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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... reader's memory as a perpetual irony , commenting from just below the surface of con- sciousness on the ideals and progress of the regime based on San Tome's " material interests . " But Wordsworth's dislo- cated narrative , considered ...
... reader's full consciousness of the whole narrative . The reader is not entirely unprepared for the baby's death , even if he has not noticed the transference mechanism and the ominous placing of the infant as Margaret makes her prophecy ...
... reader's imagination , the durability of their environment . Michael could become a partly numinous fig- ure like the Leech - gatherer , or an eternal wanderer like the Old Cumberland Beggar . But this must not happen , and hence the ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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