Ferris' article closely examines the grammar, structure and rhetoric of the Simplon Pass incident in Book 6 of the 1850 The Prelude (Ferris prefers the 1850 version for reasons of grammatical and rhetorical clarity and revision). Through this thorough (and rather convoluted) analysis, Ferris questions traditional criticism and interpretation of the entire poem and how these relate to Wordsworth's view of history and language.

He states that a "danger arises" from the looking at the passage simply as an "understanding of the imagination and its role as a mode of interrelation within romanticism" (391).

The very appropriateness of this passage does, however, pose a danger of considerable magnitude and it is a danger that arises from the ease with which literary criticism has been able to confer an emblematic status on this passage. Yet, this status has little to do with the qualities inherent to the Simplon Pass episode. Rather, it reflects the anthologizing and synecdochic tendency which, it would seem, necessarily dominates critical interpretation of The Prelude.

Ferris posits that the phrase"...let one incident make known" (1850, 6:562) promises a certain knowledge (historical) to be gained that will, in effect, interpret the rest of the problematic poem and this explains the frequent use and reference to this specific occurrence. He believes that this offer seems too "conspicuous" and that, like Wordsworth and his companion, the reader must retrace the steps back to the brook from the peasant in order to come to the true meaning, the intended and previously concealed path.

The article is divided into three sections: I. Recognitions, II. Where Three Paths Meet, and III. Echo and the Incidence of History. Ferris performs a meticulous surgery of the Imagination passage wherein he examines the specific grammar, syntax, and sequencing. In this section, he attempts to establish an understanding of the Imagination passage in relation to the actual historical event of the Simplon passage by setting up a grammatical and syntactic connection with the "action" of the incident. Through fastidious scrutiny of the popular phrase "unfathered vapour" and conjunctions, similes, dashes and other discursive devises, he questions the initial (and sometimes assumed absolute) meaning assigned to the words in order to put language into a historical context that mirrors or "reflects" the movement of meaning and of the characters involved. In this case, creating a pseudo-linguistic "border" that mirrors the border Wordsworth and his companion cross. The passage becomes both a historical event and a sequence that leads to the "passage from language to history" (403). In his interpretation, language becomes landscape and visa versa.

He introduces a chiasmatic structure; the action of Wordsworth retracing his steps back to the brook after speaking to the Peasant reflects the linguistic motion of returning to the Imagination passage in order to correctly read the subsequent "historical" events.

The three paths of his title are: the original path that Wordsworth and his companion follow after their "noon-tide meal," the path they mistakenly take that leads to the peasant, and the intended path (missed because of the "torrent") unveiled by the Peasant. Ferris proposes this structure and the three paths in order to present how he sees the abstract concept (language) is explained by the concrete (history) which originally led to the abstract.

Ferris discusses the tenses of the passage and how the differences and shifts create a tension between the past and future, especially when examining the fact that the text recognizes itself as a future and abstract result of the past and also an origin.

[T]he true significance of The Prelude lies in its own writing, its own production. This Prelude would always remember that it remembers and, accordingly, it would always remember that, in the last instance, its writing was (and is) about its writing (as if every perplexity could be avoided, concealed, missed by enwrapping it in some self-reflexive relation, as if every example of writing were known to be about writing). (430)

For Ferris, the poem becomes a "border" to cross between language and history, past and future, where one crosses without knowledge or realization until returning to the place where the paths me[e]t in Imagination.

Ferris' article, while interesting and well-contended (possibly overly so), is fraught with problematic sentence structure and cyclic polemics that often confuses and frustrates. His argument gets lost in incomplete sentences and dangling modifiers. While the examination of the discourse is imperative to the argument and sometimes insightful, I often found myself lost in the ambiguity and lack of clarity without a way of recovering the original thought. These issues take away from Ferris' implied purpose, to establish, cross and recognize the discursive intentions and meanings within the Simplon Pass incident and the Imagination passage. I was left with much the same questions as when I began, but a better understanding and respect for the multiplicity of time and language.

Document created March 3, 1997