William Wordsworth'ün The Prelude Şiirinde Öz-Bilinç

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the element of self-consciousness in William Wordsworth's The Prelude (1850) with regards to the poetry of the Romantic Period. Performing a close reading of the poem, the thesis will discuss the argument that an analysis of The Prelude from the vantage point of self-consciousness reveals the poem to be a self-conscious poetic endeavour aimed to create a self-fashioned poetic identity. In the light of the phenomenon of self-consciousness, the study asserts that Wordsworth's interest in the self is an essential part of his distinctively modern understanding of authorship, rather than a genuine soul-searching as suggested by the poet himself, or a product of the poetic egotism Wordsworth was initially associated with by his contemporaries. For the purposes of this study, a survey into the Romantic Movement as well as a definition of self-consciousness along with terms such as self-reflexivity, meta-poetry and self-conscious poetry are provided. The Romantic notion of authorship with regards to the Wordsworthian definition of poetry being an "overflow of powerful feelings" with its origin being "emotion recollected in tranquillity" as expressed in "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (1801) is discussed in the light of the Romantic ideals of immateriality and spontaneity. It is argued that while this definition is paradoxical, the responses to this paradox dominated the Romantic writing. The way this clash is reflected in the poet's work as self-doubt and self-assertion concerning the anxieties about his authorship, poetic prowess, and reception will also be observed. It is also demonstrated that the illusion of poetic failure is a self-conscious mode of writing for Wordsworth in the four texts of The Prelude. The constant re-editing of the poem resulting in four versions and its posthumous publication are claimed to serve to the pragmatic purpose of establishing a domain for the poet in which he becomes the reader and critic of his own poetry in the path towards creating his own poetic identity. The chapter also argues that the anxieties of authorship and reception fashioned as self-exposure and identity crises in The Prelude are in fact self-conscious reflections of the poet's aspirations to create a poetic identity. In conclusion, the aim of this study is to establish that the contradiction between Wordsworth's theory of poetry and his experiment in The Prelude promote a self-conscious return to the literary practice and display a growing self-consciousness within the medium of poetry, greatly contributing to poetic theory while providing a unique insight to the phenomenon of self-consciousness.