The Confessional Imagination: A Reading of Wordsworth's Prelude - Couverture souple

McConnell, Frank D. D.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1421435543 ISBN 13 : 9781421435541

Editeur : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Originally published in 1974. This book concerns the archetypal quality of Wordsworth's The Prelude, specifically the ways in which it develops and defines concepts of language, time, and narrative that influenced writers who came after Wordsworth. Frank D. McConnell sees the philosopher and theologian St. Augustine as the most suggestive analogue for the Wordsworthian quest for lost time and for the redemptive power of memory. McConnell maps similarities and dissimilarities between Wordsworth's Prelude and Augustine's Confessions. Each chapter of the book centers on an aspect of Wordsworth's confessional procedure in writing the poem. Chapter 1 ascribes peculiarities in the mode of address to The Prelude's definitive auditor, Coleridge, as a felt presence that shapes the overall form of the poem. Chapter 2 discusses the confessional—and Wordsworthian—view of the human career, contrasting the holistic and organic ideal of man's development with a more ancient and allegorical, or daemonic, view against which the confessional vision struggles. Chapter 3 carries the argument to the more fundamental level of the senses of sight and hearing. And chapter 4 deals with language itself, the irreducible counters of Wordsworth's vision and the highly specialized confessional language of "Edenic words." The general direction of the author's reading is a narrowing of focus from the most general to the most specific features of the confessional act.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Frank D. McConnell was a professor of English at University of California, Santa Barbara. Before 1982, McConnell taught at Northwestern University and Cornell University. He was a Guggenheim fellow, a chair of the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury, and a Fulbright professor in Germany.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Date d'édition: 2019
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1421435543
• ISBN 13: 9781421435541
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 226
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible