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The Parliament of Monsters continued |
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This language is very different from that he uses to describe the fair. In the contrast, he touches on the question of how one can be exposed to such "barbarian" scenes and not be corrupted, through exposure to more exalted scenes that lend themselves to "majesty." For the sights of the fair, or the city in general, cannot completely "weary out the eye" (708) of ...him who looks In steadiness, who hath among least things An under-sense of greatest, sees the parts As parts, but with a feeling of the whole. (710-713) Wordsworth seems to imply here that it is "him who" has this ability. His descriptions of the fair, however, did not provide of sense of one seeking to find the "greatest" within the "least things;" on the contrary, the "least things" are consistently shown as being monstrous at worst and trivial at best, and in exhaustively looking at the "parts/As parts...with a feeling of the whole," the parts and the whole merely formed a reciprocal relationship of hellishness. Humanity and Nature are both seen as complicit in contributing to the "hell" Wordsworth finds in London in general and at the fair in particular. At the same time, his lengthy descriptions and vividly-expressed sense of horror suggest a certain fascination with the scene that in turn suggests a certain fascination humanity may have with the strange and unusual, which may explain why such scenes, "hellish" to some tastes, exist in the first place. Works Cited Wordsworth, William. The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 . Ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. New York: Norton, 1979. |
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