Epilogue

Abstract

Drawing together themes from Chapters 1–5, the epilogue suggests that the poetry and prose Wordsworth produced between 1806 and 1822 might be seen, in retrospect, to anticipate the work of groups such as the Oxford Tract Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society. The widespread Victorian revival of enthusiasm for monasticism and ruined abbeys, antiquarianism, and ecclesiology makes sense of the Victorian ‘taste’ for poems such as The White Doe and The Excursion. And yet, as the book has shown, Wordsworth resists conventional medievalist and antiquarian activity in deference to the silence of the landscape.