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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... suggest that this was the point he thought he had made . Wordsworth habitually describes significant time , not ... suggesting both disease in crops and shriveled hopes . As in " The Last of the Flock , " there is a suggestion that the ...
... suggest that it is bad . In the moral sense , the word " idleness " has nothing to do with the amount of energy ... suggested something else that he ought to be doing . Nothing in the poem , however , suggests that Wordsworth and his ...
... suggests an inexhaustible energy , they are , simply because we count them , measures of our own decay . Waterfalls and glaciers suggest natural processes as strongly as they suggest permanence ; if we look at them carefully we can see ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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