This thesis explores the use of the pastoral genre in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Takings its cue from William Empson’s Some Versions of Pastoral, this study interrogates the idea of the romanticised rural idyll. It argues for a variegated and dynamic generic landscape that is underpinned by a new subgenre called the dark pastoral. Examining Wordsworth and Coleridge’s early poetry as well as Wordsworth’s epics, this thesis charts the experimentation, rehabilitation and evolution of the pastoral across 55 years. Through the approach of new formalism, this study reveals the poetic techniques and innovations of two Romantic poets committed to generic advancement.
The first chapter introduces the idea of generic experimentation in its analysis of the lyric ‘I’ in Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798, ‘The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description’ and ‘The Nightingale’. The second chapter investigates pastoral anxiety in Coleridge’s ‘Conversation Poems’ and notes the transformative effect of the imagination in lyrics including ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ and Fears in Solitude. The third chapter investigates Coleridge’s hybridisation of the pastoral with myth narrative in its exploration of self-consciousness in ‘Kubla Khan’, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and ‘Christabel’. Chapter four discusses how Wordsworth manipulates genre to produce his epic tale of suffering, The Excursion. The final chapter reveals the new poet-hero in its examination of pastoral trial in The Prelude.
Although the word ‘pastoral’ rarely appears in Wordsworth and Coleridge’s works, the genre underpins their poetic thoughts. Both poets relish the challenge of reinventing the pastoral, figuring it as an opportunity to modernise and liberate key axioms such as the return, Arcadia and nostalgia. Through their unique approaches to generic experimentation, Wordsworth and Coleridge drastically alter the style, form and content of the bucolic landscape, ultimately revealing two distinct but imaginative types of pastoral poetry.
