Studying Wordsworth’s The Prelude, books i and ii

Abstract

The first, obvious fact about The Prelude is that it is a very long narrative poem, whereas so far in this book we have only looked at comparatively short lyrics. This difference in kind means that we shall need to change our method of approach. The tools we have used to analyse a lyric will not work for a narrative poem just because we are dealing with a different kind of work. A sharp knife might be excellent for slicing bread but is not much use when you are trying to dig up the road.