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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... lines 121-34 of " Tintern Ab- bey " reveal . this prayer I make , Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart ... lines 128-31 remind one of Romans 8 : 38-39 , where Saint Paul proclaims that nothing can separate Christians from the ...
... lines , and straggled O'er paths they used to deck : carnations , once Prized for surpassing beauty , and no less For the peculiar pains they had required , Declined their languid heads , wanting support . The cumbrous bind - weed ...
... lines as a species of déjà vu experience . For in lines 65–93 , he allows these shift- ing and merging impressions to sink from the immediate surface of the reader's attention . The intervening verse has a deliberately ordinary tone and ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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