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
Results 1-3 of 29
... hand " ( Prelude , 5 : 57-140 ) . The sleep in which this dream is experienced is a very light one — a mere doze or catnap in the midday heat of summer . There is very little of the " processing " of the material ingredients which ...
... hand Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up In mortal stillness ; and they ministered To human comfort . Stooping down to drink , Upon the slimy foot - stone I espied The useless fragment of a wooden bowl , Green with the moss ...
... hands . Presumably the thought would have caused them little or no distress . But as things are , with Luke in his eighteenth year Michael remarks : ' if these fields of ours Should pass into a stranger's hand , I think That I could not ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown