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
Results 1-3 of 9
... associated with his lost happiness . Worse , he is bound by social laws and moral habits , laws heavier than nature's . The natural world knows nothing of determined cheerfulness . The specially human pain , however , arises from the ...
... associated with lakes and crags , and if the intimations of divine presence were all huge and mighty forms pursuing the sinner or low breathings chastising him by fear . But what I now have to investigate are certain mysti- cal ...
... associated with the Christian shrines , we shall be able to identify a curious kind of vibration in the poetry — a shuttling between past and present time in our consciousness so rapid we are scarcely aware of it . Herbert Lindenberger ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown