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The Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry
Click here for details of a new AHRC award (April-July 2007) for 'From Goslar to Grasmere: Moving Through and Dwelling in Wordsworth’s Manuscript Spaces'
NEW The Dove Cottage Bursary for N8 Scholars is for Postgraduate students working on a dissertation in the field of English Romantic Literature, particularly (but not exclusively) on Poetry and Place. The bursary is for £290, and can be applied for by students who want to give a paper at the Summer Conference. Click here for further details.
AHRC Landscape and Environment Programme
AHRC Landscape and Environment Programme: Collaborative Doctoral Studentship
Other links:
Video: Wordsworth's Spots of Time
Research Interests
Current Projects
Publications
Useful Web Addresses
Student projects:
A Student Project, 2004-05: Prelude Maps
A Student Poem, 2005-06: A Modern Version of Tintern Abbey
A Student Film, 2005-06, on Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey:
RealPlayer Windows Media Player
The Wordsworth Centre was established in 1987 by Professor Keith Hanley. It is currently co-directed by Sally Bushell and Simon Bainbridge.
Its primary aim is to promote interest in Wordsworth and the Lake District at an undergraduate, postgraduate and wider level. It is also interested in exploring wider questions about poetry and landscape, poetry and conservation, and in looking ahead from romantic poetry to the present day.
The research interests of the two directors are in:
- Wordsworth - particularly the later Wordsworth
- Romantic poetry and poetics
- The long poem in the nineteenth century
- Questions of readership and reader-response theory
- Romantic Ecology
- William Morris
- Twentieth Century poetry and poetics
- Regionalism and Romanticism
Current and recent projects include:
- Wordsworth's 'Spots of Time' - video of Wordsworth's life and work for the academic market with interviews by major scholars in the field. Now completed and distributed by Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
- The recent acquistion of Christopher Wordsworth's library by the university.
- The Wordsworth Lecture - an annual event.
- Poetry Readings at the University.
- Recent conference: 'Wordsworth's "Second Selves": The Poetic Afterlife 1798-2002'. An international three day conference held at Lancaster University in 2002. The aim of this conference was to open up academic debate on Wordsworth by looking at his work, and that of others, from three different perspectives.
Within the university the Wordsworth Centre contributes to the cross-disciplinary M.A. in Lake District Studies. There is also a Long Poem reading group run by the members and courses for undergraduates which involve the study of Wordsworth's poetry on location in the lake district. Lancaster is keen to make full use of its excellent location in relation to study of the Lake poets. The Centre is also working to build up its research profile and would welcome applications for students interested in either a research MA or Ph.D. research in this field.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications from The Wordsworth Centre include:
Simon Bainbridge
Napoleon and English Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
'"Of war and taking towns': Byron's siege poems", in Romantic Wars: Studies in Culture and Conflict, 1793-1822, ed. Philip Shaw (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
British Poetry and the Revolutionary and NapoleonicWars: Visions of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
'"Was it for this [...]": The Poetic Histories of Southey and Wordsworth', Romanticism on the Net, Issues 32-33 (November 2003-Feb 2004).
'The Historical Context', in Romanticism - An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas Roe (Oxford University Press, 2004).
'Napoleon and European Romanticism', in Companion to European Romanticism, ed. Michael Ferber (Blackwell: 2005).
'Theological Readings of Literature: Wordsworth and Coleridge', in Oxford Companion to Literature and Theology (Oxford University Press, 2005/6).
Keith Hanley
An Annotated Critical Bibliography of William Wordsworth (Hall/ Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995).
Wordsworth: A Poet?s History (Palgrave, 2000).
Co-editor of the Journal Nineteenth Century Context.
General Editor with Greg Kucich of the book series Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies.
Editor of the Armitt Journal: Current Research in the English Lake District.
Tony Pinkney
"Naming Places: Wordsworth and Eco-Criticism" in News from Nowhere: Theory and Politics of Romanticism (Keele University Press, 1995).
"Romantic Ecology" in A Companion to Romanticism ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
Sally Bushell
"Exempla in The Excursion: The Purpose of the Pastor?s Epitaphic Tales". The Charles Lamb Bulletin, n.s. 105 Jan. 1999. ISSN 0308- 0951.
"Retold Tales and Structured Silences in The Excursion". A chapter in a forthcoming collection: Romanticism and Silence ed. Fiona Price and S. J. Masson (Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).
Re-Reading 'The Excursion' (Ashgate, 2001).
The Excursion by William Wordsworth (Cornell University Press, 2002), Editor: Michael Jaye, Associate Editors: James A. Butler and Sally Bushell.
For any enquiries concerning The Wordsworth Centre contact: s.bainbridge@lancaster.ac.uk
Useful Web Addresses
Wordsworth Complete Poetical Works (Bartleby Project at Columbia University):
http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/wordsworth
A Webguide to William Wordsworth from Literary History.com (Very useful site summing up all critical articles on the web):
http://www.literaryhistory.com/19thC/WORDSWORTH.htm
The Wordsworth Circle on the World Wide Web (Major Journal for Academic Criticism of Wordsworth):
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/english/journal/wordsworth/index.html
The Wordsworth Trust (The Wordsworth Museum and Dove Cottage, Grasmere):
http://www.wordsworth.org.uk
Rydal Mount and Gardens (Home of Wordsworth from 1812):
http://www.cumbria-the-lake-district.co.uk/attractions/rydal-mount.htm
The William Wordsworth Page (includes portraits of Wordsworth and Calls for Papers):
http://members.aol.com/wordspage/home.htm
OTHER ROMANTICISM SITES
B.A.R.S. (British Association of Romantic Studies)
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/english/bars.intro.htm
N.A.S.S.R. (North American Society for the Study of Romanticism)
http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~jmwright/nassr.html
Romanticism on the Net
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/
Alan Liu "The Voice of the Shuttle"
http://vos.ucsb.edu/index.asp
The Arts and Humanities Research Council: Landscape and Environment Programme: Collaborative Doctoral Studentship Lancaster University (Wordsworth Centre and CeMOre) and The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere have funded a 3-year PhD Studentship for a project entitled ‘A Place Re-imagined: The Spatial, Literary and Cultural Making of Dove Cottage, Grasmere’, commencing 1 October 2006. Supervision to be provided by Professor Simon Bainbridge and Professor John Urry at Lancaster University and Jeff Cowton of the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.
Prelude Maps
During the academic year 2004-5 students were set the unassessed task of reading the whole of The Prelude and designing a map to represent the poem in a visual/spatial way. The results were impressively creative and we have selected some of them for others to enjoy.
The maps below were created by the following students and are reproduced with their kind permission:
Prelude Map 2 - Louise Clapperton
Prelude Map 5 - Nathan Dirienzo
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