Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

The works of Romantic poet William Wordsworth are generally regarded as idealistic nature poems. However, Wordsworth was writing in a turbulent era, between the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Contrary to conventional labels, Wordsworth's prose and poetry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries strongly critiques social and economic affairs, similar to the ways Thomas Malthus comments on the same subjects. In 1798, political and economic theorist Thomas Robert Malthus published his infamous Essay on the Principle of Population, in which he devotes considerable thought to the subjects of poverty and England's Old Poor Law system. This thesis explores the connections between Wordsworth and Malthus, establishing Wordsworth as an amateur political economic theorist, who was concerned with the contemporary treatment of poverty and the morals of the legislators of the Poor Laws. I further claim that Wordsworth was a parable-poet, who sought to provide moral guidance regarding poor relief through affective poetry.

Comments

by Christina R. Kirchner.

Extent

viii, 76 p. : ill..

Identifier

818759680

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