Abstract

Excess is a power beyond that of a given system such as nature or human community. It can also be a power beyond the self. In this case, excess serves to mediate between the being of the self and the being of the world. Excess, that "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," gives rise to the imagination in The Prelude. ;From the 1799 Prelude to the 1805 Prelude, Wordsworth shifts the basis of his power from nature to human community. Such an understanding is also a movement, for Wordsworth realizes his own role not as child, but as parent in the 1805 Prelude. This shift resituates the relationship of systems of power to the self. ;The 1805 Prelude moves from a depiction of Wordsworth as a "chosen" being to Wordsworth as a social being. The Prelude ends, after all, with a discussion of friendship, of Wordsworth's relationship to Dorothy and Coleridge. ;While excess tends to de-individuate being and thus to dissolve all being into one being, this very de-individuation is the possibility of vision--seeing into the life of things. Wordsworth, however, comes to understand such vision as inhuman. He learns to mediate individual being with the being of community. ;Along with the socialization of vision in The Prelude, Wordsworth also comes to understand language as that which mediates between the natural and the human. It is through excess that the possibility of the divine arises and through language that this experience is re-presented. Wordsworth thereby comes to understand the role of language in The Prelude as the mediator of excess, as something which humanizes power