“Tintern Abbey” Recollected: Wordsworth’s Architecture of Memory

Abstract

I turn to new approaches to psychology, particularly the more recent theories of Julia Kristeva, in the present analysis of Wordsworth’s well known “Tintern Abbey” with the goal of examining the privilege of memory in hopes to open avenues for more fruitful psychological discussions of Romantic poetry outside of Freud’s hegemony.  With psychology as a guide, in the end, I hope to also lead John Ruskin in an evaluation of Wordsworth’s emerging architecture of memory in the poem.  To the deeply entrenched student of Wordsworth’s more canonical work, the veneration of temporal experience, or historical record, is peculiarly subdued. What replaces and transcends these past experiences, for Wordsworth, is afterthought and recollection of that experience.  Upon a closer look at “Tintern Abbey”, we will begin to see that it is the memory of an event rather than the event itself that Wordsworth holds in high esteem.  After the passage of time, memory is shown to allow the poet to appreciate nature, memory preserves history, memory replaces crude thoughts, and memory preserves the greater language of nature.