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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... season , " and " hour . " Certain phrases , such as " Two blighting seasons " ( 1. 537 ) , " The hardships of that season " ( 1. 543 ) , and " those calamitous years " ( 1. 549 ) seem almost to imply that some personified abstraction ...
... season . " Wordsworth describes at some length his own attempt to adjust in this way in " Ode on Intimations of Immortality , " lines 22-24 , and the Pedlar suggests the same notion . " Tis now the hour of deepest noon . At this still ...
... season prompts man to rouse and go forth , Wordsworth is on his way home to bed ; second , for the society which he has just left , the great joy of the night is over , but for Wordsworth the flat social aftermath is the occasion of a ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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