Centring the Self: Subjectivity, Society, and Reading from Thomas Gray to Thomas HardyThese essays focus primarily on the theme of selfhood and subjective experience in the poetry of the British Romantic period, and in the later poetry and novels that were its legacy. There are chapters on Gray, Cowper, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hardy and George Eliot - writers who, though often having a strong interest in public affairs, all turned inwards to make trial of imagination and the individual life as sources of order and value against a background of cultural unsettlement. The book moves from the emergence of post-Enlightenment psychological man to the proto-modernist preoccupation with the self as construct in Byron and Hardy. |
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Page 83
... spirit with the Spirit of Nature on Snowdon , or , on a smaller scale , the potentially terminal release of apocalyptic imaginings in ' Resolution and Independence ' supplies the impulse towards stabilizing thoughts about the future ...
... spirit with the Spirit of Nature on Snowdon , or , on a smaller scale , the potentially terminal release of apocalyptic imaginings in ' Resolution and Independence ' supplies the impulse towards stabilizing thoughts about the future ...
Page 182
... spirit's flights of fire . Harold could people the stars with ' beings bright ' , forgetting ' earth - born jars ' and ' human frailties ' , but thus falls victim to an inevitable reversal : Could he have kept his spirit to that flight ...
... spirit's flights of fire . Harold could people the stars with ' beings bright ' , forgetting ' earth - born jars ' and ' human frailties ' , but thus falls victim to an inevitable reversal : Could he have kept his spirit to that flight ...
Page 202
... Spirit and of the Divine , and in the act of realization is inscribed the impossibility of entering that realm , leaving the earthly and its circumscriptions behind . We are reminded of the stanza near the beginning of Canto III , where ...
... Spirit and of the Divine , and in the act of realization is inscribed the impossibility of entering that realm , leaving the earthly and its circumscriptions behind . We are reminded of the stanza near the beginning of Canto III , where ...
Contents
William Cowper and the Condition of England | 19 |
Cowpers The Castaway | 33 |
Wordsworth Bunyan and the Puritan Mind | 69 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
Adonais Alastor Apollo Arabella beauty becomes Bunyan Byron Canto Castaway Chapter Childe Harold Christminster Coleridge's consciousness course Cowper creative Critical dark death desire despair destiny divine Donald Davie drama dream edition Elegy emotional Endymion English Essays eternal event example existence experience expression faith favour feeling Gray's Hardy Hardy's heart hope human hymns Hyperion idea ideal imagination interpretation John Keats Jude Jude the Obscure Jude's Julian and Maddalo Keats Keats's Letters and Prose living London Lonsdale Lyrical Lyrical Ballads maniac mariner Mary Shelley McGann meaning meditation mind narrative nature Nature's Olney hymns perception Pilgrim's Progress poem poet poet's poetic poetry political Prelude present psychodrama psychological Puritan Queen Mab reader reading reference Romantic sense Shelley Shelley's soul spirit stanza suffering thee theme things Thomas Gray thou thought Tintern Abbey transcendence truth universe verse vision William Cowper words Wordsworth