Historicism, Formalism, and “Tintern Abbey”

Abstract

This article responds to Marjorie Levinson's groundbreaking historicist study Wordsworth's Great Period Poems. Beginning with a reading Wordsworth's “Tintern Abbey,” I give a different account of how we might approach the politics of Wordsworth's poetry – namely, by acknowledging Wordsworth's exploration of the interconnection between poetic and institutional forms. I relate this account to several themes that I explore in my own writing on Romantic literature and the history of secular institution-building and penal reform; I close by considering how my arguments depart from recent, competing accounts of literary form.