ABSTRACT
The more closely we examine the “sense of place” in Wordsworth, the more tenuous become the connections between him and the “place” we wish to make for him in history. Regarding the relationship between the poet and the nascent sciences of historical reconstruction of his day, this means specifically his place in the history of history-making at the end of the eighteenth century. This essay is about “Michael” as a poem of historical succession, sacrifice, and “place-keeping,” and about “place-keeping” as a function of that numerical anomaly, zero.
