Jeff Everhart
Senior Honors Research Proposal
Romanticism, Language, and the Vox Populi:
A Sociolinguistic analysis of Wordsworth and Whitman
The role of the poet as creator or maker is central to the Romantic view of poetry, as is
the connective and expressive powers of language. According to F.O. Matthiessen,
“[s]ince language is the material in which the writer must work… his theory of what its
potentialities are… does not remain an abstraction but enters inevitably into his practice”
(32-3). Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth are two Romantic poets representative
of this linguistic viewpoint. Their philosophies regarding language arise from a growing
rift, a sense of separation between the natural and artificial resulting from the rise of
industrialism during the nineteenth century.
In Lyrical Ballads (1802), for instance, Wordsworth condemns industrialization
as the cause of deterioration in poetic language; therefore, Wordsworth chooses pastoral
life as the chief object of Lyrical Ballads and Tintern Abbey in an attempt to reconnect
Man and Nature, correcting the schism between Man and Nature caused by an industrial
and artificial separation from the natural world. On the other hand, Whitman posits an
altogether different response in response to the same schism. In Leaves of Grass (1855),
Whitman does not separate the industrial and pastoral as Wordsworth does, but rather
integrates the two opposing concepts into a form that embodies a new and radically
altered American identity. This project will use linguistic theories to explore how both
authors attempt to unify concepts that they perceive to be in need of resolution, yet each
author takes a drastically different approach to this synthesis.
At present, there is a scarcity of criticism comparing Whitman and Wordsworth.
The criticism that does exist mainly focuses on their connection as quasi-mystics or as
prophetic voices. For example, D.J Moores notes that the philosophies of these authors
most notably intersect at several key points, namely, “the interpenetration of thought and
inanimate objects,” “the coupling of subject and object,” and “different things becoming
one” (13). Moores attributes these connections, and rightly so, to a shared
transcendentalist vein extending through both authors’ literary traditions. Moores thus
addresses one facet of Romantic ideology in their work, but the extent to which modern
critics have utilized Sassurian linguistic techniques to systemically analyze the language,
symbols, and signs of Wordsworth and Whitman is relatively limited. This is due, in part,
to several mitigating factors; primarily, the field of trans-Atlantic studies has only begun
to address Romantic authors over the last several years, thus providing ample room for
this study to actively participate and contribute to the growing critical conversation
regarding trans-Atlantic Romanticism. Secondly, in terms of chronology and epistolary
evidence, more critical attention has been paid to the relationship between Wordsworth
and Ralph Waldo Emerson, all but ignoring the blatant similarities between Wordsworth
and Whitman and their use of language. This study will address Emerson as a transitional
figure, using him as a proverbial link between Wordsworth and Whitman to further
illuminate an ideological relationship that has received relatively little comparative
criticism from a linguistic standpoint. Therefore, the final product of my research will
attempt to fill the gap in this portion of the critical conversation.
In terms of a proposed schedule for this research project, I will have all of my
primary and secondary research completed by mid-fall of 2010. Nearing the end of the
fall semester I will have a rough outline complete and begin prewriting over the winter
break. The first half of the spring semester will be reserved for writing, with a rough draft
expected near the end of February. The remaining period will be reserved for revision
and rewriting as well as the final stages of editing with plans of scheduling the defense in
mid- to late- April 2011.
The organization of the paper itself will be broken down into five sections. The
first will be an introduction that outlines the current critical conversation and highlights
the Sassurian linguistic methodology that will be applied to the study itself.
The second section will define the aesthetic milieu in which Whitman and
Wordsworth wrote, discussing the Romantic view of imagination, transcendence, and
language’s function in both poetry and society. It will be necessary to utilize as reference
points the views of the British Romantic author Samuel Coleridge and the American
Transcendental author Emerson to create the contrast on which the rest of the essay will
rest, thus fashioning a proverbial chain through which these Romantic ideals flowed as
the movement evolved throughout the 19th century.
The third section will deal with the similarities exemplified by Wordsworth and
Whitman, tentatively focusing on how Whitman and Wordsworth are similar in regards
to the function of their art and expression in the larger social and artistic conversation in
which they engaged. In addition, I will explore how both claim that poetic language is
property of the common people and how they attempt in their respective works to return
poetry to a linguistic register reflective of its humble and common beginnings.
The fourth section will contrast these similarities, highlighting their different
approaches to the poetic craft in spite of their obvious philosophical similarities. For
Wordsworth, the connective power of poetry exists in recalling and noticing the
complexities in moments of past experience; for Whitman, his ideals regarding poetic
language stem from his desire to create a poetic American language, one that is able to
concretely categorize the great diversity of the United States. Wordsworth, along with
Emerson in the United States, sought to exalt nature over the artificial language that had
crept into the English lexicon, thus offering a solution to the industrial schism in terms of
absolutes. On the other hand, Whitman attempts to equalize the two, placing them within
a structure that is at times utterly contradictory and paradoxically successful in its
synthesis.
The final section will re-contextualize the relationship between Wordsworth and
Whitman, discussing the findings of the study in terms that define the importance of the
points raised and how they not only contribute to the examination of Romantic thought,
but engage in an analysis of an inspiring movement that straddles two centuries and spans
an ocean, enveloping two continents amidst the groans and smoke clouds of quickly
industrializing nations.
Tentative Bibliography
Bigelow, Gordon. The Poet’s Third Eye. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc, 1976.
Coleridge, Samuel. Biographia Literaria. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt.New York. W.W.
Norton & Company Inc, 2006. 474-88.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston.
Houghton Mifflin, 2009.1707-1734. Print.
Matthiessen, F.O. American Renaissance. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2009. Print.
Moores, D.J. Mystical Discourse in Wordsworth and Whitman. Paris: Peeters, 2006.
Print.
Murray, Roger. Wordsworth’s Style. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1967.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. London:
Fontana/Collins, 1974.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston.
Houghton Mifflin, 2009,2996-3009. Print.
Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York.
W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2006. 263-74.
---. The Prelude. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York. W.W. Norton & Company Inc,
2006. 324-89.
---. “Tintern Abby”. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York. W.W. Norton & Company Inc,
2006. 258-62.