The Two-Part Prelude Analysis

Wordsworth critics have often used the Two-Part Prelude as a basis for psychoanalytic critique. Scholars often cite Lacan as a contributing philosopher for understanding Wordsworth’s implementation of the “blessed babe” in part two of the Two-Part Prelude. However, there seems to be a gap in the scholarship when it comes to discussing the Lacanian Real in connection with the death drive within Wordsworth’s “spots of time.” By first using Lacan's "mirror stage" to investigate the meaning of the “blessed babe” and then continuing to explore Wordsworth’s "spots of time" within the frame of Lacan, one can see that the Two-Part Prelude is Wordsworth acting out the death drive, attempting to reconnect with the Real. To adequately interpret the …show more content…
He sees himself as an extension of the mother because, “the object which the child first frequently encounters is the mother’s breast, an object which he instinctively desires, and the force of his desire…urges him on in learning to distinguish his mother from the rest of his surroundings, as well as in forming his first attachment to an object” (Richardson 17). This distinction of the mother will follow Wordsworth through his life, as readers see in the “spots of time.” Also present during this period is a subtly stated connection with nature—which is the Symbolic signifier Wordsworth uses to stand in for the Real. Because the poet has yet to realize his individual status, he is still one with nature and the creative spirit of the universe. This is the closest Wordsworth will ever come to being in contact with the Real. Though later, when he, “doth gather passion from his Mother’s eye,” the reflection that the infant sees of himself in his mother’s eyes can be inferred as the beginnings of the “mirror stage” (Hale 151). This moment is a turning point for the poet as he faces the beginning of isolation and a removal from his closeness to the Real. “The mirror stage is a metaphor for the subject’s performance of a relationship to selfhood within language, and through which it negotiates the gap between experience and the subject’s idealized projection of itself” (Lundberg 31). Wordworth’s experience as the “blessed babe” occurs before the mirror stage, and his growing up and the “spots of time” that he produces are all instances of performance and negotiation. It is also interesting to observe the placement of the “blessed babe” scene in part two rather than in part one, which helps to solidify the Lacanian philosophy that a subject’s relationship with external forces is something that must be worked through retroactively. By providing