The Mancunian Paradigm, James Peake and the Hawkshead of William Wordsworth

Abstract

For Wordsworth, the soul of education was certainly not ‘the little that can be learned from books and a master’; what mattered was ‘all that life and nature teach’ (LY II: 19). We have noticed that Wordsworth felt himself an outsider at Cambridge, that he was ‘not for that hour, / Nor for that place’ (Prelude 3.81-2). Did Wordsworth similarly feel estranged at Hawkshead and simply learn from nature? Perhaps the answer is in the following from The Prelude:

the earth

And common face of Nature spake to me

Rememberable things; sometimes, ‘tis true,

By chance collisions and quaint accidents

(Like those ill-sorted unions, work supposed

Of evil-minded fairies), yet not vain

Nor profitless, if haply they impressed

Collateral objects and appearances,

Albeit lifeless then, and doomed to sleep

Until maturer seasons called them forth

To impregnate and to elevate the mind.

(1.586-96)