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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... moving soul " of the objects skimming the water . The pun on " moving " can hardly be overlooked - the breeze is both moving and the cause of movement . More- over , it is a Wordsworthian commonplace that breezes are never merely ...
... moving outside the clock , so that he sees time working , the earth rolling with visible motion her diurnal round . His moment is timeless then , or outside time , belonging to what medieval theologians would have called the permanence ...
... moving . James's author seems to have experienced a similar delusion — the movement of the cloud masses is so large - scale that it seems that the protruding peaks are moving . " A few high peaks , including the one I was one , seemed ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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