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. |
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... moral crisis and had " Yielded up moral questions in despair " ( Prelude , 11 : 305 ) . He was , therefore , peculiarly open to such an influence as Coleridge's . It is not unfair , nor particularly unkind either , to say that ...
... moral affirmation : man is more than nature . Wordsworth and his companions are moved to pity by the sight of the wasted angler ; nature is not . As line 65 em- phasizes , the lake is a " dead unfeeling lake . " The man , sim- ply by ...
... moral and emotional stability ; we cannot be easily swayed from our beliefs and moral habits , and we are not unusually depressed by the weary business of ordinary routine , by the malice or sneers of other people . The lines from The ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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