A Feeling of the Whole: Reading The Prelude

This chapter maps the kairos/chronos distinction onto critical readings of The Prelude and The Excursion. Victorian reviewers repeatedly describe Wordsworth’s long poems as uneven landscapes, with parts that rise above or should be extracted from the less impressive ground. Other readers suggest that both the order of the parts and the more prosaic sections are necessary to understanding the progress that Wordsworth narrates. This chapter argues that, despite the temptation to privilege the spots of time and treat them as self-contained lyrics, the long journey of reading The Prelude makes visible the losses, gains, and recuperations that Wordsworth undergoes both in his life and in the fictional writing process.