Rowing to Sublimity: The “Stolen Boat” Episode from The Prelude

Rowing to Sublimity: The “Stolen Boat” Episode from The Prelude

The “Stolen Boat,” one of the most celebrated episodes from William Wordsworth’s The Prelude, recounts the occasion when the poet as a youth takes a boat from the shore of the Ullswater in England’s Lake District and begins rowing into the middle of the lake. Suddenly, when he sees a higher peak emerge from a lower hill adjacent to the bank from which he is rowing, he is taken aback by the sight and immediately returns to shore. The episode in recent years has rightly been cited by critics as a representative example of the sublime, but on-site investigations by the author suggest that the matter should be further considered in light of physical evidence that the poet may have amalgamated the image of the mountain with other information in a time-integration analogous to the motion of the boat. The result is a new reading that does not necessarily refute earlier theoretical insights into the episode as a sublime experience, but rather qualifies them by underscoring the complicated manner in which Wordsworth incorporates nature into the “growth of the poet’s mind.”