Wordsworth's Despotic Eye

In The Prelude, William Wordsworth explores the complexity of seeing, in light of the density of filters through which we access the world, and invites the question of whether literature and art, as mediators, enable or subvert the moral witnessing of crises. In the course of his exploration, he declares the eye to be the "most despotic" of the senses, which reveals that the problem of mediation goes well beyond the presence of cultural filters. This article enters the ongoing conversation on the politics of mediation by presenting Wordsworth's epic as a postmodern experiment on whether it is possible to know existence free of filters and whether such an aspiration serves the interests of humanity.