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Articles

Volume 08, Number 2 (1983)

Remembering It All Well: "The Tantramar Revisited"

  • Tracy Ware
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1983-06-06

Abstract

Charles G.D. Roberts's "The Tantramar Revisited" makes an unmistakable generic allusion to Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" -- both are "return" poems. Both Wordsworth and Roberts's speakers are disturbed by the "still, sad music of humanity," though their attitudes towards that music are markedly different. Wordsworth is chastened, subdued, and elevated, but Roberts's speaker receives less abundant recompense; Wordsworth can return to a beloved setting without abandoning his other and more human concerns, but Roberts cannot resolve his two concerns, the social and the natural. "The Tantramar Revisited" is thus a homecoming that is not a homecoming; it records the point at which the Romantic poet (in this case, Roberts himself) abandons his childhood view of nature .