Graduate Program
English
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Semester of Degree Completion
2010
Thesis Director
Randall Beebe
Thesis Committee Member
John Kilgore
Thesis Committee Member
Unknown
Abstract
The discussion in Robert Weisbuch's Atlantic Double-Cross about the ways in which American writers wrote both with and against their British contemporaries is analogous to the way Ralph Waldo Emerson is influenced by and connected to William Wordsworth through the "art of loss". Wordsworth is the poet of human suffering, and through many of his poems about dealing with loss and mortality, especially, The Excursion, and the "Intimations Ode," he has a profound impact on Emerson. Emerson's ability to deal with the loss of his young son Waldo is difficult, and he attempts to look to Wordsworth's poems on death and mourning as a means of dealing with loss, grief, and dejection, and as a source of poetic inspiration and personal healing. The contentious quality of his feelings toward Wordsworth are apparent in his difficulty with following Wordsworth's lead while staying true to himself and utilizing his own version of self reliance.
I will argue that Wordsworth provides a template for Emerson with his "double consciousness" of reconciling a private grief with public poetry writing. Emerson follows Wordsworth's example in The Excursion by facilitating a philosophical discussion through poetry where differing voices help to initiate a dialogue and to ask questions (and not necessarily answer them) concerning mortality, dejection, and healing. Through an intertextual study of the connection between Ralph Waldo Emerson and the poetry of William Wordsworth, and what Patrick J. Keane calls the "art of loss," I will attempt to engage in a transatlantic dialogue between British Romanticism and American Transcendentalism.
Recommended Citation
Shaner, Nicholas M., "Wordsworth, Emerson, And The "Art Of Loss"" (2010). Masters Theses. 301.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/301
