A Lacanian Study of Motherhood in the Poems of William Wordsworth Essay

William Wordsworth was a prolific poet of the Romantic movement, perhaps best cognize for publishing Lyrical Ballads with friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. These poems were written in what Wordsworth described as a common tongue with a centre on themes often found in Romantic poetry, such(prenominal)(prenominal) as the pastoral, the mythical, fragmentation, heroism and satire. In Lyrical Ballads one recurring subject roughly unique to Wordsworth in its passion and persistence is that of motherhood. The connection between muliebrity and nature brace it a frequently explored theme for many poets, such as Blake in his Songs of Innocence. However, I have chosen to focus on Wordsworth since motherhood is not only examined at great length in his poetry, but also because biographical details of his own life make analysis of his works concerning the topic all the more significant, since he had unconnected his own mother at the age of eight. For a t opic such as motherhood, one school of critical thought likely to append interesting observations is that of psychoanalysis. I have chosen to focus on Jacques Lacan for this canvas since his theories have a greater emphasis on the use and validation of language in the individual than other key figures in his field, such as Jung or Freud. Lacan believed that when we examine literature, we do not merely see the characters of a text, but also the text itself as an effect of the linguistic wordplay of the unconscious. For this reason I feel that Lacan is particularly well suit to the discussion of poetry. In this essay I shall be making course credit to Lacans analysis of The Three Orders and his account of The Mirror Stage in relation to the ego. For Lacan, the Mirror Stage is not ... ...ressing or painful situations, although we whitethorn have forgotten of origins of the compulsion. In the symbolic realm we also receive our unending search for Objet (petit) a, the lost o bject that must constantly be sought in order, we feel, to complete us an unobtainable other. For Wordsworth, this Objet (petit) a appears to be the mother figure and his compulsion is to write about her from every perspective. whole works CitedBennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An introduction to literature, criticism and theory 4. ed. Harlow Pearson Longman, 2009.Leitch, Vincent B. Jacques Lacan. In The Norton anthology of theory and criticism. New York Norton, 2001. Wilden, Anthony. system of rules and structure essays in communication and exchange. 2nd ed. London Tavistock, 1980.Wu, Duncan. Lyrical Ballads. In Romanticism an anthology. Oxford, UK Blackwell, 1994.