Keywords
William Wordsworth
El preludio
ciencia y arte Disenchantment
William Wordsworth
The Prelude
Science and Art
How to Cite
Abstract
Much of the literary criticism devoted to interpreting the work of W. Wordsworth tries, on the one hand, to overcome and moderate, or, on the other hand, to directly accept the manifest opposition against science and scientific practices that the poet maintains, mainly throughout his work The Prelude. I will examine the conceptual basis of such hostile attitude by analyzing the lexicon used in this work. The results obtained permit confirming Wordsworth’s hostility towards science, and more precisely, the prejudice that modern science would not allow a humanized perception of nature. But I argue that this attitude is due to a latent enchanted worldview, in a Weberian sense, more suitable for the sentimental description than for the perception and description of the natural landscape based on the explanatory knowledge of nature.
References
Austin, Frances (1989), The Language of Wordsworth and Coleridge. London, Macmillan.
Bewell, Alan (2017), Natures in Translation: Romanticism and Colonial Natural History. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bonacina, L. W. C. (1944), «Wordsworth and Science», Nature, n.º 153, p. 716.
Bush, Douglas (1950), Science and English Poetry: A Historical Sketch, 1590-1950. New York, Oxford University Press.
Cooper, Lane (1911), A Concordance to the Poems of William Wordsworth. London, Smith, Elder & Co.
Dawkins, Richard (1998), Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.
Dilthey, Wilhelm (1989-2010), Selected Works (ed. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi). Princeton, Princeton University Press. 5 vols.
Durrant, Geoffrey (1970), Wordsworth and the Great System: A Study of Wordsworth's Poetic Universe. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Evans, B. Ifor (1954), Literature and Science. London, George Allen and Unwin.
Gane, Nicholas (2002), Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization versus Re-enchantment. New York, Palgrave.
Gaull, Marilyn (2015), «Wordsworth and Science», The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth (eds. Richard Gravil and Daniel Robinson). Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Gaull, Marilyn (1979), «From Wordsworth to Darwin: “On to the Fields of Praise”», Wordsworth Circle, n.º 10, Issue 1, pp. 33-48.
Garstang, Walter (1926), «Wordsworth’s Interpretation of Nature», Nature (supplement), n.º 117, Issue 2933, pp. 1-8.
Holmes, Richard (2009), The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. London, Harper Press.
Hughes-Hallett, Penelope (2000), The Immortal Dinner. London, Viking.
Jeffrey, Lloyd N. (1967), «Wordsworth and Science», South Central Bulletin, vol. 27.
Josephson-Storm, Jason A. (2017), The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Keats, John (1978), The Poems of John Keats (ed. Jack Stillinger). Cambridge (Massachusetts), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Kontos, Alkis (1994), «The World Disenchanted and the Return of Gods and Demons», The Barbarism of Reason: Max Weber and the Twilight of Enlightenment (ed. A. Horowitz and T. Maley). Toronto, University of Toronto Press, pp. 223-247.
Koshul, Basit Bilal (2005), The Postmodern Significance of Max Weber’s Legacy: Disenchanting Disenchantment. New York, Palgrave.
Mackie, Alexander (1906), Nature Knowledge in Modern Poetry. London, The Aberdeen University Press.
Manier, Edward (1978), The Young Darwin and his Cultural Circle. Studies in the History of Modern Science, vol. 2. Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Co.
Marquard, Odo (1986), Apoligie des Zufälligen. Stuttgart, Reclam.
Mill, John Stuart (1897), «What is Poetry?» Early Essays (ed. J. W. M. Gibbs). London, George Bell and Sons, pp. 201-217.
Nichols, Ashton (2005), «Roaring Alligators and Burning Tygers: Poetry and Science from William Bartram to Charles Darwin», Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, n.º 149, Issue 3, pp. 304-315.
O’Connor, Ralph (2007), The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856. Chicago, Chicago University Press.
Pacho, Julián (2005), Positivismo y darwinismo. Madrid, Akal.
Paris, John Ayrton (1831), The Life of Sir Humphry Davy. London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. 2 vols.
Plumly, Stanley (2014), The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb. New York, W. W. Norton.
Schroeder, Ralph (1992), Max Weber and the Sociology of Culture. London, Sage Publications.
Stevenson, Lionel (1932), Darwin among the Poets. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Turner, John (1990), «Wordsworth and Science», Critical Survey, vol. 2, n.º 1. Science and the Nineteenth Century, pp. 21-28.
Valenza, Robin (2009), Literature, Language, and the Rise of the Intellectual Disciplines in Britain, 1680-1820. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Weber, Max (2004), «Science as a Vocation», The Vocation Lectures (ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong; trans. Rodney Livingstone). Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, pp. 1-31.
Whitehead, Alfred North (2011), Science and the Modern World. New York, Cambridge University Press [1925].
Wordsworth, William (1982), The Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth (ed. Paul D. Sheats. Boston). Houghton Mifflin Company.
Wordsworth, William (1975), Wordsworth: Poetical Works (ed. Thomas Hutchinson). London, Oxford University Press.
Wordsworth, William (1928), The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind (ed. Ernest de Sélincourt). London, Oxford University Press.
Wyatt, John (1995), Wordsworth and the Geologists. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.