Time and Mind in Wordsworth's PoetryWilliam Wordsworth was fascinated by the relationship of the creative mind to the created world, and by the effect of time on both of them. In this important new study, Jeffrey Baker explores the significant ways in which the theme of time is manifested in the imagery and diction of Wordsworth's major poetry. He discusses the poet's preoccupation with "clock" and "natural" time, as well as his escape from time through "deliberate holiday" and in the famous visionary "spots of time." Throughout his analysis, Baker concentrateson the texts which the poet himself approved for publication, asserting that the growing practice of citing poetically inferior versions for biographical or other extra poetic reasons misdirects a reader's attention. Only by reexamining the familiar poems as poems, rather than as philosophical or psychological statements, is it possible to appreciate how Wordsworth's changing concepts of the creator, the poet, and the ambiguities of time function as works of art. The volume includes a selected bibliography and an appendix describing the early Christian shrines alluded to in The Prelude. |
From inside the book
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... earth is solid and lasting is under- mined by the coexisting sense that the earth is both gross and ephemeral compared to the permanence of heaven ; a hunger for the visual splendors of earth and its pleasures is present with a hunger ...
... earth , absorbed into its motion . Her years are “ earthly " years ; her course is " earth's diurnal course . " We are time's prisoners , the poem says , and we die in prison . 3 The Nature and Status of the Mind Although Wordsworth 50 ...
... earth ; the mind of man is a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells . When man asserts his independence , " strict time , " which offers only a pittance , becomes " lowly thyme , " from which man crushes a ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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