Keywords
travel journals, dorothy wordsworth, revisiting, journal of a tour on the continent
Abstract
This paper argues that Dorothy Wordsworth, in her often overlooked Journal of a Tour on the Continent, was essentially “revisiting” places that she was viewing for the first time, as she had visited them secondhand through William's stories and writings about them. In 1820, Dorothy, William, and Mary Wordsworth embarked on a tour of the continent in the inverse direction of William’s youthful 1790 trip. For thirty years, Dorothy had heard stories and read about his experiences, building up an image in her mind of what the Continent would be like which changed her own exploration of the sights. By exploring Dorothy’s tour as a form of revisiting, we see how imagining a place before physically seeing it shapes the viewing experience, blurring the line between reality and imagination. Further, a close study of Dorothy’s journal illustrates the impermanence of sites and travelers as they inevitably change over time.
Issue and Volume
Winter 2024
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Dixon Fennimore, Eve
(2024)
"“Viewed in Prospect or Retrospect”: Dorothy Wordsworth’s “Revisiting” on the 1820 Continental Tour,"
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 17:
Iss.
1, Article 9.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol17/iss1/9