The People and the Poet Redeemed: William Wordsworth and the Peninsular Uprising

This paper examines William Wordsworth's contribution to an 1808 debate about the Peninsular Uprising where the concept of popular sovereignty was at stake. For Wordsworth, the peninsular people represent an instance of "constituent power"—a power conceived specifically as pre-formal or pre-institutional and yet collective. From 1793 to 1815 Wordsworth is committed to this version of popular sovereignty, but the 1809 tract on the Convention of Cintra represents his most successful effort to sublimate its problematic aspects. I show that an intriguing symmetry between the poet and the peninsular people ultimately legitimates or redeems both.