Between the “Abyss of Idealism” and the Hard Wall of “Reality”: Lessons of the Wordsworthian Child

Abstract

The following article examines the myth of the Romantic Child, both as it originated in the Romantic period, specifically through the work of William Wordsworth, and as it continues to be promulgated, often uncritically, in popular culture and in the modern environmentalist movement. The idealization of the child, as I will suggest, represents a misconstruction of Wordsworth's poetry, in particular his “Immortality Ode,” which articulates a much more complicated and disquieting vision of childhood. That vision is supported by Wordsworth's personal commentaries on the poem, which foreground the liminality of the child's experiences and its place in society. A reexamination of the myth of the Romantic Child and the reasons for its cultural durability offers a means for literary scholars to articulate critical, pedagogical, and psychological counterpoints that make space for the “ordinary child.”