William Wordsworth's writings on war, 1793 - 1798

Abstract

This thesis is about William Wordsworth's early literary engagement with the French Revolutionary Wars. The military conflicts lasted from 1793 to 1802, but I have taken the years between 1793-the year when the wars broke out and Wordsworth's 'An Evening Walk' and 'Descriptive Sketches' were published-and the spring of 1798, a period when Wordsworth was 'especially productive' and completed 'The Discharged Soldier', as my period. I have treated a pamphlet, a play and seven poems composed by Wordsworth within the time frame in chronological order. I have focused on this period in his career in order to show that Wordsworth, before he wrote the belligerent sonnet sequence of 1802-3, was already displaying signs of support for the war in his earlier works such as 'Descriptive Sketches', 'Adventures on Salisbury Plain', The Borderers, 'Old Man Travelling', 'The Ruined Cottage' and 'The Discharged Soldier', which have not been regarded as engaging with the present war or supporting it. My reading of the earlier works will supplement previous studies of the political sonnets by critics such as Mary A. Favret and Simon Bainbridge who have detected Wordsworth’s bellicist stance in them and help establish Wordsworth’s identity as a pro-war poet.