Rutgers University Press The Global Wordsworth: Romanticism Out of Place (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

The Global Wordsworth examines Anglophone writers who repurposed William Wordsworth's poetry. By reading Wordsworth in dialog with J. M. Coetzee, Lydia Maria Child, and Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine Bergren revitalizes our understanding of Wordsworth's career and its place in the canon. Always considered the most provincial of the great Romantics, this study argues that Wordsworth's afterlives in former British colonies reveal a poet whose career came to see and represent the local, the national, and the global not as separate spheres, but as entangled by forces of British imperialism and colonial expansion. By examining Wordsworth through his afterlives, Bergren argues that he saw and represented England as increasingly contingent on a world beyond its shores. She addresses the effects of imperialism and capitalistic exchange on the appearance and meaning of that England, in both British Romanticism and the literatures of a world remade by imperial forces. Review "The methodology of the Global Wordsworth is exciting and innovative and will have much to offer readers interested in understanding better the ways in which Romanticism might be deployed in a colonial or settler context....[T]he vision of Romanticism, and of Wordsworth, that emerges in Bergren's book is more nuanced and indeed more 'worldly' than the one to which we have become accustomed."-- "European Romantic Review""A model of academic excellence, this literary study of William Wordsworth upon various cultures around the world is an extraordinarily informative and thought-provoking read."-- "Midwest Book Review""Beautifully written, equally attentive to Romanticism and its afterlives, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in Romanticism and its legacies, whether scholarly or general readers. It offers a genuinely original perspective on Wordsworth and his works, without insisting on the privilege of canonicity."-- "Review 19""Recommended."-- "Choice""One aspect of Wordsworth's poetry that has survived generations of revisionary scholarship is its sense of place. Katherine Bergren's mildly shocking case for Wordsworth 'sense of planet' operates through patient and innovative readings of three writers 'repurposing' Wordsworth's writings--a repurposing that in its turn reveals an entirely more worldly and global Wordsworth. Meticulously situating these intertextual encounters in the context of discussions of postcoloniality, transatlantic mobility, and ecocritical belonging, The Global Wordsworth updates a romantic worldliness we have only just begun to read."--Pieter Vermeulen "author of Romanticism after the Holocaust" About the Author Katherine Bergren is assistant professor of English at Trinity College.