Wordsworth's Historical Imagination (Routledge Revivals): The Poetry of DisplacementTraditionally, Wordsworth’s greatness is founded on his identity as the poet of nature and solitude. The Wordsworthian imagination is seen as an essentially private faculty, its very existence premised on the absence of other people. In this title, first published in 1987, David Simpson challenges this established view of Wordsworth, arguing that it fails to recognize and explain the importance of the context of the public sphere and the social environment to the authentic experience of the imagination. Wordsworth’s preoccupation with the metaphors of property and labour shows him to be acutely anxious about the value of his art in a world that he regarded as corrupted. Through close examination of a few important poems, both well-known and relatively unknown, Simpson shows that there is no unitary, public Wordsworth, nor is there a conflict or tension between the private and the public. The absence of any clear kind of authority in the voice that speaks the poems makes Wordsworth’s poetry, in Simpson’s phrase, a ‘poetry of displacement’. |
From inside the book
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... already in place for most potential readers, but were determined by particular conditions of time and place that were themselves disappearing. Second, many of Wordsworth's poems address themselves to fairly precise events and ...
... already interacted with each other to produce that self. Application of this general syndrome to particular cases produces differently emphasized explanations. Some areas of human behaviour, such as sexuality and aggression, are highly ...
... already, this self is not exclusively individual, so that its prominence entails an effacement of the 'world' — a thesis that is probably the hoariest of all latterday constructions of Romanticism — but is a medium in which the world is ...
... already be clear; we have to understand the integrity of his case against the directions being taken by English society and the national economy, and much of this is articulated in prose. Few would contest that 'Michael' and 'The Old ...
... already. But it does claim to be a serious interpretation of some poems, and one that could be extended to others, even as it might be qualified by new evidence. This calls for some preliminary discussion. Writing this book has helped ...
Contents
1 | |
1 Gipsies | 22 |
the case against urban life | 56 |
3 Another guide to the lakes | 79 |
4 In single or in social eminence? The political economy of The Prelude and Home at Grasmere | 108 |
Michael and Simon Lee | 140 |
the politics of sympathy | 160 |
The Excursion | 185 |
The star of eve was wanting | 209 |
Notes | 217 |
Bibliography | 225 |
Index | 236 |
Other editions - View all
Wordsworth's Historical Imagination (Routledge Revivals): The Poetry of ... David Simpson Limited preview - 2014 |
Wordsworth's Historical Imagination (Routledge Revivals): The Poetry of ... David Simpson No preview available - 2016 |
Wordsworth's Historical Imagination (Routledge Revivals): The Poetry of ... David Simpson No preview available - 2014 |