Newly uploaded, free to read in its entirety, Geoffrey Hartman’s interview with Xie Qiong on trauma and literary theory.
“Remarkably, Wordsworth’s recall of his earlier, intense and often frightening Nature experiences, which made him describe childhood as a heroic age, now comes to his aid. He sees those experiences as a providential pedagogy preparing him internally for later identity shocks. Nature’s return via these recollections also returns to him his identity at this disorienting moment. He recovers his vocation of poet by removing from it the slur of otium, of ignoble leisure, envisioning his task that of assisting Nature, its role in human development at this turbulent time. In a period marked by the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars (as well as industrial side effects such as urbanization and stimulus-flooding), his poetry would be devoted to preventing schismatic schemes of social reform.”
