Wordsworth and the Passions of Critical Poetics [Hardcover]

This scholarly study presents a new political Wordsworth: an artist interested in 'autonomous' poetry's redistribution of affect. No slave of Whig ideology, Wordsworth explores emotion for its generation of human experience and meaning. He renders poetry a critical instrument that, through acute feeling, can evaluate public and private life.Introduction: Poetry, Feeling and Criticism Shaftesbury, Wordsworth and Affective Critique? Burke, Wordsworth and the Poet? Poetry and the Liberty of Feeling? Wordsworth's Ear and the Place of Aesthetic Autonomy? Poetry and Embodiment? Melancholy and Affirmation Conclusion

Wordsworth's push and pull through emotional turbulence to conciliatory consciousness, alienation into affection, is sharply explored by Allen throughout the study and his simultaneous focus on the aesthetic, political, affective and material through both historical philosophy and modern theory keeps the book lively and percipient throughout. - Emma Mason, Warwick University, UK