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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... movement of the verse , stumbling between line endings and caesuras , enacts the interrupted progress of the ramblers . And often / trifling with a privilege Alike indulged to all , we paused , one now , And now the other , / to point ...
... movements of the dandelion seeds are caused by an " invisible breeze " which is the " moving soul " of the objects skimming the water . The pun on " moving " can hardly be overlooked - the breeze is both moving and the cause of movement ...
... so leads to the indoctrination of the young rather than to their education . One of the things the Romantic movement was rebelling against was the scientific optimism of the seven- teenth Idleness and Deliberate Holiday 125.
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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