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Date
2019-03-??
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英語學系
Department of English, NTNU
Department of English, NTNU
Abstract
The “Stolen Boat,” one of the most celebrated episodes from WilliamWordsworth’s The Prelude, recounts the occasion when the poet as a youth takesa boat from the shore of the Ullswater in England’s Lake District and beginsrowing into the middle of the lake. Suddenly, when he sees a higher peak emergefrom a lower hill adjacent to the bank from which he is rowing, he is taken abackby the sight and immediately returns to shore. The episode in recent years hasrightly been cited by critics as a representative example of the sublime, buton-site investigations by the author suggest that the matter should be furtherconsidered in light of physical evidence that the poet may have amalgamated theimage of the mountain with other information in a time-integration analogous tothe motion of the boat. The result is a new reading that does not necessarilyrefute earlier theoretical insights into the episode as a sublime experience, butrather qualifies them by underscoring the complicated manner in whichWordsworth incorporates nature into the “growth of the poet’s mind