Article Summary: The Excursion and “The Surface of Things”

Hope Watley and Courtney Swearingen

1.     The argument and main points of the article:

Farina argues that in The Excursion, Wordsworth turns to a different model of character, one that is not focused on the inwardness but rather on sociality and the surfaces of “things” (99). 

Farina talks a lot about the function of “things” all throughout this article.  On page 100, Farina talks about “things” as “concrete objectivity of objects as well as different kinds of invisible, inaudible, or otherwise ineffable forms of touching, picturing, feeling, life, law, and order.” He uses the example on lines 452 of The Ruined Cottage, of Margaret  “busy in the distance, shaping things/that made her heart beat quick.”

He also makes the point that “things” function as a point of contact that connects the relationship between people and objects. He notes that The Excursion suggests that one should learn to see “things” as “coextensive with and animate of the self,” (100).

 Farina points out that the abstractness of  “things”: “These ”things” are seen but invisible, half-known, silent, or speaking a different language,” (101), he notes that somehow these “things” are still material. He goes on to say that these  “things”, and the abstract process of them, direct the mind outward. We believe these lines from The Ruined Cottage support this point: “For hours she sate; and evermore her eye/ Was busy in the distance, shaping things/ That made her heart beat quick,” (451-453) and again on lines 32-33, “I see around me here/ Things which you cannot see:,”.

Farina then points out The Excursion, instead of focusing on the internal changes focuses on the external changes by experimenting with the less permanent, less comfortable, and “less individual experience of changes of place, attitude, and company,” (102).

Farina ends the article with saying that this abstractness of the “things” allows for Wordsworth to specify objects by generalizing them instead of saying what the particular object is and that The Excursion aims to show how characters interact with the outside world (104).

2.     Rhetorical techniques, blind spots, or assumption:

This article gives little reference to The Ruined Cottage. It just talks

about The Excursion in its entirety but we feel it references more of the part of the poem we do not have.

           On page 100, Farina briefly mentions the Associationist Psychology without really elaborating more on it and its correlation to the argument.

3.     Questions:

-Farina keeps referring to this taxonomical medium/method. What does he mean by this? 

-       What does Farina mean when he says that “things” function as a currency, or a fit exchange for anything in “The Excursion?”