I mentioned Wordsworth a fair bit in one of my recent entries. The major touchstone we kept coming back to in the 19th-century survey class I taught last semester was “Tintern Abbey.” More than any of his other poetic work, it seems to me (and my students thus far) to be continually resonant. The other works are important, but unsurprisingly “Tintern Abbey” is central: to Wordsworth’s personal ethos, to the Romantic movement as a whole, and to later writer’s engagements with the Romantics (for instance compare Wordsworth’s usage of the wilderness surrounding the Abbey to Matthew Arnold’s more melancholy picture at the end of “Stanzas From the Grande Chartreuse.”)

Anyway, this is all prelude to pointing out an excellent site hosted by the University of Michigan: Enchanting Ruin: Tintern Abbey and Romantic Tourism in Wales. It is an impressive resource that examines the larger context that the poem fits into, including the Romantic preoccupation with picturesque ruins, and the visual representation of landscape during the period. It has some great images and provides some interesting insight that illuminates the poem as well as the broader Romantic Era world. Really cool stuff.