@article{oai:icu.repo.nii.ac.jp:00004293,
 author = {Simons, Christopher E. J.},
 issue = {47},
 journal = {人文科学研究 : キリスト教と文化},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {This paper explores the antiquarian contexts of the opening sonnets in 
the first edition of William Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822). The 
first section of the Sketches explores the period from pre-Christian Britain to 
Norman Britain, including the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. The paper 
looks at the language of the first five poems in this section, comparing 
their language and imagery to Wordsworth’s antiquarian sources. During 
the composition of these poems, Wordsworth was impatiently waiting for 
a package of books to add historical research to his writing. Evaluating 
which sonnets may have been composed with access to which antiquarian 
sources provides insight into Wordsworth’s parallel deployment of scholastic 
antiquarianism and Enlightenment scepticism. The paper argues that reading 
the Sketches for tensions between two streams of intellectual history—
scholastic antiquarianism and Enlightenment virtuosity—illuminates 
important tensions in Wordsworth’s creative mind during the period of 
composition. The paper hypothesises that (a) tensions between antiquarian 
and Enlightenment knowledge in the Sketches shape their representations of 
self and mind; and similarly, that (b) tensions between the texts’ religious 
and intellectual convictions affect how the poems represent historical shifts 
between scholasticism and naturalism (antiquity and Enlightenment) in 
British history. Close readings of the first five sonnets in the Sketches, in 
the biographical context of what antiquarian sources Wordsworth had 
available to him during composition, allow us to draw conclusions as to 
how much Wordsworth depended on his antiquarian reading, and how 
much he resisted or rejected the arguments of these sources. The paper 
concludes that Wordsworth’s use of seventeenth-century and contemporary 
antiquarian sources such as Thomas Fuller’s The Church-History of Britain 
(1655) and Edward Davies’ Celtic Researches (1804) shows two opposite creative 
tendencies in the Sketches: (a) Wordsworth reading antiquarian sources but 
writing against them; and (b) Wordsworth not having access to antiquarian 
sources, and feeling that he cannot write ‘historically’ without them. As a 
productive result of these opposing impulses, Wordsworth sometimes turns 
to memory (including both biography and earlier antiquarian reading) for 
inspiration, and produces a more aesthetically vigorous, optimistic portrait 
of ancient religion in Britain.},
 pages = {51--96},
 title = {From Superstition to Enlightenment: Wordsworth’s Antiquarian and Virtuoso Selves in the Ecclesiastical Sketches},
 year = {2016}
}