Wordsworthian composition: The micro-Prelude.(Critical essay)

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-SEP-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 Boston University

THIS PAPER FORMS PART OF A WIDER STUDY OF POETIC COMPOSITION which has as its central ambition the development of a critical research method for the study of textual process and poetic draft material. (1) In its wider context such work seeks to move across the perceived borders between "textual" and "literary" criticism to articulate and illustrate the importance of a full understanding of the textual process that underlies a single textual product in what might be termed a "compositional criticism." In relation to Wordsworth it focuses upon the act of sustained composition required for both of Wordsworth's long poems and on the compositional methods, anxieties and strategies which inform his writing. The section of work reproduced in this article concentrates on early Prelude composition.

1. First Draft Activity

The existence of parallel forms of The Prelude from De Selincourt's 1926 edition onwards (2) has meant that the study of this poem in the twentieth century has been characterized by an unusually heightened awareness of composition, which has developed in two ways, the latter largely superceding the former. The first of these involves comparison of the 1805 and 1850 versions of the poem which encouraged a strong focus by critics on acts of revision within the major "versions" of the text, frequently without any reference to manuscript material. (3) Such a debate has tended to be rather value-laden and, at its most reductive, descends into argument over which of the two texts is "better." (4) The process of composition itself, within, between and across the "complete" Prelude stages is largely ignored. This is a little like crossing a river by means of stepping stones brought down by the flood: you experience its force but your feet remain dry.

The second approach was initiated by J. R. Macgillivray's foundational article of 1962 on "The Three Forms of The Prelude" when he emphasized his concern with "The composition of the poem, as distinct from its revision" and developed the argument that "the poem of 1805 was not the first version of the autobiography, but rather the third." (5) Macgillivray's piece makes excellent use of manuscript material in a range of ways, not only to outline the three major stages of the 1805 text (and preceding compositional material) but to look at the relationship between Pedlar and Prelude material and to provide good examples of literary-critical use of mss. to point to uncertain areas within the "fixed" (1805) text. This critical approach, which pays attention to textual process, forms the basis of much of Jonathan Wordsworth's work, and feeds directly into the principles underlying the Cornell series. More recent critical approaches, involving the comparison of different forms of a text, issues of creative revision and other related topics, have resulted from this. (6)

Instead of responding to The Prelude in terms of its contingent stages, or of comparison between them, I want in this paper to explore the "micro-Prelude." This will allow for the breakdown of the compositional act into its smallest constituent parts so that we can consider composition as a series of widening circles, moving outward from a close focus on a single word in a line, to lines upon the page, and then to blocks of developing work within the manuscript. Secondly, it allows for a refinement of our understanding of the nature of composition as a process which is both mental and physical by approaching it in terms of a sequence of intentional acts. Thirdly, from such a perspective, activities such as revising and redrafting are able to be more closely considered and distinct textual stages can also be defined.

One way of breaking composition down is by making use of the currently unfashionable concept of "intention" not so much in terms of "what the author intended" as through intentional acts on the manuscript page. By thinking about intentionality in terms of a mental state preceding physical acts we can allow it a place at the heart of the act of composition which need not be articulated in authorially-specific terms and which, at least partially, releases intention from personal or biographical confines. A useful author here is the philosopher John Searle and his book Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of the Mind. In this work Searle looks closely at the relationship between intention as a mental state and the action that results from it and argues for an "intention in action" which forms a part of every act, however small; "the intention in action just is the Intentional content of the action; the action and the intention are inseparable." (7) Intention exists both as a state in the mind, and as the embodiment of that state as an event. It combines an internal condition and its external fulfillment. Drawing upon his earlier work in relation to speech act theory, Searle states: There is a double level of Intentionality in the performance of the speech act. There is first of all the Intentional state expressed, but then secondly there is the intention ... with which the utterance is made. (27) In the same way, in an act of oral or written composition, at a localized level, a double level of intentionality exists. So, for example, the performance of the act of deleting, or of replacing one word by another, is bound up with an intentional state in which the act is undertaken.

However, as well as this kind of intention there is also the presence or absence of conscious intention on the part of the person who acts--in Searle's terms "prior intention" (84). It is not possible to perform any action without intention occurring, but it is possible to perform an action without conscious intention: [T]here can be actions without corresponding prior intentions.... But there can't be any actions, not even unintentional actions, without intentions in action. (107) Searle sums up the small-scale activity involved in these terms: [T]he whole action is an intention in action plus a bodily movement which is caused by the intention in action and which is the rest of the conditions of satisfaction of that intention in action. (106) The process can be delineated as a sequence, the last three parts of which constitute the intentional act:

[Prior Intention] [right arrow] Intention-in-action [right arrow] Bodily movement [right arrow] Action/Event

When we consider these philosophical ideas about intentionality in relation to the process of poetic composition, it would seem that action without prior intention is unlikely to occur except at the stage of first composition when it is highly likely that the intended meaning of the words may not be pre-planned by the poet. All later work upon a text, however (at the detailed level of "intention in action") will tend to be undertaken with a very clear, localized focus upon intended meaning. In terms of literary composition then, we could say that Searle's prior intention effectively corresponds to intended authorial meaning at a local level (word by word, line by line).

We need now to return to the act of composition upon the page which encompasses the full sequence given above and forms the active core of composition. Within that process, when we break it down into component parts, there should exist immediate prior intention (an intention to undertake a localized change which will affect the nature of the communication), then intention as action which results in a compositional act (entering a word, deleting a word, etc). The process can be more clearly understood in relation to a particular example from the earliest continuous Prelude material in MS JJ: ridge cliff alone While on the perilous [begin strikethrough]edge[end strikethrough] I hung (8) In the process of composition here, Wordsworth begins by reading the original line and finds himself dissatisfied with the word "edge" so he crosses it out and replaces it with one, or two, alternatives. In its smallest component parts the process thus runs: Prior Intention (I intend to cross the word out); intention-in-action (I am crossing the word...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.