ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Charles Taylor's statement about individualism in Sources of the Self lies at the heart. Modern culture has developed conceptions of individualism which picture the human person as, at least potentially, finding his or her own bearings within, declaring independence from the webs of interlocution which have originally formed, or at least neutralizing them. Taylor's beautiful phrase, webs of interlocution, captures the connections with others, particularly through speech. The unbearable pain which Wordsworth's Surprized by joy registers is all the more acute because it records, not only the loss of a child and the memory of that loss, but the incompleteness of joy when it cannot be shared. The chapter focuses on the significance of webs of interlocution with reference to a few poems by Wordsworth and Auden. Criticism about lyric address and apostrophe has been influential in drawing attention to the presence or importance of others in poetry.
