Romanticism &
Contemporary Culture

How to Save "Tintern Abbey" from New-Critical Pedagogy (in Three Minutes Fifty-Six Seconds)

Ted Underwood, Colby College

Notes

¹ In addition to Stoppard, see Powers, The Stress of her Regard: A Novel and Holland, Lord of the Dead.
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² Morris Dickstein gives an excellent reading of this line's simplicity and difficulty in "'The Very Culture of the Feelings': Wordsworth and Solitude."
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³ Atara Stein's "Achtung Emily," a compilation of interlaced excerpts from U2's Achtung Baby and Shelley's "Epipsychidion," helped me realize how very close the comparison is.
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⁴ Especially Laura Mandell's comments from the MOO discussion in the Villa Diodati.
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⁵ My skepticism here is analogous to Timothy Melley's skepticism about the contemporary conspiracy-theory thriller. Conspiracy theory, in Melley's view, can usefully draw our attention to the monopolization of power and knowledge by elites. But when it stages a sharply-drawn distinction between "individual agency" and "controlling organizations," it also promulgates a misleading fantasy of absolute autonomy (7-16). I would propose that the concept of "mass culture" itself is useful, and misleading, in these same ways.
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