An Analysis Of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey

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An Analysis of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey Generally speaking, Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey" has been seen in relation to many an aspect of his poetic career. First of all, it is said to be a historical record of the different stages of the growth of his poetic imagination, and that is why some view it as a miniature epic that anticipates his epical endeavour with "The Prelude", in both thematic and artistic designs. Tintern Abbey contains and expounds many of Wordsworth’s poetic and philosophical beliefs, which were intended to be the themes of his other poems like, “Recluse”, “The Excursion” and, of course, “The Prelude”. Again the poem is unusual in examining the composition of the landscape, like his contemporary artist of his country Constable, rather than expressing the spirit of the landscape—its topography, its arrangement of vegetation, its placement of the works of men and its colours and light and shade have been scrupulously described. These scenes ultimately become the “objective correlative” for his philosophy of that period. The procedure and kind of poem were determined by Coleridge’s influence, for “The Eolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight” were its immediate successors, with the 18th century sublime odes in the farther background. But it must be admitted that "Tintern Abbey" has greater dimension and intricacy and a more various verbal conversation than Coleridge’s poems. Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey inaugurated wonderfully the functional device, which he later called “two consciousness”: a scene is revisited, and the remembered landscape, “the picture of the mind” is superimposed on the picture before the eye. As the two landscapes fail to match, they set a problem, “a sad perplexity”, which compels the poet to the meditation. As Wordsworth now stands on the bank of the river Wye, he comes to the final realization of his relation to Nature and of

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