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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... looked , and said , ' The will of God be done ! ' ( Ll . 1-4 ) The sun is the time reference , fixing the moment not as an entry in a diary or a date in a biography , but in order fully to represent the anagnorisis and self - knowing of ...
... looked at her , and looked again / And did not wish her mine ! " ( 11. 55-56 ) . His dead daughter is irreplaceable . In like manner , the affinity he now feels between him- self and his young pupil is not kinship and cannot be . The ...
... looked over a gashed and corrugated landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon , and again from the same point when I could see nothing beneath me but a bound- less expanse of white cloud , on the blown ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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