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Introductory Note

Book I
Book II
Book XII
Book XIII
Book XIV

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The subject of Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem, subtitled 'The Growth of a Poet's Mind', is found almost by accident. At the beginning of the poem the poet has returned to his home, the countryside, and contemplates writing a great epic poem, on some subject left by "Milton unsung". Unhappily for him he is bereft of inspiration, and can think of nothing to write of which is both original and inspiring. In despair he begins to look back on his own past, and on the influences which have shaped him as both poet and human being, and attempts to analyse the sources of decline. Thus the poet stumbles upon a worthy subject, none other than the epic story of his own growth and development, and in particular the benevolent ministry of nature in forming and shaping him, both consciously and unconsciously.
It is deeply significant that Wordsworth subtitles the poem as being about the "growth" of a poet's mind: not for him the mechanistic or materialist Lockean notion of man and mind as machine, but rather a notion of the human self and consciousness itself as organic, watered and nourished by a Nature which, the poem suggests, is no less than a religious influence, directing and sustaining his moral and psychological growth. The plant metaphor is significant also in its associations with roots, and the suggestion (a century before Freud) of unconscious forces at work in his conscious life and development. Like a plant the human mind, for Wordsworth, has roots which are invisible to conscious scrutiny, but which nevertheless sustain and feed it. In passages such as the famous boat-stealing incident in Book 1, or more directly in Book XIV, where Wordsworth describes his nocturnal ascent of Mount Snowdon, Wordsworth illustrates his conviction of the reality of the unconscious influences which go into the making of the adult self, ways in which the child becomes "Father to the Man".















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Lockean here refers to the work of the eighteenth century philosopher and psychologist John Locke, whose views on the nature and formation of the human mind dominated eighteenth century British thought. For Locke the mind of each mind was, at birth, a blank slate ('tabula rasa') or empty closet, and attained knowledge and wisdom only through the mechanistic associations of thoughrts, experiences and sensations (sensory data) from the "outside world". Wordsworth's poem, Ode: Intimations of Immortality , is a direct refutation of this view of the neonate's mind. Locke's theories had, of course, radical implications for the subsequent development of theories of education and educational practice and this, for Wordsworth, was another issue upon which he rejected Locke's essentially mechanistic theory of best educational practice. The poet Blake was similarly resistant to Lockean philosophy, and to its reliance on empirical philosphy.















Further Information

BOOK FIRST, BOOK SECOND, BOOK TWELFTH
BOOK THIRTEENTH, BOOK FOURTEENTH