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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... begins with a peculiarly Wordsworthian kind of ambiguity , the kind of doubleness of understanding that amounts to a brilliantly economical accuracy . In lines 425–26 , the iambic momentum that carries the reader over the comma after ...
... begin to linger on a particular object . The pleasure of such encounters may be transient , but it springs from an ... begins to note the symbols of passing time . The crowing of the cock is one of those natural signals that human ...
... begins to pull out of the station , we may , if we happen not to turn our eyes to the platform on the other side , be deluded into believing that our train is moving . James's author seems to have experienced a similar delusion — the ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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