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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... death , and obituaries almost always use the word " un- timely . ” Man's most bewildered grief is for his dead chil- dren , and the bewilderment consists in the powerful sense that death has come before it should . One of Ordered and ...
... death . Wordsworth certainly experienced difficulty in realizing his own daughter's death , as he records in what I consider to be his greatest sonnet . Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport - Oh ...
... death but the certainty of ultimate death . Again we must admire the deceptive craft of a poem which is , as Geoffrey Durrant says , “ a subtly worked out account of the relationship between man's inadequate sense of time , at the mercy ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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