ABSTRACT
The implicit or explicit reference to an ideal of agrarian civic virtue is the major organizational energy that runs through a great deal of Wordsworth's prose and poetry. This chapter explores the degree to which both empirical facts and perceived contradictions determined that such a rhetoric could only exist for William Wordsworth in a state of stress or extreme ambiguity, with the result that his representations of organicist harmony most be seen as aspirations, rather than as achievements. Wordsworth agrarian idealism is more coherent when seen as a negative critique of urbanization, than it becomes when we try to imagine its implementation as a positive alternative. In the model of social-psychological agrarianism, people can trace one dominant moral and political preference that will help to explain some of the transitions in Wordsworth's career that might otherwise remain puzzling.
