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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... ruins . My examination of the Furness Abbey lines must neces- sarily be long and complicated , not because I am ... ruin , Christian or pagan , either an old fane where once the druids worshipped or the antique walls Of that large abbey ...
... ruins . I hope that the reader may get a better sense of these features with the help of the following brief historical sketches . CARTMEL PRIORY ( 1805 version of The Prelude , 10 : 493 ) Although Wordsworth does not describe any ...
... ruin.1 However in the next two hundred years nothing was done , and the church fell into ruin again . The Lancashire ... ruins , or may at least have shaped his memory of them at the time of writing . LADY HOLME ( The Prelude , 2 : 54-65 ) ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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