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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... spirit of the season is not denied ; the obligation to be guided by the invisible breeze , the " moving soul " of nature , is not countermanded . But there is a supplementary moral affirmation : man is more than nature . Wordsworth and ...
... spirit , " and " lurks / Among ... passages of life . " Certainly Wordsworth is not suggesting a spirit in the sense of an angelic being who visits him on these occasions , but he was probably content to allow the suggestion of this ...
... spirit of the 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 ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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