William Wordworth's Sonnets Dedicated To Liberty are dominated
by his personal and political connections with France, and his
changing attitudes to Britain's participation in the
counter-Revolutionary war effort. Wordsworth's experiments with the
sonnet form in this period were clearly sustained, intensive and
closely engaged with affairs of state. However, a number of the
sonnets are also keenly responsive to 17th-century British history
in ways that raise distinct challenges to our sense of Wordworth's
shifting political attitudes. Are the sonnets continuous with
Wordsworth's early radicalism? Or are the poems better understood
as a redirection of political and imaginative energies under the
pressure of the Napoleonic threat towards the conservative defence
of the nation and tradition? In this lecture, Phil Connell
considers these and other questions.
About the Podcast
Recordings from the popular public lecture series featuring new work on all aspects of intellectual history. Hosted by the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews.