First published in 1970, this stylistic and interpretative account of some of Wordsworth s major poetry examines description and meditation in his landscape writing. It describes the integration of two kinds of thinking, and a variety of beauties and lapses that come from their separation.

Although Wordsworth s deepest affinity was with nature, the author argues the finest landscape writing of the poet s late twenties and early thirties derives from his attempt to humanise his love of nature. This work therefore aims to examine the way in which Wordsworth strives in his poetry to extend...

First published in 1974. Wordsworth, with Coleridge, is the major literary critic of the Romantic period. This volume assembles all of Wordsworth s formal critical writings and a selection of critical comments from his correspondence. These documents are invaluable for Romantic poetry at large, and his theories particularly on poetic diction, ordinary language and the nature of the creative process inspired lively critical debate. This book discusses the nature and origin of Wordsworth s criticism in general, and the literary tradition from which they sprang. The texts are succinctly...

First published in 1983, this book examines a work whose intricacies have baffled and infuriated generations of readers and proposes a theory of Coleridge s writing habits that "explain(s) his explanation." The author painstakingly analyses the "Biographia s "organising structure distinguishing between the daring conception and often inept execution of Coleridge s idea of critical discourse. It is argued that Coleridge s autobiographical format present a richly metaphorical "self" whose literary life has led to the now-famous doctrine of secondary imagination. The author s command of...

First published in 1983, this books aims to guide Wordsworth students through his difficult masterpiece by reading it in continuous sequence and making its sense emerge. The special value of this commentary is that it explains the structure of "The Prelude "by encouraging study of the poem as a continuous whole rather than selectively looking at individual sections an approach that has typified modern criticism of the work. This depends upon a close attention to the careful arrangement of the verse paragraphs, all of which make an indispensable contribution to the overall thought pattern,...

First published in 1991, this book collects a broad array of path-finding scholarship by specialists in Coleridge and Romantic literature on the subject of his prose. They range from broad appraisals of Coleridge s own critical practises; demonstrations of the fecundity of his autobiography, the "Biographia Literaria, "for contemporaries; the effect of Milton and the radical polemicists of the English Civil War on Coleridge s early political and religious dissent; and the influence of the Hebrew prophetic tradition in his move away from the conjectural millenarianism of his youth towards...

First published in 1969, this book places Coleridge s literary criticism against the background of his philosophical thinking, examining his theories about criticism and the nature of poetry. Particular attention is paid to the structure of "Biographia Literaria, "Coleridge s distinction between Imagination and Fancy, his definitions of the poetic characters of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, his analysis of the mental state of audiences in theatres, and his interpretations of "Paradise Lost," " Hamlet "and Aeschylus " Prometheus. "The emphasis throughout is on how Coleridge thought rather...

First published in 1981, this study sees Wordsworth s work as part of the continuous European struggle to come to terms with consciousness. The author pays particular attention to Wordsworth s style and investigates the unstated and unconscious assumptions of that style. He discusses the conflicting feelings that shaped Wordsworth s changing conception of "The Recluse," offers a new interpretation of his classification of his poems and examines the meaning of one of his favourite images the panoramic view of a valley filled with mist. While the emphasis is on Wordsworth s greatness as a...

First published in 1982. In this study of Wordsworth s major poetry, the author explores the conflict between the poet s celebration of an impersonal earth and his concern for the most intensely personal relationships. The opening chapter concentrates on Wordsworth s struggle to describe the natural world and the extraordinary claims he makes for the natural landscape which are shown to derive not from vague mysticism but precisely articulated common sense. The close readings of "Michael, The Idiot Boy, Tintern Abbey" and "The Ruined Cottage," and poems as passages on solitaries are...

First published in 1979, this book provides thorough a guide through Coleridge s diverse body of work, looking not just his poetry but also his literary criticism and theories, plays, political journalism and theory, and writings on religion and philosophy. The author is careful to avoid emphasising one aspect of his work over another and consequently the whole emerges as a richer, more complete body of thought less esoteric and more concerned with the world. It challenges the notion of the damaged archangel, showing he was a successful playwright, long-standing contributor to one of the...

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 naive perpetrator of poetical blunders at the other and, the author argues, a far more exciting one. This book will be of interest to...