Wordsworth and Welsh Romanticism by James Prothero (review)

Over the past two decades scholars of William Wordsworth and Romantic Era writing have seen a shift in the study to include the effects of Romantic era thought on later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers. James Prothero’s Wordsworth and Welsh Romanticism contributes to this focus by paying particular attention to the ways that Romanticism appears unexpectedly in early twentieth-century Welsh poetry. In doing so, Prothero makes important connections between Wordsworth and Wales—both in terms of how Wales influenced Wordsworth, and how Wordsworth influenced Welsh writers in the twentieth-century. In his book, Prothero painstakingly recounts how six Welsh writers allude to the “mountainous shadow of William Wordsworth”: Huw Menai, John Cowper Powys, Idris Davies, R.S. Thomas, William Henry Davies, and Leslie Norris. A great deal of the book’s theoretical approach centers on issues of identity, and an emphasis upon cultural concerns of the early twentieth-century. Wordsworth and Welsh Romanticism focuses on two significant Welsh allusions in Wordsworth’s poetry—his ascent of Mt. Snowdon and his “poem Upon the Wye”—as these moments punctuate Wordsworth’s literary career. Although there has been increasing interest in Wordsworth’s relationship with Wales and notions of national identity in his writing, Prothero’s book is significant to the study because it examines not only how Wales influenced Wordsworth, but also how Wordsworth continued to influence twentieth-century Welsh writers.

In Chapter One, Prothero defines Wordsworth’s relationship with Wales and how it is reflected in his writing. The reader is able to recognize the ways that Prothero punctuates Wordsworth’s literary career by using Lyrical Ballads and the posthumously published Prelude as definitive markers of “start” and “finish” (11). After the book’s first chapter, Chapters Two, Three, and Four follow a similar structure, as Prothero works to establish an explicit connection between Wordsworth and Huw Menai, John Cowper Powys, and Idris Davies.

In Chapter Five, Prothero breaks this pattern in his discussion of R.S. Thomas, whom he calls “admittedly a Romantic…almost reluctantly so” (101). Like the first four chapters of the book, Chapter Six draws connections between the twentieth-century Welsh poet and Wordsworth as a model of what a poet should be. Here, however, Prothero argues that while Thomas does not show admiration for Wordsworth, nor does he acknowledge him as a poetic model, the study and discussion of Wordsworth in Thomas’s writing demonstrate his influence. W.H. Davies, who possesses the same working-class background of Huw Menai and Idris Davies, is in this chapter as well. Prothero claims that for W. H. Davies, Wordsworth’s poetry was an important component of writing and reading education, which is evident in his commitment to carrying a copy of Wordsworth’s poetry as he was “on the tramp” north of London (122).

The book’s final and seventh chapter on Leslie Norris is an outlier, not only because it addresses Wordsworth’s influence on the only woman writer featured in the book, but also because Prothero performs more qualitative analysis on Norris and her Romantic perspective. Chapter Seven features excerpts from an interview with Norris conducted by Prothero from 1998. The questions regarding Welsh identity in early-twentieth century writing are perhaps most clearly articulated in Appendix A of the book, wherein a more complete model of this interview can be found.

Each chapter clearly and carefully feeds into the next, and Prothero is just as careful in his construction of his argument as he is in his avoidance of the term “movement” to describe “Welsh Romanticism.” This active avoidance in defining the term as such is perhaps the central weakness of Wordsworth and Welsh Romanticism. Where Prothero could lay the foundation for a new set of scholarship, he adjusts the focus of the book more on the idea of Romanticism as a perspective instead of defining it by its features. Ultimately, this weakness helps the reader see beyond the alleged features of Romantic Era writing; indeed, Prothero wants his readers to recognize that the...