Re-Reading The Excursion

Sally Bushell completed her Ph.D. at Queens' College, Cambridge in 1999. She is now lecturer in Romantic Studies and Co-Director of The Wordsworth Centre at Lancaster University. She is also currently co-editing the Cornell edition of The Excursion (forthcoming). This is her first full length critical work.

• Contents: Introduction; The poet's voice: Disappointed expectations; Ventiloquizing through another man's mouth: Coleridge; Impertinent babbling: Hazlitt and Jeffrey; The voice of speaking communication: Lamb; Dramatic composition, dramatic definition: Defining the dramatic poem; Internalised dramatic conventions; Indirectness; In which they differ: characterisation; In which they resemble each other: textual transposition; Dramatic composition; A performative philosophy: Context or content: i. ideology; Context or content: ii. Religion; Performative structures: i. Dialogue; Performative structures: ii. Walking and talking; A context for response: The historical context: reading aloud; Contextualising affective response; The poetic context: i. The embedded narrative; The poetic context: ii. Retelling Margaret's tale; Making the reader active: Doubling response: Margaret and the sentimental; Unsettling the reader; The twice-told tale; The problem of the poet; Different ways of seeing: Seen through a tender haze: the epitaph form; We see, then, as we feel: subjective difference; Meeting at the midway point: subjective transcendence; Narrative Memory: The minds of men; Telling tales in The Prelude; Narrative memory in The Excursion; Narrative memory and the poetic act; The poet and his community; Bibliography; Index.

'Well written, well presented, and very scholarly ... The use of critical theory is admirable - sophisticated, illuminating, but not overdone ... the section arguing from the manuscripts is scholarly and original. ... an intelligent and stimulating study of a major poem.' Professor J.R. Watson, University of Durham 'An important and original contribution to Wordsworth studies and, in particular, to the project of recovering The Excursion as a central text in the poet's corpus. ... Sally Bushell helps us to understand The Excursion as the indisputably (if idiosyncratically) "dramatic" work the poet intended to write. ... Bushell ... opens up the poem's "philosophy" to fresh scrutiny and appreciation. This admirable study establishes The Excursion as a poem worth reading - and re-reading.' Alison Hickey, Associate Professor of English, Wellesley College, and author of Impure Conceits: Rhetoric and Ideology in Wordsworth's ’Excursion' '... in this fine study, Bushell encourages us that there is more to The Excursion than we first realized.' The Byron Journal '... Wordsworthians [...] will greatly value Bushell's contributions to the discussion of the The Excursion and the strong scholarship she brings to her readings.' European Romantic Review '... richly insightful of the various published and manuscript versions of this too neglected Wordsworthian text... both the critic and the poet have succeeded brilliantly in their task of reading poetry back into real life...' Australasian Victorian Studies Journal