Richard E. Matlak, The Poetry of Relationship: The Wordsworths and Coleridge, 1797-1800. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. ISBN: 031210166X. Price: £26.95 (US$39.95).

Richard Matlak's book, The Poetry of Relationship, is a difficult book for me to review. I found much to admire in this work, particularly the attention to the intertextual connections between William Wordsworth's poetry and both Dorothy Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's writings. Matlak's often quite original close-textual readings and uncovering of intertextual echoes and allusions are alone worth the price of the book. However, I also cannot but address the theoretical assumptions of the work, especially its occasional dismissals of competing methodologies. Before I do, I want to highlight the superb sections of the book and the ways that The Poetry of Relationship represents a valuable contribution to scholarship on the early life and work of both Coleridge and the Wordsworths. As I have said, Matlak is at his best when he is tracing the intertextuality of Wordsworth's poetry. His close readings of the Ruined Cottage (88-98) and "Tintern Abbey" (120-136), for example, are superb, for they clarify the ways that Wordsworth is countering the philosophical and formal ramifications of Coleridge's poetry, specifically and respectively the "Ancyent Marinere" and "Eolian Harp." These sorts of close readings, which appear regularly throughout the book make The Poetry of Relationship an important companion to Paul Magnuson's intertextual readings in Coleridge and Wordsworth: A Lyrical Dialogue (1988). Indeed, Matlak's book offers a different spin to Magnuson's approach by arguing for less a dialogic than what he terms a "forensic"—one might even say agonistic—relationship between the two poets. As Matlak explains, In addition, Matlak makes a stronger case for Dorothy's influence on William's development of his poetic and philosophical principles, arguing for "the responsive nature of Dorothy's Journals to her brother's poetry and the resulting tension they provoke in his verse" (3). Matlak also illuminates other influences on Wordsworth's poetry, particularly the debt Wordsworth owed to classical oration in the structuring of his "Tintern Abbey" (124-135) and the importance of Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia (118-19) to Wordsworth's early ideas regarding the poet's relationship to nature. In all of these cases, Matlak rests his interpretations on the undeniable proof that is close textual reading. Where he becomes less convincing is when he speculates about the psychobiographical meanings of Wordsworth's early poetry: "Descriptive Sketches" and an "Evening Walk" as commentaries on Annette Vallon's status as an eroticized surrogate for Dorothy and on Wordsworth's desire to leave Annette Vallon for Dorothy's sake (17-24); The Tale of Vaudracour and Julia as justification to Dorothy and Mary Hutchinson Wordsworth for William's affair with Annette Vallon (24-35); the "Adventures on Salisbury Plain" and the Borderers as commentaries on oedipal and incestuous fantasies (45-71); "Tintern Abbey" as William's effort to win back Dorothy's affections from Coleridge (122-137); the Lucy poems as fantasies about (and a secret desire for) the death of Dorothy (139-170); the spots of time, "Home at Grasmere" and Michael" as commentaries on specific events and relationships in Wordsworth's life (171-208). These are just a few of the connections Matlak offers between Wordsworth's poetry and his psychobiography, and they make for some quite intriguing reading. However, I must admit that I was disappointed anytime Matlak chose to move from his rich textual analyses to these sorts of speculations. What I find most disturbing about Matlak's analysis, however, is not its psychobiographical approach. For anyone who enjoys reading intimations of Wordsworth's immorality (on the unconscious level, of course), this book offers tantalizing and well-researched fare. What struck me, rather, were the occasional pot-shots at other theoretical approaches, particularly New Historicism and deconstruction, since these attacks seem to me to be just as easily re-directed to Matlak himself. At one point, Matlak …