Nature and Classification in Dorothy and William Wordsworth's Writings

Abstract:This article sets William Wordsworth's 1815 Poems alongside his sister Dorothy Wordsworth's prose and poetry in order to argue for the importance of classification within each of their literary projects. I argue that William's turn toward classifying his poems is an adaptation of a mode of generality that Dorothy had already developed in the Alfoxden and Grasmere journals, written between 1798 and 1803. I show that for each of these writers the technology of classification is an effort to bring more of the world into view by making more views visible—that is, by showing what it means to generalize.