The later poetry of William Wordsworth, popular in his lifetime and influential on the Victorians, has, with a few exceptions, received little attention from contemporary literary critics. In
Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1815-1845, Tim Fulford argues that the later work reveals a mature poet far more varied and surprising than is often acknowledged. Examining the most characteristic poems in their historical contexts, he shows Wordsworth probing the experiences and perspectives of later life and innovating formally and stylistically. He demonstrates how Wordsworth modified his writing in light of conversations with younger poets and learned to acknowledge his debt to women in ways he could not as a young man. The older Wordsworth emerges in Fulford’s depiction as a love poet of companionate tenderness rather than passionate lament. He also appears as a political poet—bitter at capitalist exploitation and at a society in which vanity is rewarded while poverty is blamed. Most notably, he stands out as a history poet more probing and more clear-sighted than any of his time in his understanding of the responsibilities and temptations of all who try to memorialize the past.
Table of Content
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I. PRODUCING A POET FOR THE PUBLIC
Chapter 1. Learning to Be a Poet of Imagination: Wordsworth and the Ghost of Cowper
Chapter 2. The Politics of Landscape and the Poetics of Patronage: Collecting Coleorton
PART II. SPOTS OF SPACE: MATERIALIZING MEMORY
Chapter 3. Memoirs of Scott-land, 1814-33
Chapter 4. Textual Strata and Geological Form: The Scriptorium and the Cave
PART III. THE POLITICS OF DICTION
Chapter 5. The Erotics of Influence: Wordsworth as Byron and Keats
Chapter 6. Wordsworth and Ebenezer Elliott: Radicalism Renewed
PART IV. LATE GENRES
Chapter 7. Narrow Cells and Stone Circles: Sonnet Form and Spiritual History
Chapter 8. Evanescence and After-Effect: The Evening Voluntaries
Coda. Elegiac Musing and Generic Mixing
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
About the author
Tim Fulford is Professor of English at De Montfort University. He is author of many books, including The Late Poetry of the Lake Poets: Romanticism Revised and Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries: The Dialect of the Tribe. He is coeditor of Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1811-38 and the online publication The Collected Letters of Robert Southey.
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