Re-Reading Wordsworth’s “Michael”: Sacramental Poetics in a Secular Age
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Sean Dempsey
Abstract
This essay focuses on how William Wordsworth’s “Michael can be considered an aesthetic or phenomenological transcription of what it feels like to go through the investiture crisis experienced when one abruptly transitions from the self-enclosed world of local knowledge into the unbounded world of secular modernity. I argue that the poem functions as an example of sacramental poetics, or a poetics that is potentially able to not only signify but also effect grace by affecting the body of the observant participant in a special way. The first of three sections explores how “Michael” might conform to T. S. Eliot’s conception of a dissociation of sensibility, and responds to Marjorie Levinson’s influential reading of the poem. The remaining two sections aim for more novel speculations about what the poem by first drawing upon the work of the political theorist William Connolly and the neurobiologist Joseph LeDoux to explore how the sensibilities “Michael” invokes in its readers might be related to a sacramental poetics that affects the infrasensible dimension of being human. Finally, in the last section I demonstrate how Eric Santner’s conception of psychotheology can be used to further clarify how and why “Michael” might function as a sacramental poetics, and conclude by suggesting how the poem has the potential to help us see more fully what the study of religion and literature might mean in a secular age.
Correction Note
This article was originally published under the DOI 10.1515/znth-2015-0005 by mistake.
© 2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Essays/Aufsätze
- Romanticism as Modern Re-Enchantment: Burke, Kant, and Emerson on Religious Taste
- Devotional Emerson
- Religion and the Problem of Subjectivity in the reception of Early German Romanticism
- History is Divine Art: Schelling’s Spätphilosophie as Orthodox Romantic Theology
- Re-Reading Wordsworth’s “Michael”: Sacramental Poetics in a Secular Age
- Reviews/Rezensionen
- Michael Multhammer: Lessings „Rettungen“. Geschichte und Genese eines Denkstils
- Irene A. Diekmann (Hg.): Das Emanzipationsedikt von 1812 in Preußen. Der lange Weg der Juden zu „Einländern“ und „preußischen Staatsbürgern". Marion Schulte: Über die bürgerlichen Verhältnisse der Juden in Preußen. Ziele und Motive der Reformzeit (1787–1812)
- Dalia Nassar: The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804
- Michael Fischer: Religion, Nation, Krieg. Der Lutherchoral „Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott“ zwischen Befreiungskriegen und Erstem Weltkrieg
- Silvio Reichelt: Der Erlebnisraum Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Genese, Entwicklung und Bestand eines protestantischen Erinnerungsortes
- Johannes Zachhuber: Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany: From F. C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch
- Matthias A. Deuschle: Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des kirchlichen Konservatismus im Preußen des 19. Jahrhunderts
- Konrad Hammann: Hermann Gunkel. Eine Biographie
- Konrad Hammann: Hermann Gunkel. Eine Biographie. Ernst-Joachim Waschke (Hg.): Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932)
- Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz (Hg.): Lauterkeit des Blicks. Unbekannte Materialien zu Romano Guardini
- Paul Silas Peterson: The Early Hans Urs von Balthasar. Historical Contexts and Intellectual Formation
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Essays/Aufsätze
- Romanticism as Modern Re-Enchantment: Burke, Kant, and Emerson on Religious Taste
- Devotional Emerson
- Religion and the Problem of Subjectivity in the reception of Early German Romanticism
- History is Divine Art: Schelling’s Spätphilosophie as Orthodox Romantic Theology
- Re-Reading Wordsworth’s “Michael”: Sacramental Poetics in a Secular Age
- Reviews/Rezensionen
- Michael Multhammer: Lessings „Rettungen“. Geschichte und Genese eines Denkstils
- Irene A. Diekmann (Hg.): Das Emanzipationsedikt von 1812 in Preußen. Der lange Weg der Juden zu „Einländern“ und „preußischen Staatsbürgern". Marion Schulte: Über die bürgerlichen Verhältnisse der Juden in Preußen. Ziele und Motive der Reformzeit (1787–1812)
- Dalia Nassar: The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804
- Michael Fischer: Religion, Nation, Krieg. Der Lutherchoral „Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott“ zwischen Befreiungskriegen und Erstem Weltkrieg
- Silvio Reichelt: Der Erlebnisraum Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Genese, Entwicklung und Bestand eines protestantischen Erinnerungsortes
- Johannes Zachhuber: Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany: From F. C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch
- Matthias A. Deuschle: Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des kirchlichen Konservatismus im Preußen des 19. Jahrhunderts
- Konrad Hammann: Hermann Gunkel. Eine Biographie
- Konrad Hammann: Hermann Gunkel. Eine Biographie. Ernst-Joachim Waschke (Hg.): Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932)
- Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz (Hg.): Lauterkeit des Blicks. Unbekannte Materialien zu Romano Guardini
- Paul Silas Peterson: The Early Hans Urs von Balthasar. Historical Contexts and Intellectual Formation
