The problem is, just as when a pendulum reverses direction it does not stop in the middle, so the imagined continuum between intelligence and emotion did not center itself—it swung too far to the left. We can see that Wordsworth recognized this in his own discussions of the place of emotions within poetry:

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility had also thought long and deeply.

—(Wordsworth 425)

Clearly, Wordsworth recognized the importance of long, deep thought being connected to emotionality in poetry. Through this we see that Wordsworth valued the keen self awareness and sense of self-control that is marked by Daniel Goleman as being so central to Emotional Intelligence. While emotional reasoning lies as the center of much of Wordsworth’s writing, he had no patience for the dramatic emotional over-indulgence.



Wordsworth also believed that poetry created a kind of framework where the functioning of this “rational” emotion could be examined, though he, of course, never described it in precisely that way. Here he describes poetry as a kind of language of human emotion:

But these passions and thoughts and feelings [those which poets write about] are the general passions and thoughts and feelings of men. And with what are they connected? Undoubtedly with our moral sentiments and animal sensations, and with the causes which excite these…These, and the like, are the sensations and objects which the Poet describes, as they are the sensations of other men, and the objects which interest them. The poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human passions.

—(Wordsworth 430)

So if emotionality gives meaning and value to logical reasoning, and the poet works in a medium that is naturally representative of human emotions, then we should be able to see it functioning directly within the works of William Wordsworth.



David Perkins, a significant scholar of Romantic poetry, would certainly agree. He suggests that Romantic writing has “…a tendency through the course of a poem to trace not so much the sequence of logical argument or of narration, but rather the evolution and turn of feeling.” (Perkins 9) Thus, this important Romantic shift away from the intensive focus on logical argument set up Wordsworth and his contemporaries to write with the perfect philosophical mindset to explore the possible values of emotion within human experience.



In part two of this examination, I will explore this possibility in two of Wordsworth’s poems: “Character of the Happy Warrior” and “Lines: Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”.