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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... idleness . " Like Shakespeare's Angelo and Isabella , Wordsworth and his friends do finally judge themselves . But the poem as a whole suggests that their self - condemnation was as wrong as their condemnation of the fisherman . The ...
... idleness of that sweet morn , / With all its lovely images , was changed " ; " Nor did we fail to see within ourselves " ( 11. 68-69 , 71 ) . The last phrase needs no direct object . It is because the happy mood is changed , because ...
... idleness is neither good nor bad , for it is not idleness at all . That a leisured life is not necessarily an idle one is even more true of that of the shepherd in the summertime de- scribed in The Prelude , 8 : 196–201 . at large The ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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