ABSTRACT
The reader is offered the double response of the person telling the tale and of the listener to it, the latter's response clearly intended to guide that of the reader. Through the Poet's increasingly obvious limitations William Wordsworth makes the reader question and redefines his own response. The effect of the Poet's limitations, most apparent in the early books, is to make the reader aware of an ability to respond with more sophistication than the Poet is capable of. Response is divided between the narrator of the poem and the narrator of the story in the poem. Thus the Poet ‘remains engrossed in the narrative mode, without rising up out of its immediate emotional effects to interpret it. The reader's distance from the Poet is increasingly confirmed as his authority is undercut and his own need for a guide becomes clear at both a physical and narrative level.
