Book Description

"Essays by several contributors represent a marriage between traditional textual scholarship and issues raised by contemporary theory and criticism. Jonathan Wordsworth discusses the making and remaking of The Prelude, along with other examples of the long poem in English; he emphasizes the shifting nature of both the text and the self and questions traditional assumptions about authorial intention and the possibility of producing authoritative texts. Pamela Woof brings an awareness of recent developments in feminist theory and gender studies to bear on her exploration of the role of Dorothy Wordsworth in the engendering of her brother's poetry, while Jared Curtis uses close textual analysis of a poem that was originally drafted by William, revised by Dorothy, and published by Coleridge, to raise issues of intertextuality and collective authorship." "Such accommodation between traditional scholarship and contemporary trends is by no means universal, and the present volume closes with Helen Vendler's fierce attack on the New Historicism, which she sees as hostile to the lyric impulse. Academic revolutions, as we know, can generate violent debate, but such debate should surely be welcomed as a guarantee of the continuing vitality of the discipline."--BOOK JACKET.