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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... imaginative force which builds up a new creation . Nevertheless , what- ever transforming gleam the auxiliar light ... imagination that we perceive and measure time , and the human mind is a willful clock , as Virginia Woolf recognized ...
... imagination . Stallknecht has made a very good case for Jakob Boehme's influence on Wordsworth's conception of the imagination being ultimately greater than the influence of Locke , Hartley , and Godwin . Wordsworth , he says , shows ...
... imagination in the stone , the star , and the " dead unfeeling lake . " Though it may be a reflection of the first great creative fiat , human imagination is native to the human mind . Geoffrey Hartman supplies a corrective to ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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