth redefines nature as a companion and as a tutor and not an object of distance and awe.  The poem relates the connection between the poet and nature as a continuum of relations, which develop as time goes by.  When the poet is still young, he enjoys the natural environment as against when he is older and is indulged into reflective meditation about the environment.  Furthermore, nature is assumed to be constitutive of the moral consciousness and behavior. To describe nature as a nurse, a guide and the soul of moral being, Wordsworth anticipates nature not only as an object of aesthetics but as an ally that strengthens human agency and develops self-awareness.  The paper also questions how Wordsworth has used various imagery and language devices that mediate the outer scenery and subjective recollections in alternative ways, thus defining a unique Romantic understanding of nature. As a result of this, the article argues that the ethos of Romanticism is summed up in the article of Tintern Abbey.  Also, the paper relates Wordsworth meditations with contemporary climate-change rhetoric, indicating that his focus on what nature provides prefigures the issue of ecology in the modern times. Locating nature outside of time and human constraints, Wordsworth increases the topicality of his works, demonstrating a timeless interest of people in nature with the help of consciousness.