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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... universe " out there , " but brings to it an imaginative force which builds up a new creation . Nevertheless , what- ever transforming gleam the auxiliar light may shed on na- ture , the world , as A. E. Housman lamented , " is the old ...
... universe , that the effects of the mo- ment are beneficial and lasting , and that the experience is in fact sacramental . Time stops , but the value lies not in the oddity of time stopping , but in the reality thus made avail- able ...
... universe he has created : the moon's " sovereign ele- vation " is the timeless vantage point from which God views time . But the moon is also the type of man's intellect and her elevation is also the timeless vantage point from which ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
Ordered and Disordered Time | 29 |
The Nature and Status of the Mind | 51 |
Copyright | |
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