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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... natural beauty and not to the knowledge of what man is doing to man ? Human beings need the education of events as well as of nature , as Wordsworth concedes by his very men- tion of the still , sad music . And there is also the notion ...
... nature . " Imagination , as Wordsworth says in lines 592-94 , " rose from the mind's abyss " ( my italics ) . But having recognized its autonomy , the mind does not turn away from nature . Nature may be no longer its proper sub- ject ...
... nature , is not countermanded . But there is a supplementary moral affirmation : man is more than nature . Wordsworth and his companions are moved to pity by the sight of the wasted angler ; nature is not . As line 65 em- phasizes , the ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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