The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth

The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth
Author: Eliza Borkowska
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2020-11-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000264017

Called by one of its reviewers "Wordsworth’s biographia literaria," this book takes its reader on a fascinating journey into the mind of the poet whose attitude to God and religion points to a major shift in Western culture. The monograph probes the philosophical foundations of Wordsworth’s religious outlook, drawing attention to this First Generation Romantic poet as the author who happened to record in his verse the rise to prominence of some of the intellectual and spiritual challenges and the most troublesome uncertainties that have defined Western man ever since. The book constitutes a self-contained whole and can be read independently. Simultaneously, it creates an unusual duet with the companion volume, The Presence of God in the Works of William Wordsworth. These two works can be regarded as contraries—or negatives: one offering an ironically positive reading of Wordsworth’s religious discourse, the other offering a reading which is positively negative.

The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth

The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth
Author: Eliza Borkowska
Publisher: Routledge Studies in Romanticism
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-05
Genre: Religion in literature
ISBN: 9780367641368

Called by one of its reviewers "Wordsworth's biographia literaria," this book takes its reader on a fascinating journey into the mind of the poet whose attitude to God and religion points to a major shift in Western culture. The monograph probes the philosophical foundations of Wordsworth's religious outlook, drawing attention to this First Generation Romantic poet as the author who happened to record in his verse the rise to prominence of some of the intellectual and spiritual challenges and the most troublesome uncertainties that have defined Western man ever since. The book constitutes a self-contained whole and can be read independently. Simultaneously, it creates an unusual duet with the companion volume, The Presence of God in the Works of William Wordsworth. These two works can be regarded as contraries--or negatives: one offering an ironically positive reading of Wordsworth's religious discourse, the other offering a reading which is positively negative.

Robert Pollok’s The Course of Time and Literary Theodicy in the Romantic Age

Robert Pollok’s The Course of Time and Literary Theodicy in the Romantic Age
Author: Deryl Davis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2023-11-17
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 1000993744

This book explores the contexts and reception history of Robert Pollok’s religious epic The Course of Time (1827), one of the best- selling long poems of the nineteenth century, which has been almost entirely forgotten today. Widely read in the United States and across the British Empire, the poem’s combination of evangelical Calvinism, High Romanticism, and native Scottishness proved irresistible to many readers. This monograph traces the poem’s origins as a defense of Biblical authority, divine providence, and religious orthodoxy (against figures like Byron and Joseph Priestley) and explores the reasons for The Course of Time’s enormous, decades- long popularity and later precipitous decline. A close reading of the poem and an examination of its reception history offers readers important insights into the dynamic relationship between religion and wider culture in the nineteenth century, the uses of literature as a vehicle for theological argument and theodicy, and the important but often overlooked role that religion played in literary— and, particularly, Scottish— Romanticism. This work will appeal to scholars of religious history, literary history, Evangelicalism, Romanticism, Scottish literature, and nineteenth- century culture.

Romantic Prayer

Romantic Prayer
Author: Christopher Stokes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192599658

Whilst religion and the secular have been continually debated contexts for literature of the Romantic era, the dominant scholarly focus has been on doctrines and denominations. In analysing the motif of devotion, Romantic Prayer shifts attention to the quintessential articulation of religion as lived experience, as practice, and as a performative rather than descriptive phenomenon. In an era when the tenability and rationality of prayer was much contested, poetry—a form with its own interlinked history with prayer—was a unique place to register what prayer meant in modernity. This study illustrates how the discourse of prayer continually intervened in the way that poetic practices evolved and responded to the religious and secular questions of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century moment. After laying out the details of prayer's historical position in the Romantic era across a spread of religious traditions, Romantic Prayer turns to a range of writers, from the identifiably religious to the staunchly sceptical. William Cowper and Anna Letitia Barbauld are shown to use poetry to reflect and reinvent the ideals of prayer inherited from their own denominational histories. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's work is analysed as part of a long engagement with the rationality of prayer, culminating in an explicit 'philosophy' of prayer; William Wordsworth—by contrast—keeps prayer at an aesthetic distance, continually alluding to prayerful language but rarely committing to devotional voice itself. John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron are treated in the context of departing from Christianity, under the influence of Enlightenment, materialist, and atheist critiques—what happens to prayer in poetry when prayer as a language traditionally conceived is becoming impossible to maintain?

Study Guide to the Major Poetry of William Wordsworth

Study Guide to the Major Poetry of William Wordsworth
Author: Intelligent Education
Publisher: Influence Publishers
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-09-26
Genre: Study Aids
ISBN: 1645424758

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by William Wordsworth, who began the Romantic Age for English literature with his joint publication of Lyrical Ballads alongside Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Titles in this study guide include The Reverie Of Poor Susan, We Are Seven, The Thorn, Simon Lee, Lines Written In Early Spring, To My Sister, Expostulation And Reply, The Tables Turned, Strange Fits Of Passion Have I Known, and She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways. As a poet of the Georgian Era, William Wordsworth wrote in contrast to most, advocating for the vocabulary and speech patterns of the common people. Moreover, his work is placed at the center of the human experience and focused on the understanding of human nature. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Willam Wordsworth’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary

The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary
Author: Kristin Flieger Samuelian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100038778X

The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary explores ways in which England in the Romantic period conceptualized its relation both to its constituent parts within the United Kingdom and to the larger world through discussions of dance, dancing, and dancers, and through theories of dance and performance. As a referent that both engaged and constructed the body—through physical training, anatomization, spectacle and spectatorship, pathology, parody, and sentiment—dance worked to produce an English exceptional body. Discussions of dance in fiction and periodical essays, as well as its visual representation in print culture, were important ways to theorize points of contact as England was investing itself in the world as an economic and imperial power during and after the Revolutionary period. These formulations offer dance as an engine for the reconfiguration of gender, class, and national identity in the print culture of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England.

A Companion to William Wordsworth

A Companion to William Wordsworth
Author: Sunil Kumar Sarker
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2003
Genre: English poetry
ISBN: 9788126902521

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.