But the misdating of crucial events - such as the composition of the Glad Preamble - do not detract from its validity as autobiographical writing, but rather gives evidence of the self-problematising nature of origins. Wordsworth’s revisions of the Prelude afford an insightful means of understanding these issues: here the imperatives of narrative self-constitution far outweigh the imperatives of literal facts. Reading Wordsworth’s Prelude implicates us immediately in the politics of autobiographical writing - which deliberately elides, to use Felicity Nussbaum’s words, “the subject’s fragmentations and discontinuities.” But at the same time, one cannot help suspecting that the seemingly reasonable expectation of factual correctness in autobiography can also mask a deep denial of these essential fragmentations and discontinuities in the name of truth.
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