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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... says throughout the poem - is that the mind of man " half creates " what it sees , and that the world " of eye and ... say : associationism was attractive to Wordsworth because it seemed to give a basis for the value he attached to his ...
... says Wordsworth , is a " difference to me ! " As Geoffrey Durrant says of this poem : " Wordsworth con- templates the humble place man occupies or seems to occupy - in the great sweep of space and time , and boldly makes the human mind ...
... says , Wordsworth's mind " desperately and unself - knowingly in search of a nature adequate to deep childhood impressions , finds instead itself , and has to ac- knowledge that nature is no longer its proper subject or home . " By the ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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