Bushell, S. C. and Butler, J. and Jaye, Michael (2007) Cornell Edition: The Excursion by William Wordsworth. UNSPECIFIED.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The Excursion by William Wordsworth is a dramatic poem that advances largely through debate among the four main speakers: the Poet, the Wanderer, the Solitary, and the Pastor; the action of the poem seems to take place over five days. It was Wordsworth’s second long poem, his public attempt at a “Great Poem,” and his only work of any length to be read by most of his contemporaries. While The Prelude found favour with the Romantics, The Excursion appealed to the Victorians, who embraced it, considering this influential work a source of spiritual strength in an uncertain world. The Cornell Wordsworth volume presents the first scholarly edition of The Excursion in half a century – and the first true scholarly edition of the original 1814 text. All manuscripts produced under the author’s supervision are separately and completely transcribed in this edition. An introduction, a manuscript history, lists of printed verbal and nonverbal variants, extensive editor’s notes, and selected photographs also chronicle the poem’s full evolution. In short, this edition makes it possible for the first time, to follow the complete compositional history of Wordsworth’s epic