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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... moment joined to eternity . The incidents leading to the great moments of vision are always introduced casually , with ref- erence to material time . The skating episode ( Prelude , 1 : 425– 63 ) begins at six o'clock on a winter ...
... moments of mystical apprehension , including the moments of visionary joy as well as these two moments of visionary dreariness . The words suggest moments which have a perceptible separateness from the general flow of time , a ...
... moments , however , is not a solidifying or freezing of the process , but an awareness , a sudden and unusual awareness , of discreteness . When one of these supreme moments singles itself out , Wordsworth becomes aware of the sensuous ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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