The Simple Wordsworth


Book Description

First published in 1960, this book studies Wordsworth’s ‘simple’ poems, such as the Lyrical Ballads, as products of a sophisticated and powerfully successful literary genius. The author aims to approach the poems as perhaps Wordsworth expected his first readers to; but as they have never been in fact. The result of this approach is to discover a Wordsworth far different to that which he has previously been presented as — the ‘Sage of Rydal’ at one extreme and a naïve perpetrator of poetical blunders at the other — and, the author argues, a far more exciting one. This book will be of interest to students of literature.




William Wordsworth in Context


Book Description

This book provides the essential contexts for an understanding of all aspects of the major English Romantic poet, William Wordsworth.




A Companion to William Wordsworth


Book Description

This Is Perhaps The Most Comprehensive Book On Wordsworth, Having Discussions On Most Of The Different Dimensions Of The Poet As A Critic, A Poetic Theorist, A Great Lover Of Nature, A Humanist, And As A Philosopher. In This Book, Twelve Most Important Poems Of The Poet, His Five Lucy Poems And Also His Six Sonnets Have Been Thoroughly Discussed, And The Texts Of All The 23 Poems Have Been Given. In The Three Appendices, The Texts Of Wordsworth S Three Most Important Literary Essays Preface To Lyrical Ballads (1802), Appendix On Poetic Diction, And Essay Supplementary To The Preface Have Been Given For The Reader S Ready References. The Author Has Shunned All Pedantry Anywhere In The Book, His Primary Objective Being Introduction Of Wordsworth To The Generality Of Readers. References Have Always Been Cited Whenever Quotations From Critics Books Have Been Appropriated.Contents Vol. 1: Preface; Life And Works; Twelve Select Poems Of Wordsworth; The Five Lucy Poems Of Wordsworth; Six Select Sonnets Of Wordsworth; Wordsworth As A Romantic Poet; Wordsworth S Theory Of Poetry; Wordsworth As A Poet Of Nature.Contents Vol. 2: Wordsworth As A Poet Of Humanity; Wordsworth As A Philosophical Poet; Wordsworth S Style; Wordsworth As A Critic; Appreciation And Criticism Of Wordsworth; Residuary Discussions On Wordsworth; Wordsworth And Coleridge; The Prelude; The Excursion; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.




Wordsworth's Fun


Book Description

“The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge’s cottage,” William Hazlitt recalled, “He answered in some degree to his friend’s description of him, but was more quaint and Don Quixote- like . . . there was a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth.” Hazlitt presents a Wordsworth who differs from the one we know—and, as Matthew Bevis argues in his radical new reading of the poet, this Wordsworth owed his quixotic creativity to a profound feeling for comedy. Wordsworth’s Fun explores the writer’s debts to the ludic and the ludicrous in classical tradition; his reworkings of Ariosto, Erasmus, and Cervantes; his engagement with forms of English poetic humor; and his love of comic prose. Combining close reading with cultural analysis, Bevis travels many untrodden ways, studying Wordsworth’s interest in laughing gas, pantomime, the figure of the fool, and the value of play. Intrepid, immersive, and entertaining, Wordsworth’s Fun sheds fresh light on how one poet’s strange humor helped to shape modern literary experiment.




The Cambridge Companion to ‘Lyrical Ballads'


Book Description

This accessible collection of essays provides an essential introduction to the volume of poetry that defined British Romanticism.




Authors and Authority


Book Description

One of the great paradoxes of modern times is that the more scientists understand the natural world, the more we discover that our everyday beliefs about it are wrong. Neil F. Comins has identified and classified, by origin and topic, over 1,700 commonly held misconceptions about the universe. He presents the reader with the tools needed to probe erroneous notions so that we can begin to question for ourselves... and to think more like scientists.




The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion


Book Description

This unique and comprehensive volume looks at the study of literature and religion from a contemporary critical perspective. Including discussion of global literature and world religions, this Companion looks at: Key moments in the story of religion and literary studies from Matthew Arnold through to the impact of 9/11 A variety of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and literature Different ways that religion and literature are connected from overtly religious writing, to subtle religious readings Analysis of key sacred texts and the way they have been studied, re-written, and questioned by literature Political implications of work on religion and literature Thoroughly introduced and contextualised, this volume is an engaging introduction to this huge and complex field.




Local Transcendence


Book Description

Driven by global economic forces to innovate, today’s society paradoxically looks forward to the future while staring only at the nearest, most local present—the most recent financial quarter, the latest artistic movement, the instant message or blog post at the top of the screen. Postmodernity is lived, it seems, at the end of history. In the essays collected in Local Transcendence, Alan Liu takes the pulse of such postmodern historicism by tracking two leading indicators of its acceleration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: postmodern cultural criticism—including the new historicism, the new cultural history, cultural anthropology, the new pragmatism, and postmodern and postindustrial theory—and digital information technology. What is the relation between the new historicist anecdote and the database field, Liu asks, and can either have a critical function in the age of postmodern historicism? Local Transcendence includes two previously unpublished essays and a synthetic introduction in which Liu traverses from his earlier work on the theory of historicism to his recent studies of information culture to propose a theory of contingent method incorporating a special inflection of history: media history.




Why the Lyrical Ballads?


Book Description

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.