Wordsworth was not unusual among Romantic poets for his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution, but he stands apart from his contemporaries for actually being there to see it for himself (‘Thou wert there,’ Coleridge wrote). This episode looks at Wordsworth’s retrospective account of his 1791 visit to France, described in books 9 and 10 of The Prelude, and the ways in which it reveals a passionate commitment to republicanism while recoiling from political extremism. Mark and Seamus discuss why, despite Wordsworth’s claim of being innately republican, discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution is strangely absent from the poem, which is more often preoccupied with romance and the imagination, particularly in their power to soften zealotry.
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Further reading in the LRB:
Seamus Perry:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/seamus-perry/regrets-vexations-lassitudes
E.P. Thompson
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n22/e.p.-thompson/wordsworth-s-crisis
Colin Burrow:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n13/colin-burrow/a-solemn-and-unsexual-man
Marilyn Butler
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n12/marilyn-butler/three-feet-on-the-ground
Thomas Keymer
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n12/thomas-keymer/after-meditation
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