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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... idea of the separate moment , an idea that had in some ways dominated seventeenth - century metaphysical thinking . Coupled with the belief that God could and might choose to annihilate man at any moment , the idea may well have added ...
... ideas or sensations experienced together often and vividly will suggest each other when ex- perienced individually ... idea of associationism did not originate with Hartley ; Aristotle had described it and explained memory in terms of ...
... idea . " Solidifying a moment in the flux " has certain unfortunate undertones : if this is what poetry does , and all it does , it would seem to be a kind of imaginative thrombosis . William F. Lynch has very effec- tively attacked the ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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