Wordsworth’s Monastic Inheritance: Poetry, Place, and the Sense of Community

This book offers the first extended examination of the influence of monasticism on Wordsworth’s writing. Covering the poet’s development between 1806 and 1822, it considers how a series of sources describing medieval monastic life in the north of England influenced Wordsworth’s thinking about regional attachment, trans-historical community, and national cohesion. It also seeks to explain the stylistic shifts that occurred in his poetry during this period: Wordsworth’s interest in monasticism inflected his attempt to create difficult, austere poetry that overturned the expectations of a general reading public that had an appetite for exciting narrative action. An appreciation of Wordsworth’s engagement with the monastic history of his local region helps us to make sense of the radical poetic strategies he adopted in order to subdue and refine readers’ taste.