In Book 7 of The Prelude, Wordsworth describes a blind beggar "wearing a written paper, to explain / his story, whence he came, and who he was." In her article, Friedman focuses on this "autobiographical" beggar as a figure who encompasses many of the problems of autobiography and representation with which Wordsworth struggles throughout the rest of Book 7 and most of The Prelude in general. Friedman argues that the "vexed relation between nature and representation" which surrounds the text is continually reinscribed and explored within it in Book 7.

To examine Wordsworth's consideration of autobiography's legitimacy in representing thought and experience, Friedman relies on the 1850 version of The Prelude for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the 1850 "blind beggar" passage is a bit longer and more detailed than the 1805 version, and includes what Friedman sees as a crucial introductory section. For another, the 1850 version has built into it the idea of the insufficiency of language to represent experience, since that particular version of The Prelude grew out of Wordsworth's belief in the flaws in his enterprise, and his continual attempts to rectify them.

Friedman sees Wordsworth's search for a legitimate autobiographical text as being rooted at least partly in issues of legitimacy from his past. The French Revolution itself (the "child of French Enlightenment texts") and Wordsworth's daughter Caroline (the illegitimate product of his relationship with Annette Vallon) are part of what lies behind Book 7's "self-reflexive concerns with problems of figuration and language." Wordsworth's concern for the origin of London's children is thus a manifestation of his preoccupation with the origin and legitimacy of his autobiographical text -- "episodes like those involving Mary of Buttermere's baby and the prostitute's child in the theater render explicit the issue of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of representation." Wordsworth's ambivalence about the legitimacy of the French Revolution and of London's children reflects his uncertainty about the legitimacy of his own textual representations of experience and thought.

Wordsworth seeks some natural form of representation, and in his description of London criticises the same sort of artificial, theatrical modes of expression which Burke condemned during the French Revolution. Wordsworth describes a model for a natural, legitimate form of representation in the passage immmediately preceding the "blind beggar," where a sunbeam acts as a foil, setting itself apart from the dark confusion of a storm in the background. The blind beggar functions as a foil in the same way, arising suddenly from the confusion of the London landscape. Wordsworth sees this "illuminative" foil model as a potential explanation of linguistic representatin and the creation of a text; the foregrounding of expression in language puts the background of thought and experience into perspective, and similarly, the text arises out of its context.

Friedman then says that Wordsworth undercuts this proposed "natural" model for representing thought in language by complicating the relationship between foil and background. The relationship is not one of simple difference, with the foreground opposed to background; one could view the foregrounded beggar, for instance, as a synecdochic part of the whole crowd, since he is "a sight not rare." Difference and similarity merge; language is different from yet similar to thought; text is related to but not identical to context. Representation draws from both difference and similarity between foreground and background, and is neither purely "natural" nor purely "artificial," but lies somewhere in between.

In general, Freidman's approach to The Prelude is a New Historicist one, in which she explores the relationship between foreground and background with its manifestations in language and thought, and text and context. She modifies the New Historicist enterprise in a deconstructionist manner, however, by partially dissolving the difference between foreground and background, implying a matrix model for the origin and situation of language and texts, where the foreground is not entirely distinct from, but is partially embedded in the background. In short, Friedman says that Wordsworth's concern for finding a distinct but relevant linguistic means to represent his thoughts, emotions, and experiences informs most of Book 7, and the "blind beggar" passage in particular.

Document created February 17, 1997