“I gazed – and gazed – but little thought” (Wordsworth Line 11)

“Oh the horrors of slavery! – How the thought of it pains my heart! But the truth ought to be told of it; and what my eyes have seen. I think it is my duty to relate; for few people in England know what slavery is. I have been a slave – I have felt what a slave feels, and I know what a slave knows; and I would have all the good people in England know it too, that they may break our chains, and set us free.” (Prince 21)

            In comparing a line of William Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud to five sentences of Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, I will be using, broadly, the epistemological framework of Wordsworth’s Romantic Lyric to track a similar epistemological framework within Prince’s Historical Slave Narrative. The purpose is not to clumsily force Prince’s works to fit the genre expectations of the time period, but instead, hopefully, to display the ways that the dominant literary genre, and theory of attained knowledge, fails to account for perspectives outside of the dominant majority. This should reflect the extent to which Prince’s Historical Slave Narrative exists within the same time period as Wordsworth’s Romantic Lyric, being affected by the same broad forces of the time period, while explicitly operating against the epistemological framework to accomplish the same end goal. This epistemological framework uses the steps that I will label initial experience, initial thought, recalled memory, and recollected experience.

           The differences in the genres, generally, will begin to in explain how the respective authors experience, process, and recount information. Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, falls within genre of Romantic Lyric. In Romantic Lyric, the content of the poem is experienced on the whim of the individual, upon whom the onus falls to faithfully, process the external forces, and later recount it as true to life as possible. Structurally, this is accomplished through the enhancement of language through the adherence to lyrical poetic form, in this poem ABABCC, or an adjusted Venus and Adonis form. In comparison, Prince’s The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, falls into the genre of a Historical Slave Narrative in which a person’s life makes up the experience of the narrative. In contrast to Romantic Lyric, in a Historical Slave Narrative every facet of experiencing, processing and recounting information is re-contextualized as the conditions of the individual’s existence are not voluntary, instead forced upon the individual. The result is that processing and recounting the experiences of a Historic Slave Narrative are not incentivized in the same ways that Romantic Lyric’s experiences are incentivized. Prince overcomes these obstacles and delivers a Historic Slave Narrative which recounts her personal experience, faithfully recreating it as true to life as possible for a greater purpose. Structurally, Prince overcomes secondary challenges as her words as a Historic Slave Narrative were transcribed, then edited by separate parties. Not only does Prince communicate her experience in non-poetic spoken word, but it also must resist the transcribing process.

           Within the epistemological framework of the Romantic Lyric, Wordsworth’s first step is focusing on the eyes as the method of taking in the scene before him to facilitate a process I will call initial experience. Wordsworth, within a physical location, displays a passive embodiment of the scene around him and little else, with “I gazed – and gazed.” The mode of transmission between the scene around Wordsworth is predominantly visual, despite him inhabiting, in his entirety, the Romantic tableau. Wordsworth follows closely the definition of poetry provided in lecture, Wordsworth describing poetry as, “spontaneous emotion recollected in tranquility.” The initial presence of mind that leads to the creation of memory from the “spontaneous emotion” will be what I am calling the initial thought. The condition of Wordsworth’s initial thought is specifically described as, “little thought.” The mode of transmission between information to Wordsworth is remarkably passive as the Romantic tableau is absorbed into the eyes with little initial reflection. The passive choice of “gazed,” reflects inherently the ability to choose to not gaze, or to leave the scene. Wordsworth has the choice to enter nature and reconcile with its beauty on his own terms. The purpose of gazing with “little thought,” is to aid in having a rich and unfiltered view of the Romantic tableau when later recalling this moment. I will be calling this memory of the scene recalled memory. Recalled memory is the memory contained within the mind of the author. The end goal of initial thought as “little thought,” subsequently preserved in recalled memory, is for the purpose of creating the words of the poem. The lack of initial input from Wordsworth during the moment of experiencing the Romantic tableau facilitates the verisimilitude when he is later able to recall almost the entirety of the experience by having inhabited the moment in a state of almost full reception. The last step in this process is the latter half of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry when the experience is, “recollected in tranquility.” Therefore, I will be calling this step recollected experience, or when the initial thought, along with recalled memory, are faithfully recollected for the purpose of sharing the experience with others. In an ideal world, Wordsworth would have zero thought during initial thought, then being able to entirely capture the moment in his mind to preserve in his recollected experience. However, because Wordsworth is in a state of “little thought” he must create the missing details using imagination in order to faithfully re-create the verisimilitude in his poetry to the experience. Wordsworth’s purpose is to move the reader to fully experience the scene and give them the same experience of nature.

