Frigørelsens poetik

Resumé

Jakob Ladegaard: "Frigørelsens poetik - Den franske revolution og poetisk indbildningskraft i Wordsworths The Prelude"

Abstract

Jakob Ladegaard: “The Poetics of Emancipation – Poetic Imagination and The French Revolution in Wordsworth’s The Prelude”

It has often been argued that William Wordsworth’s tribute to poetic imagination in his great epic poem The Prelude (1805/1850) should be read as the mature poet’s farewell to the historical and political world of The French Revolution to which the young Wordsworth was greatly attached. The present essay argues to the contrary that the elaboration of the concept of imagination in the poem is tied to an affirmative re-interpretation of the popular and democratic elements of the revolution in the face of its disappointing decline into elitism, terror and The Revolutionary Wars. A close reading of The Prelude’s narration of the poet’s travels to France during the revolution suggests that poetic imagination is not the exclusive property of the artistic genius, but a common principle put into democratic practice by anonymous
masses on the roads of France. The relations thus established in the poem between the poet and the people are interpreted through the lenses of the English republican tradition and recent democratic theories advanced by French philosophers like Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort and Jacques Rancière.