Habitat theory: "aesthetic satisfaction, experienced in the contemplation of landscape, stems from the spontaneous perception of landscape features which, in their shapes, colours, spatial arrangements and other visible attributes, act as sign-stimuli indicative of environmental conditions favourable to survival, whether they really are favourable or not." (p. 69)
Prospect-refuge: "at both human and sub-human level the ability to see and the ability to hide are both important in calculating a creature's survival prospects . . . . Where he has an unimpeded opportunity to see we can call it a prospect. Where he has an opportunity to hide, a refuge. . . . To this . . . aesthetic hypothesis we can apply the name prospect-refuge theory." (p. 73)
Types of prospect:
| "Tintern Abbey": consider the opening paragraph. The prospect here appears to be a vista, defined by the vertical boundaries of the "steep and lofty cliffs"; the poet is positioned in a refuge location "under this dark sycamore." Secondary refuges are suggested by the "pastoral farms," but more particularly by the location of the "vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods" and the "hermit's cave" (and to what extent is the speaker aligned with these figures? cf. the sense of exile from the events of 1793 implied later: "the fretful stir," etc.). |
Example annotated view (J. J. Meyer, "Das Schloss Räzüns
und der Galanda-Berg" (1826), watercolour, 14.2 x 18.8 cm; Zentralbibliothek,
Zurich):
Hazard: prospect and refuge take their meaning as defence: "To 'abolish' the
hazard altogether is to deprive the prospect and the refuge of their meaningful
roles, since they cannot be expected to react against a stimulus which is no
longer there. Burke realized, and stated very explicitly, that exposure to a
sense of the power of nature, or better still to a sense of the infinite, was
indispensable to the experience of the Sublime . . . , and this is simply stating,
in eighteenth-century terms, that prospect symbolism and refuge symbolism also
demand a hazard symbolism to make them work." (p. 96)
| "Tintern Abbey": Burke's "vacuity, darkness, solitude, and silence" (Enquiry 125) are hallmarks of the sublime. How far does this account speak to Wordsworth's "Thoughts of more deep seclusion"? And how far is it consistent with the "blessed mood" and process of insight in which "We see into the life of things"? Is this mood a darkening? Keats thought so: "We are in a mist. . . . We feel the 'burden of the mystery.' . . . His genius is explorative of those dark passages" (see Letter, Wu 1022). |
Hazards: animate (human or non-human); inanimate (weather, instability [e.g.,
glacier], water, fire, locomotion [e.g., cliffs]); impediments (natural, artificial);
deficiency (e.g., thirst) (p. 96)
| "Tintern Abbey": the response to nature in 1793 suggests a deliberate engagement with hazard, signified by locomotion ("I bounded o'er the mountains," etc.), water ("The sounding cataract") and other impediments ("the tall rock, / The mountain"). Is this a displacement for the sense of political alienation in 1793 (and beyond)? |
Refuges: classified by function (hides / shelters); by origin (natural / artificial); by material (earth, e.g., caves; vegetation, e.g. forest, grass; mist); by accessibility (p. 102)
-- the coulisse: side entrances as on stage (p. 105)
Surfaces: convex suggest prospect; concave suggest refuge;
-- texture: earth (bare, vegetation; natural / artificial); water (flow, rough, etc.); nebulous (cloud, fog) (p. 107)
Locomotion: opportunity for movement within the landscape, importance of bridges, gateways, roads; and as focus of imagination:
"In contemplating the pattern of communications in a landscape the eye tends to fit together the visible components in such a way as to construct imaginary paths between its various parts. A carriage drive in a park, for instance, which dips out of sight into dead ground and reappears on a rising surface farther off, suggests a continuous channel of movement, even though its continuity cannot be perceived, and leads the eye forward towards its destination." (p. 119)
Magnets: "All descriptions of landscape paintings assume an attraction of the eye towards certain parts of the composition and these we may call 'magnets'. Depending on their character we may further distinguish them as 'magnetic points', 'magnetic lines' or' magnetic areas'." (p. 144)
Naturalizing: "Supreme among the devices for linking the artificial with the natural is the ruin, in which the harsh functionalism suggested by its form is tempered by its manifest incorporation within the natural order." (p. 173)
| "Tintern Abbey": note the reversal now in 1798 of the hazard implied by earlier scenes (especially Wordsworth "Flying from something that he dreads"). The locomotion shifts to the sublime mode of the "presence that disturbs" which "rolls through all things." If Wordsworth "half-creates" this perception, then he is become a participant in the process that is "interfused" with nature and "the mind of man." He is able to see Dorothy as sufficiently fortified against hazard to tell her: "let the misty mountain-winds be free / To blow against thee." |
Document created November 19th 1999