Wordsworth and the Victorians tells the story of the flowering of Wordsworth's reputation and influence in the Victorian era. Stephen Gill uses a large amount of anecdotal and biographical material to illustrate the various ways in which Wordsworth's reputation was diffused. How poets and novelists such as Matthew Arnold and George Eliot transmitted the Wordsworthian spirit is examined, but so also is the personal testimony of critics, scholars, and ordinary readers, explaining just what Wordsworth's poetry meant to them.
Wordsworth and the Victorians tells the story of the flowering of Wordsworth's reputation and influence. As well as showing how poets and novelists such as Matthew Arnold and George Eliot transmitted the Wordsworthian spirit, Stephen Gill uses a mass of anecdotal and biographical material - the personal testimony of critics, scholars, publishers, and ordinary readers - to illustrate just what Wordsworth's poetry meant to his Victorian readers.
Thomas Owens explores exultant visions inspired by Wordsworth's and Coleridge's scrutiny of the night sky, the natural world, and the domains of science. He examines a set of scientific patterns which the poets used to express ideas about poetry, religion, criticism, and philosophy, and sets out the importance of analogy in their creative thinking.
The first extended examination of the influence of monasticism on Wordsworth's writing. Covering the poet's development between 1806 and 1822, it considers how a series of sources describing medieval monastic life in the north of England influenced Wordsworth's thinking about regional attachment, trans-historical community, and national cohesion.
This book explores those moments of repetition, placing them in the early nineteenth century context from which they emerged, and teasing out through extended close attention to the poetry itself the complexities of repetition and recapitulation.
In this beautifully written and thoughtful book Wordsworth's biographer and editor Stephen Gill explores the ways in which the poet attempted as an artist to maintain continuities through all the stages of his life and shows how revisitings of various kinds are at the heart of his creativity.
In this beautifully written and thoughtful book Wordsworth's biographer and editor Stephen Gill explores the ways in which the poet attempted as an artist to maintain continuities through all the stages of his life and shows how revisitings of various kinds are at the heart of his creativity.
Wordsworth has traditionally been understood as the 'poet of memory'. This book argues that 'unremembered pleasure', an idea Wordsworth formulates in 'Tintern Abbey' but is often overlooked by modern readers, is central to understanding his writing.