Wordsworth’s Re-Formation of Individuality: "Spots of Time," the Fragment and the Autobiography

particularity of the poet and the poet’s experience was the principle of
absolute universal authority and the agency by which poetry attained the
infinite totality it strove to evoke” (Ibid. 140). Individuality stands along
with infinity and at the same time proves to be “the very vehicle for real-
izing the union with infinity” (Ibid. 5). 
Freedom and plurality characterize both the fragment and individuality,
both of which are compatible with numerous other fragments and indi-
viduals. The authors of The Literary Absolute write, “Fragments are defi-
nitions of the fragment; this is what installs the totality of the fragment as
a plurality and its completion as the incompletion of its infinity” (44).
Despite the ostensibly tautological definition of fragments, fragmentary
individuality includes multiplicity and infinity to generate itself in
diverse forms. Thus, “the genre of the fragment is the genre of genera-
tion” (LA 49). In addition, the self-generating impetus of the fragment is
akin to that of “romantic poetry” in that it is “a progressive, universal
poetry” (AF 116). Romantic poetry aims at reuniting “all the separate
species of poetry and put[ting] poetry in touch with philosophy and
rhetoric” (Ibid.). Above all, the idea that “the romantic kind of poetry is
still in the state of becoming and never be perfected” (Ibid.) is valuable
to the discussion of self-generating fragmentary totality. In view of “the
autonomy of the self-jointure” (LA 46), fragmentation comes to engender
defragmentation through infinitely self-producing process of an
autonomous individual organism. This particular performance of self-
production extends to the singularly Romantic phenomenon of self-writ-
ing as shown in many cases of (auto)biographical writings.
5
Concerning the prevalence of the genre of the autobiography, it is cru-