James K. Chandler, The Greatest Lyric in English? Reading Wordsworth's Immortality Ode

"The Greatest Lyric in English? Reading Wordsworth's Immortality Ode"
University of Chicago
October 15, 2022
James K. Chandler, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of English

This session addresses a single poem, Wordsworth's famous “Intimations of Immortality Ode,” a text that has supplied lines and phrases that reverberate in modern literary culture: "trailing clouds of glory," "Shades of the prison-house," "splendor in the grass," "The Child is father of the Man," and "Thoughts that ... lie too deep for tears." Taken in its entirety, the Immortality Ode is a particularly challenging lyric with complex twists and turns, a work that amply rewards the kind of critical patience and close attention we will be bringing to it.