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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Jeffrey Baker. things , one could only create a sense of duration from the endless series of separate instants by associative memories . In doing this one also created a self : all those innumerable " I's " that existed in all those past ...
... create A like existence ... which ( Prelude , 14 : 86-95 ) The mutations sent abroad are " kindred " to those of the creative power working through nature , and the mind , by its very reciprocation of that power's activities , both ...
... creates me anew at this very moment , in other words , preserves me . For it is clear , when one con- siders the nature ... create it anew if it did not yet exist ; there is thus only a conceptual distinction between pres- ervation and ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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