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

Abstract
This paper argues that it is possible to construct an analogy of the liter-
ary fragment to an organic individual on the basis of an autonomous sys-
tem of organic unity by reading William Wordsworth’s ways of self-writ-
ing in The Prelude. The organicity of a fragment is borrowed from
Friedrich Schlegel’s theoretic and literary approach to the Romantic frag-
ment. Focusing primarily on the two “spots of time” in Book Twelfth, I
attempt to formulate a reciprocal relationship between a work of art and a
literary autobiographer in terms of the self-generativity of the fragment.
To be precise, both the fragment and the autobiographical project presup-
pose and at the same time depend on the engendering force of an organic
unity and its resistance to discontinuity, which ironically affirms the per-
sistent threat of disruption and death. Rewriting traumatic childhood
experiences as rites of passage into adulthood, the two specified “spots of
time” show the dominant mode of memory operative in the poem.
Asserting the prominence of the individual as the very vehicle of realiz-
ing universal humanity, Wordsworth tries to re-form his individuality
grounded in his childhood memories in a literary fashion. Under the
premise that the poet is remembered by his posterity, The Prelude is con-
stituted and reconstituted in conjunction with different versions of each
memory. The poem also marks the poet’s unachieved project of writing a
philosophical poem, namely, The Recluse; for this very reason, The
Prelude
, which is complete in itself, points to an eternal work in
progress, turning the truth of every fragment complete in its incomple-
tion. As a trope of fragmentation, an autobiographical individuality is re-
formed in the poet’s process of writing and re-visioning while simultane-
ously being dispersed once again between words, sentences, and pages.
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Mikyung Park