Wordsworth's Historical Imagination (Routledge Revivals)
The Poetry of Displacement
Published on 7. August 2014
252 pages
978-1-317-62032-7 (ISBN)
Description
Traditionally, Wordsworth's greatness is founded on his identity as the poet of nature and solitude. The Wordsworthian imagination is seen as an essentially private faculty, its very existence premised on the absence of other people. In this title, first published in 1987, David Simpson challenges this established view of Wordsworth, arguing that it fails to recognize and explain the importance of the context of the public sphere and the social environment to the authentic experience of the imagination. Wordsworth's preoccupation with the metaphors of property and labour shows him to be acutely anxious about the value of his art in a world that he regarded as corrupted. Through close examination of a few important poems, both well-known and relatively unknown, Simpson shows that there is no unitary, public Wordsworth, nor is there a conflict or tension between the private and the public. The absence of any clear kind of authority in the voice that speaks the poems makes Wordsworth's poetry, in Simpson's phrase, a 'poetry of displacement'.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
File size
7,26 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-317-62032-7 (9781317620327)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2016
1st Edition
Routledge
€76.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Book
06/2014
1st Edition
Routledge
€217.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
David Simpson
Content
Acknowledgments; Citations and abbreviations; Chapter 1 'Gipsies'; Chapter 2 Wordsworth's agrarian idealism: the case against urban life; Chapter 3 Another guide to the lakes; Chapter 4 'In single or in social eminence'? The political economy of; The Prelude; and; Home at Grasmere; Chapter 5 'By conflicting passions pressed': 'Michael' and 'Simon Lee'; Chapter 6 Poets, paupers and peripatetics: the politics of sympathy; Chapter 7 Structuring a subject:; The Excursion; Chapter 8 Postscript: 'The star of eve was wanting';
