Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-222) and index.
Contents:
Introduction -- 1. The death zone: Wordsworth, Scott and Davy on Helvellyn -- 2. Chronicle of a death untold: Wordsworth's 'Epistle to Sir George Beaumont' -- 3. Wordsworth in homage: eligising the lyrical ballad -- 4. Worldsworth at sea: lockdown and lunacy in two poems from the 1830s -- 5. Dementia poetics in Wordsworth's late memorials -- 6. Wordsworth's bardic vacation: involing the spiritual in the age of steam -- 7. Hybrids, hermits and hut dwellers: late lyrical ballads -- 8. An aged man writes about an aged man: Wordsworth's last poems and the new Poor Law.
Summary:
"Experimentalism in Wordsworth's Later Poetry Tim Fulford provides detailed readings of a range of little-known, late and difficult poems which together present an alternative Wordsworth to the one we are used to. This newly-revealed Wordsworth continued experimenting with form, genre and style as his career progressed so as to ponder the challenging experiences presented by later life. Fulford invites the reader to engage, through Wordsworth's poetry, with such broadly-felt concerns as quarantine, isolation, mental illness and bereavement. Focused yet broad in chronological scope, this study also considers the literature of Wordsworth's old age in relation to his earlier work. Tim Fulford is the author of many books and articles on the literature and history of the Romantic Period (1780-1840), and is the editor of The New Cambridge Companion to Coleridge (2022). His monograph Wordsworth's Poetry 1815-45 (2019) won the Robert Penn Warren/Cleanth Brooks Award for Literary Scholarship 2020. His edition The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy (co-edited with Sharon Ruston) (2020) won an honourable mention in the MLA biennial Morton N. Cohen Award For A Distinguished Edition Of Letters"-- Provided by publisher. Tim Fulford provides detailed readings of a range of little-known, late and difficult poems which together present an alternative Wordsworth to the one we are used to. This newly-revealed Wordsworth continued experimenting with form, genre and style as his career progressed so as to ponder the challenging experiences presented by later life. Fulford invites the reader to engage, through Wordsworth's poetry, with such broadly-felt concerns as quarantine, isolation, mental illness and bereavement. Focused yet broad in chronological scope, this study also considers the literature of Wordsworth's old age in relation to his earlier work.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.