Wordsworth and the Question of "romantic Religion"Bucknell University Press, 1996 - 182 sider This book draws on research in the psychology and sociology of religion to offer a reinterpretation of transcendent experiences, metaphysical concerns, and conflicting beliefs - the religious dimension - of some of Wordsworth's major poetry. Applying a novel interdisciplinary paradigm developed out of studies of religion, Nancy Easterlin suggests Wordsworth's work at times demonstrates a tendency to resolve conflicting beliefs and experiences through the formal and semantic unities of poetry. While analyses of the religiousness of romanticism are sometimes marred by an imprecise or shifting definition of the word religion, the method adopted by Easterlin encourages clarification of the issues and phenomena under discussion. Hence, she indicates at the outset that stable religious belief typically requires both a public and a private dimension, joining orthodox commitment and structure to private experiences of enlightenment. This definition of religion underlies the present interpretation and provides the basis for the author's assertion that the religious elements of Wordsworth's poetry are chronically problematical. For in the poetry, the private dimension of religious experience exists to the exclusion of systematic belief, and vice versa. Easterlin finally asserts that Wordsworth's poetical decline was the result of a conflict between the need for the certainties of orthodox faith and the naturalistic beliefs resulting from his personal experience and poetic explorations. Wordsworth's later Anglican faith is impersonal and unconvincing, for it rests on the ideal of mystical types of experience which for the poet had led to naturalistic faith and a discursive, speculative poetics. |
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Side 73
... offer both a more precise account of transcendent experience and a more expansive sense of it . This time , as I suggested in my earlier discussion of the second mystical passage , the partial reimagining of intellectual vision is both ...
... offer both a more precise account of transcendent experience and a more expansive sense of it . This time , as I suggested in my earlier discussion of the second mystical passage , the partial reimagining of intellectual vision is both ...
Side 76
... offer a single solution to the question of belief in " Tintern Abbey , " solutions Wordsworth himself , in this poem at least , ultimately rejects . When Wordsworth delivers his final benediction , the vestiges of the religion of nature ...
... offer a single solution to the question of belief in " Tintern Abbey , " solutions Wordsworth himself , in this poem at least , ultimately rejects . When Wordsworth delivers his final benediction , the vestiges of the religion of nature ...
Side 77
... offering a divine replace- ment for God , precludes the entire system on which such static concepts are founded . It is because this poem first acknowledges and addresses our yearnings for religious security and then refuses to offer ...
... offering a divine replace- ment for God , precludes the entire system on which such static concepts are founded . It is because this poem first acknowledges and addresses our yearnings for religious security and then refuses to offer ...
Innhold
Preface | 9 |
Intellectual Vision and SelfQualifying Structure | 49 |
SelfQualification and Naturalistic Monism in The Prelude | 78 |
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Abrams aesthetic ambiguous asserts behavior belief system blank verse Book Cambridge Christian church conception consciousness continuity contrast Cornell University Cornell University Press creative criticism culture describes Ecclesiastical Sonnets edited emotion ence Excursion explanation fact faith feeling forms Freud Freudian function Harold Bloom human identifies imagination individual institutional intellectual vision interpretation James knowledge language Leda Cosmides literary Lyrical Lyrical Ballads M. H. Abrams meaning meditation memory metaphor mind mode modern monism mutability mystical experience nature orthodox Oxford Panentheism paradoxical passage perception perspective philosophical poem poet poet's poetic points pragmatic Prelude psychoanalysis Psychology of Religion Ravine of Gondo reality relationship religious experience reprint rhetoric ritual romantic poetry Romanticism scene seems sense significance Simplon Pass Snowdon social soul specific spiritual structure sublime suggests theory Tintern Abbey tion tive traditional transcendent truth ultimately unity verse paragraph William Wordsworth Words Wordsworth Wordsworth's poetry worth's York