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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... stone Half hidden from the eye ! -Fair as a star , when only one Is shining in the sky . She lived unknown , and few ... stone ( nature ) will long outlast the violet ( Lucy ) βit cannot die because it has never lived β yet it is the ...
... stone as a stone and the shell as a shell , yet caught by the logic of the crazed enthusiasm and deter- mined to " cleave unto this man . " The Arab's mission itself is the dream version of Wordsworth's going far to seek dis- quietude ...
... stone and shell , and neither does the dream Arab . The shell is " something of more worth " than Euclid's Elements ; the stone represents a reason undisturbed by space and time , but the shell is a god β yea , many gods . There is also ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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