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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... mean by " objects , " and what we mean by " endure . " Generally speaking we mean material things by " objects . " If what the mind craves is material things that last a long time , then earth can supply them . But the very use of ...
... mean- ing . " In " Strange fits of passion , " the poet's manipulation of the reader's sense of time is used first to ... means to indi- cate the slumbrous complacency of mutual love . The repeti- tion of " moon " ( five times in twenty ...
... means whereby human nature might be born again in spite of the disappointment of the French Revolution . But in ... mean , however , that it is altogether passive , that in every instance our per- ceived experience is received by us ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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