Talk:Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Wye river

In the poem, Wordsworth refers to a Wye river: which one of the disambiguation page? --Daĉjo^почта 17:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that it is the River Wye. The River Wye article says that Wordsworth's poem refers to it. Furthermore, the River Wye flows through a district called Tintern. I have wiki-linked to the River Wye page in the first sentence. Dave Runger^(t)⁄_(c) 21:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Needs an expert

This page needs an expert to revise it. At the moment it sounds like a mediocre high school essay.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.113.248 (talk • contribs) 14:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

17 July 2007

It is a mistake to suppose that Wordsworth's poem was inspired by, or had any meaning connected or referring to, Tintern Abbey -- and, by inference, to any religious motif. The complete title is "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour" and the whole poem talks about the natural environment the poet had known as a young man and its influence on his later life. pabzum 201.13.104.176 18:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Revolution? Dark deeds of the anniversary date? Questioning God/religion? The burden Nature relieves is the "din/of towns and cities," not an existential crisis. Read Shelley for that... 96.20.143.38 (talk) 02:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC)Dead Horse

The Abbey is not the subject

I agree with previous points raised on this discussion board. I think that the author of this article has overlooked the true meaning of the poem. The subject of this poem is indeed nature; it is of 'these waters, rolling from their mountain-springs', 'these steep and lofty cliffs', 'a wild secluded scene' and the environment around the Abbey. For it is through these things that the sublime can be accessed. It would be folly to assume that Wordsworth is suggesting the Abbey itself is what is giving him 'tranquil restoration', for it is a man-made structure; this would run counter to the entirety of Lyrical Ballads which, if anything, emphasises man's need to embrace nature; for the sublimity of nature is 'the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being'.

I also challenge the notion that there is much religious connotation involved within this poem. As previously stated the Abbey is not the subject, therefore there is no grounds for argument of an implied connection to God as he is writing a poem about Holy grounds. The implications of this poem are access to the sublime, and indeed what the sublime actually is - 'A motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things'.

The significance of this poem is that it is the last poem in Lyrical Ballads - it is a poem of re-visitation, both to the central themes of the Advertisement, and to nature itself. Wordsworth is revisiting this place after 5 years of absence, and what we learn is that he has changed since then ('I cannot paint what then I was'). He is revisiting a place where once he had no knowledge of the sublime, and no 'feeling' towards nature; now however he has. This is perhaps a symbol for his works of Lyrical Ballads, that now the reader must revisit values that he/she once held and challenge them; it is also a poem that shows the importance of revisiting nature itself. Previously in the works of Lyrical Ballads 'man' as a group has been very much been distanced from nature and the sublime. For example 'what man has made of man' in Lines Written in Early Spring. Here 'the mind of man' is included in a definition of the sublime and where it exists. Perhaps Wordsworth is encouraging us all to revisit nature and to embrace that connection so that we can all experience the 'serene and blessed mood'. This certainly could be argued to be the case as the poem ends with his encouragement to his dear sister Dorothy to embrace nature as he did, and his prayer to nature to 'let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walks' (as Dorothy walks). There is even encouragement perhaps for any would be disciple of this message: the line to his sister 'I behold in thee what I was once', can perhaps be taken as Wordsworth saying that once he too was apart from nature and the sublime, and that so long as you embrace nature as he did and does, anyone can achieve access to the sublime.

