The Prelude: an introduction

1.  Wordsworth's spiritual epic

A poetic contemplation of the process of creation itself and the growth of an individual mind. It is a chronicle specifically of Wordsworth's own growth, and in doing this Wordsworth becomes the first modern poet and the beginning of an aesthetic revolution. 

2.  Poetic Autobiography: "a growth of a poet's mind"

First of all, although The Prelude’s history of ‘the growth of a poet’s mind’ proceeds along roughly chronological lines, the process by which the poem itself grew was highly non-linear, as one manuscript state was fed back into the writing process as past material to be worked over and elaborated...

Secondly, the fact that the writing of The Prelude originated in the context of Wordsworth’s failure to make headway with The Recluse, the envisioned magnum opus whose completion would be ‘of sufficient importance to justify me in giving my own history to the world’ (EY 470).

3. Texual History

Wordsworth worked on this poem for more than forty years. His first drafts date back to 1798, and the last large-scale revision ended in 1839. Seventeen major Prelude manuscripts survive in the Wordsworth Library at Grasmere. There are two principal drafts of the poem, the 1805 Prelude and the 1850 Prelude...However, a third version, the two-part Prelude of 1799, contains many treasures of its own and is studied for evidence of progression and change in the mind of Wordsworth even though it is not a primary text. The manuscripts of 1799 and 1805 both indicate that Wordsworth considered his work complete, but he continued to make revisions for another thirty-four years, creating the 1850 Prelude. He had originally thought of the poem as an end piece, and then as a preparatory poem for an epic philosophical work called The Recluse, which he never completed; thus, Wordsworth never gave The Prelude a title. His wife, Mary, supplied the title after his death.

4. Restoration

In The Prelude, Wordsworth sets up a cycle of development, crisis, and recovery. This recovery moves him to a state of existence higher than the initial one-there is an added sense of awe, a heightened awareness. This new sensitivity gives meaning to human existence where there was none before, where there was only suffering and loss. The central philosophical question of The Prelude is answered-how to understand human existence in the quagmire of decline and destruction we see everywhere around us.

5. "Spots of Time"

Throughout the poem are “spots of time," as Wordsworth called them. These were intense, revelatory, almost hallucinogenic moments that descended on him occasionally, in natural surroundings, bringing him closer to nature, helping him comprehend it and define his own relationship to it.

from Jonathan Wordsworth, “The Growth of a Poet's Mind;' in The Cornell Library Journal 11 (Spring 1970): pp. 7-8.