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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... Going far to seek disquietude may be a matter of going far to disguise the nature of the disquietude . Why this fret about the " garments , " since the untrammeled mind is immortal and will in its bliss enjoy a happiness greater than ...
... going to become particular : “ a known Vale ; " " the very door , " " one cottage . " But this implied promise is not fulfilled , and we are coolly told that it cannot be . “ No picture of mere memory ever looked / So fair . " That is ...
... going on . But " living trees " suggests a truly visi- ble motion and thus by contrast freezes the image of collapse at the very moment we had begun to picture it . Wordsworth has engineered a dilemma in our imagina- tive and 168 Time ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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