Jez (195.92.67.74 12:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC))

Agreed. The subject is nature, the location is simply "a place near tintern abbey." The actual location could be interchangeable for all that the abbey has to do with the poem. Wordsworth is a Romantic, in that he rejects the material world of civilization for the spiritual connection with untrammelled nature in all her power and glory. 216.232.253.135 (talk) 02:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The topic of Wordsworth's relationship to Nature is complicated and fraught. Consider for instance the following passage from Geoffrey Hartman's Wordsworth's Poetry:

Many readers have felt that Wordsworth's poetry honors and even worships nature... Scholarship, luckily, tempers the affections, and the majority of readers have emphasized the poet's progression from nature worship or even pantheism to a highly qualified form of natural religion, with increasing awareness of the "enobling interchange" between mind and nature and a late yielding of primacy to the activity of the mind or the idealizing power of imagination. A very small group, finally, has pointed to the deeply paradoxical character of Wordsowrth's dealings with nature and suggested that what he calls imagination may be intrinsically opposed to nature. This last and rarest position seems to me closest to the truth, yet I do not feel it conflicts totally with more traditional readings stressing the poet's adherence to nature. It can be shown, via several important episodes of The Prelude, that Wordsworth thought nature itself led him beyond nature; and, since this movement of transcendence, related to what mystics have called the negative way, is inherent in life and achieved without violent or ascetic discipline, one can think of it as the progress of a soul which is naturaliter negativa.

This so called "traditional" reading, even by 1964 when Hartman published his study, was already widely seen by critics as problematic; the state of current scholarship is now heavily in favor of more philosophical readings of the Lyrical Ballads. Especially in light of Coleridge's contributions in the original edition, I don't see how this simplistic view of Wordsworth and Nature could be tenable.

Furthermore, the incorporation of Dorothy in the last part of the poem is not without critical debate either. As Heidi Thompson writes in "We Are Two": The Address to Dorothy in "Tintern Abbey":

The contested presence of "Tintern Abbey" in Wordsworth scholarship oscillates at present between two critical poles: one group considers the poem Wordsworth's most articulate expression of the egotistical sublime, based on the selfish exclusion of anything else that might impede his priviledged vision into "the life of things"; another reads the poem as the all-embracing, "impassioned ode to joy" of a wise speaker who has heard and incorporated the 'still, sad music of humanity' in his argument. The disparaging critics are outraged by what Wordsworth excludes from his self-aggrandizing prophecy (the poor, Dorothy), while the affirmative readers tend to understate how bewildered and disillusioned the speaker is in favor of a reading which emphasizes the "abundant recompense."

Thompson here points out several points of interest: [1] it is not clear amongst the critics what or how Wordsworth really feels at the end of the poem about his experiences and by extension nature. [2] There is considerable critical debate about the exact reason for incorporating Dorothy at the end of the poem; it is not at all clear that he is really encouraging Dorothy to partake in the same path that he has taken. All of these considerations require more in-depth research. But as it stands, I don't think that the page, as it stands, really reflects any of these concerns. As someone has already pointed out, "At the moment [this page] sounds like a mediocre high school essay." Confused Sea Creature (talk) 23:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Picture

The picture on this page is completely inappropriate, not merely for the reason mentioned above (that is that the poem is not really about Tintern Abbey) but because a modern picture of a restored ruin is completely antithetical to Wordsworth conception of a relentlessly crumbling Romantic ruin. It is appropriate for the page to be linked to the Tintern Abbey article, but for the picture to be on this page, especially in this prominent position, fundamentally undermines Wordworth's intent and purpose: it clouds an encyclopaedic entry about the poem. 203.97.98.36 (talk) 02:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I support this opinion; the poem is not about the Abbey. Easchiff (talk) 10:03, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The picture that has now been inserted is much better than the previous one, but it does not alter the fact that the poem normally called, for convenience, "Tintern Abbey" is actually entitled "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey". If I had a picture of the scenery Wordsworth describes, I would insert it, but as I don't I can't. Please can someone else do so. --Martin Wyatt 20:23, 4 February 2011 (UTC) (previously posting as MWLittleGuy)

