From Goslar to Grasmere: Moving Through and Dwelling in Wordsworth's Manuscript Spaces
Lead Research Organisation:
Lancaster University
Department Name: English and Creative Writing
Abstract
Context for Research
This grant will funda collaborative project between Lancaster University and The Wordsworth Trust. We will be working with manuscript materials for two Woodsworth texts (early Prelude material and Home at Grasmere) which are both fundamentally about the importance of place to the writing of poetry - either in escaping from a hostile environment through writing poetry that draws on memories of place, or in celebrating a final home-coming to the Lakes. All original manuscript materials are held at Dove Cottage, Grasmere. By putting the manuscript materials online we want to open up an understanding of the relationship between actual physical place (today) and imagined, textual space in the content of the poem and the making of the manuscript. We would like visitors to the actual site, and to the virtual site to be given a new way of understanding this relationship by means of our project.
In his writing, Wordsworth recreates his own experience of joy and rapture in response to the Lake District, as he slides across the ice, steals bird's eggs from a crag, or arrives in Grasmere for the first time: 'how my heart / Panted ... how my bosom beat/ With hope and fear' (MS JJ [DC MS 19] X). Our site will allow the public to share something of that excitement by giving them access to those accounts in their very earliest handwritten form. By guiding others through interpretation of the processes of writing about place, we will use the manuscript materials themselves as a site where different kinds of experience of place can come together and inform each other. The web site will be designed to have three levels of access: as a child or a teacher; as a visitor; as a specialist. It will contain a 'read-aloud' version of key manuscripts; stage by stage reconstructions of the writing of certain passages; discussion and comparison of images and structures; visual links to actual places mentioned; information about the writing of the manuscripts in and around Grasmere; creative activities. Understanding the nature of the creative process is something of interest to all of us. In relation to children, in particular, the accessible presentation of the way in which a poem is written and re-written, will help them to produce their own writings.
Aims and Objectives
The work will last for four months and involve collaboration between an academic specialist from the English department, the curator at the Trust (who will also undertake the text encoding), a digital expert who has worked with the Trust on a number of projects and the interpretations and IT officers. The primary objective of the project is to explore imaginative ways of presenting manuscripts materials in hypertext ans by means of TEI and to create an accessible way of understanding those materials for a wide audience. For the academic participant the objective is also two-fold: to develop a more innovative methodological way of interpreting literature and texts through place (emerging from practical engagement and theoretical reflection) and to produce academic articles drawing upon such innovation. The project allows a deeper understanding of the relationship between the writing of poetry and a particular location, avoiding a simplistic revisiting of place in terms of biography by placing the emphasis on the space and place of the text. The research which emerges will therefore be about the ways in which we ourselves and the manuscript object somehow retain that connection in the present.
Applications and Benefits
The project will stand as a model for successful collaboration between ana cademic and a non-academic institution and be of use to those interested in Wordsworth from all around the world who are not able to come to Dove Cottage. It will be of particular interest to other literary museums and to those working eith hypertext in
This grant will funda collaborative project between Lancaster University and The Wordsworth Trust. We will be working with manuscript materials for two Woodsworth texts (early Prelude material and Home at Grasmere) which are both fundamentally about the importance of place to the writing of poetry - either in escaping from a hostile environment through writing poetry that draws on memories of place, or in celebrating a final home-coming to the Lakes. All original manuscript materials are held at Dove Cottage, Grasmere. By putting the manuscript materials online we want to open up an understanding of the relationship between actual physical place (today) and imagined, textual space in the content of the poem and the making of the manuscript. We would like visitors to the actual site, and to the virtual site to be given a new way of understanding this relationship by means of our project.
In his writing, Wordsworth recreates his own experience of joy and rapture in response to the Lake District, as he slides across the ice, steals bird's eggs from a crag, or arrives in Grasmere for the first time: 'how my heart / Panted ... how my bosom beat/ With hope and fear' (MS JJ [DC MS 19] X). Our site will allow the public to share something of that excitement by giving them access to those accounts in their very earliest handwritten form. By guiding others through interpretation of the processes of writing about place, we will use the manuscript materials themselves as a site where different kinds of experience of place can come together and inform each other. The web site will be designed to have three levels of access: as a child or a teacher; as a visitor; as a specialist. It will contain a 'read-aloud' version of key manuscripts; stage by stage reconstructions of the writing of certain passages; discussion and comparison of images and structures; visual links to actual places mentioned; information about the writing of the manuscripts in and around Grasmere; creative activities. Understanding the nature of the creative process is something of interest to all of us. In relation to children, in particular, the accessible presentation of the way in which a poem is written and re-written, will help them to produce their own writings.
Aims and Objectives
The work will last for four months and involve collaboration between an academic specialist from the English department, the curator at the Trust (who will also undertake the text encoding), a digital expert who has worked with the Trust on a number of projects and the interpretations and IT officers. The primary objective of the project is to explore imaginative ways of presenting manuscripts materials in hypertext ans by means of TEI and to create an accessible way of understanding those materials for a wide audience. For the academic participant the objective is also two-fold: to develop a more innovative methodological way of interpreting literature and texts through place (emerging from practical engagement and theoretical reflection) and to produce academic articles drawing upon such innovation. The project allows a deeper understanding of the relationship between the writing of poetry and a particular location, avoiding a simplistic revisiting of place in terms of biography by placing the emphasis on the space and place of the text. The research which emerges will therefore be about the ways in which we ourselves and the manuscript object somehow retain that connection in the present.
Applications and Benefits
The project will stand as a model for successful collaboration between ana cademic and a non-academic institution and be of use to those interested in Wordsworth from all around the world who are not able to come to Dove Cottage. It will be of particular interest to other literary museums and to those working eith hypertext in
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sally Bushell (Principal Investigator) |