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This text considers William Wordsworth's use of iconography in his long poem The Excursion (1814). Through this iconographical approach, it steers a middle course between The Excursion's two very different interpretative traditions, the one focusing upon the poem's abstraction, the other upon its touristic realism. The author explores Wordsworth's iconography in The Excursion by tracing cultural and political allusions and correspondences in an abundance of post-1789 and earlier verbal and pictorial sources, as well as in Wordsworth's own prose and poetry, especially The Prelude. Particular attention is paid to the complex ways in which The Excursion's iconographical images contribute to - and also impose limitations upon - the overarching preoccupations of Wordsworth's writings: the themes of paradise lost and paradise regained in the post-revolutionary context.

Allusions in literature. --- Symbolism in literature. --- English poetry --- Romanticism --- Imagery (Psychology) in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Wordsworth, William, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- William Wordsworth --- Romantic poetry --- landscape imagery --- political iconography --- French Revolution