Conversation poems

I'm in the middle of some work on Coleridge's 'Conversation' poems. This article presently describes "Tintern Abbey" as a "conversation poem", but I don't think this category is normally extended much beyond the 8 poems of Coleridge to which it was originally applied by Harper in 1928. In 2002, Magnuson wrote, "In 1965, M. H. Abrams credited Coleridge with originating what Abrams called the 'greater Romantic lyric', a genre that began with Coleridge's 'Conversation' poems, and included Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey', Shelley's 'Stanzas Written in Dejection' and Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale', and was a major influence on more modern lyrics by Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and W. H. Auden." (Magnuson, Paul. "The 'Conversation' poems". In Newlyn, Lucy (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Cambridge University Press. pp. 32–44. ISBN 0521659094. {{cite book}}: Text "year2002" ignored (help)). Please comment if you'd object to some corresponding revisions of this part of the article. Easchiff (talk) 09:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Revision needed

The point made in 2007 that this page needs revision by an expert is still true. I have removed one incorrect statement: "It was, however, the only poem in Wordsworth's oeuvre of which he did not revise even a word for later publications, saying of it that he never wrote under circumstances more congenial." There are considerable differences between the version in Lyrical Ballads and the one in Wordsworth's final edition of 1849-50. ll 11-15 in LB read "These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,/ Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,/ Among the groves and copses lose themselves,/ Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb/ The wild green landscape."

The later version reads: "These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,/ Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,/ Are clad in one green hue and lose themselves/ 'Mid groves and copses."

But there is much else that needs to be done to it. --MWLittleGuy (talk) 20:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. This is pretty much a mess. Theonemacduff (talk) 18:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Title

I see someone has changed the opening from "Lines written ..." to "Lines Composed ..." The one title is as correct as the other. The original title, in Lyrical Ballads, was "Lines written". The title in the final version, in the collected works, was "Lines composed". --Martin Wyatt (talk) 21:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

It was precisely the contemplative setting that led the Cistercians to establish an abbey on this site. While not as contemplative and isolated as the Carthusians, the Cistercians none the less were in and of the natural world which surrounded their abbeys. And, the abbey was not "abandoned." It was closed by Henry VIII, the monks forced to leave and the abbey property sold off to raise funds for Henry's treasury.Canoensis (talk) 06:21, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Revision 2015

Successive attempts to improve an unsatisfactory article were only resulting in repetition and loss of focus. It seemed better, therefore, to concentrate such facts as were there in a radical revision. Since it now emerged that the article's main aim was to place the poem in the context of the times, I added a final section that defined this further. It really needs someone competent to expand the article along these lines, as has been suggested more than once on this page. It also needs sharp-eyed editors who will in future delete unreferenced and amateurish POV such as chatter about 'the divine' when that word does not appear anywhere in the poem. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 19:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Other people's poems

Why is there so much space given to other people's poems? There are no less than 450 words about other people's poems in an article of 1350 words, i.e. one third of the entire article, and there is more direct quotation from Sneyd Davies's poem than from Wordsworth's! It's enough to note that other people's poems have been used in analyses (or rather, one analysis) of this poem. The rest should be deleted, or split off into a separate article. 2001:BB6:4713:4858:F4D9:1773:9F93:9575 (talk) 10:09, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

I suggest this new editor gets more experience of WP and a user name before throwing his weight around. The section above makes it clear that the article is still in progress. Giving the poem context is prefectly valid and the correct response is to fill out the rest, not to delete or banish the last section. Sweetpool50 (talk) 10:25, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Well done on the ad hominem, Sweetpool50. The sections above make it clear that the article is "still in progress" since 2007! I am not the person to "fill out the rest", since I know very little about the poem, hence why I read this article: I was looking for some encyclopaedic treatment of this poem, not other people's poems. 2001:BB6:4713:4858:F4D9:1773:9F93:9575 (talk) 11:05, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Very much agree. And the ‘historical context’ seems to be a space filled by a very narrow academic literary criticism argument with vaguely political connotations. It will be of zero interest to non-academics and gives the general reader very little information about the cultural climate in which the poem occurs. 139.216.105.86 (talk) 02:21, 26 November 2023 (UTC)