           Within Mary Prince’s Historical Slave Narrative The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, Prince follows a similar epistemological process following the same steps of initial experience, initial thought, recalled memory, and recollected experience. Tracking the five sentences, through a similar process as previously described, first the speaker displays initial experience, the conditions of slavery in, “what my eyes have seen” and “I have been a slave – I have felt what a slave feels.” The experience requires the eyes to gather information, similar to Wordsworth’s “gazed,” as well as an equal emphasis on a physical embodiment within experience to gather initial thought. This forced physical embodiment is the first departure from Wordsworth’s Romantic Lyric, as Prince’s enslavement not only literally shifts the genre to Historical Slave Narrative, but also, creates new conditions under which experience is processed. While not being poetry, in Prince’s experience there is still a similar genesis of experience to Wordsworth’s “spontaneous emotion,” however the distinct lack of external agency changes the way “spontaneous emotion” is processed internally. For example, the genre of Historic Slave Narrative puts less of an emphasis on initial thought. The speaker can be filled with little thought or much thought, both have little outcome on whether or not the speaker will retain the experience. The difference being, the Romantic Lyric seeks to understand an environment in which the Speaker willingly enters and examines. Wordsworth’s end product is poetry to be “recollected in tranquility.” It is a generally positive experience which incentivizes eventual recollected experience, through the overwhelming splendor of nature which engenders sharing through poetry. In contrast, Prince is relating the “horrors of slavery.” Initial thought during initial experience, while useful to aid in the understanding of Prince’s perspective, ultimately affects recalled memory very little. This is because there is a difference in the retention of pleasant and painful experiences, which changes the relationship between the initial experience and recalled memory. Prince displays the difference, “Oh the horrors of slavery! – How the thought of it pains my heart!” Prince’s “tranquility” is only attained by keeping the recalled memories of enslavement away from her mind. Allowing the recalled memories to be “recollected in tranquility” can only lead her away from tranquility to experience further pain. Therefore, painful experiences alone, as a recalled memory, do not inherently incentivize the faithful recreation of experience. This potentially cuts off the desire to move to recollected experience in narrative form. However, Prince explains why she has chosen to overcome these obstacles, “But the truth ought to be told of it.” She then goes on to explain her end goal of her recollected experience, “I think it is my duty to relate; for few people in England know what slavery is. I have been a slave – I have felt what a slave feels, and I know what a slave knows; and I would have all the good people in England know it too, that they may break our chains, and set us free.” Prince faithfully creates the recollected experience of the conditions of slavery, overcoming the painful recalled memory, to create the verisimilitude of her personal experience, for the goal of relating the shared experience of slavery to the English public for abolition.

           Both Wordsworth and Prince use their individual perspectives to faithfully re-create an initial experience in literary form as a recollected experience in order to create a verisimilitude which will allow the reader to inhabit their respective perspectives. In both Wordsworth and Prince the emphasis on the individual perspective can be seen to, broadly, represent the forces acting upon the western world in the early 19th century in the wake of several revolutions. Wordsworth uses Romantic Lyric, as well as his tenets of poetry, in order to re-create the positive experiences of sublime nature. This epistemological framework fails to account for the perspectives of those whose experiences are overwhelmingly negative, failing to provide them with a voice. Through her Historic Slave Narrative, Prince displays the difficulty in overcoming the obstacles of this epistemological framework, and through her triumph displays a path any individual in a minority group can follow to garner an incentive for the recollection of painful memories, for the sake of the greater goal of bringing awareness to the public through literature.