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. |
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... fear that some worldwide natural disaster might destroy all records of human intellectual achievement . Human life itself , he says , might survive such a disaster , But all the meditations of mankind , Yea , all the adamantine holds of ...
... fear experienced in the very beginning of the dream " Came creeping over me . " There is some reason to suppose that Wordsworth sleeps with one eye open , watching the incoming tide . The fear that is the nervous basis of the dream is a ...
... fear is expunged and washed away . " What is experienced is an " eternal present . " Now , we could see such a state ... fear is expunged by the mystical rapture , for it is a 99 normal human fear . Matthew in " The Fountain " 177 The ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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