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Wordsworth's Prelude is usually deemed to be a work recording the "growth" of the poet's mind; thus The Prelude gives access to our understanding of this great Romantic poet. With Nature's inspiration, Wordsworth claims to find the glory in himself and in humanity because Nature, like a mother, always warms him with supporting tenderness. In The Prelude, the relationship between mankind and Nature is compared to that between a child and his mother. However, this comparison unintentionally reveals the unstable foundation of the poet's own belief in Nature's benevolence to him when we finds out that his mother died when he was only eight years old. This sad incident becomes a traumatic memory lurking behind his praise of Nature's kindness to human beings because it signifies a cruel withdrawal of love, which causes a sense of lack in his childhood when his subjectivity is forming. The "growth" in the poem actually disguises his desire for a recognition which he does not get in childhood. Therefore, in this thesis I will discuss how those unsatisfied wishes in childhood show us a regression in process through dreams to desire and finally to death. I adopt the Freudian and Lacanian perspectives to analyze this poem in the hope that the psychoanalytical interpretation will bring about some fruitful insights because The Prelude is generally considered a poem about the development of the poet's mind. Chapter II of this thesis will focus on the solitaries the poet describes in The Prelude. Emerging from the atmosphere of dreams, these solitaries do not simply demonstrate the poet's sympathy for human suffering; more importantly, they speak out his inner fear for Nature's caprice. Moreover, the Arab Quixote and the Blind Beggar passages serve to show his anxiety about himself and his writing. In Chapter Three, I will use Freud's famous story─fort/da game─to show that Wordsworth's efforts in writing this autobiographical poem result from an absence of his mother in his life. A desire for something lack drives him to become an author, a creator, which enables him to turn his passivity into activity with language. Moreover, imagination, with its magic power to transform normal landscape into poetry, usually plays an important part in Wordsworth's poems. However, from the Lacanian point of view, imagination becomes an effect of language and signifies only a lack out of a lack because it leads us not to an elevation of mind but only to a blank, such as in the Pass of Simplon and the Ascent of Snowdon scenes. My analysis in Chapter Four will focus on the theme of death. With Freud's "compulsion to repeat," I will discuss Wordsworth's death wish in his mischievous games. Moreover, the poet's memories seem to be a joy of fountain for him, but in this chapter I will explore his traumatic experiences in childhood actually shadow his memories with threat of loss and separation in the incidents of the "spots of time." In Chapter Five, my conclusion is that The Prelude as an autobiographical poem lays bare a lack of being in the poet's writing, for the hole left by his mother's early death keeps reminding him of a sudden withdrawal of love without any reasons even when he is praising Mother Nature for enlightening his life.
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