This memory aid covers 🧠 Memory Aid — The CCA Arc within Extract from The Prelude (Wordsworth) for GCSE English Literature. Revise Extract from The Prelude (Wordsworth) in Power and Conflict Poetry for GCSE English Literature with 10 exam-style questions and 14 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 16 of 19 in this topic. Use it for quick recall, then test yourself straight afterwards so the memory aid becomes usable in an answer.
🧠 Memory Aid — The CCA Arc
Remember the poem's three-stage argument with CCA:
- C — Confidence: "I struck and struck again" — the boy in control, rowing out into the dark
- C — Confrontation: "Upreared its head" — the mountain rises, moves, reclaims authority from the boy
- A — Aftermath: "unknown modes of being" — the boy is permanently changed; Nature has done its work
CCA tracks the poem's movement from human power to natural power to inner transformation. Every paragraph in your essay should be about one of these three stages — and the mountain's action in stage C is where Wordsworth's argument lives.
Practice questions for Extract from The Prelude (Wordsworth)
Wordsworth writes that the cliff rose 'as if with voluntary power instinct.' What does the phrase 'voluntary power instinct' most clearly suggest about Nature in this poem?
Explain how Wordsworth uses form and structure in The Prelude to serve the poem's argument about the growth of consciousness. Refer to at least one specific formal feature.