English Poetry - 19th Century - Literary Criticism

Re-reading The excursion

Name: Re-reading The excursion
Author: Sally Bushell
ISBN: 9780754605768

by Sally Bushell

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Overview

Sally Bushell argues that the poem, which has suffered at the hands of critics for most of the twentieth century, has been unfairly judged according to a Coleridgean rather than a Wordsworthian definition of 'philosophy' - that it has been read as a didactic work, rather than one which uses its dramatic form to teach its readers to think for themselves. She offers a new reading in which The Excursion is shown to be about providing the readers with moral habits and mental constructs by which to learn, not simply telling them what to think.