Wordsworth's Biblical Ghosts

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XI

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 5-26

3. The Word As Borderer

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 27-48

4. The Word as Borderer

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 49-78

5. How Awesome is this Place!

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 79-97

6. Wordsworth’s Prodigal Son

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 99-121

7. Wordsworth’s Song of Songs

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 123-143

8. Wordsworthian Apocalyptics

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 145-175

9. Wordsworthian Apocalyptics in Which Nothing Is Revealed

   • Deeanne Westbrook

   Pages 177-207

10. Back Matter

    Pages 209-244

    PDF

The Bible serves Wordsworth as a basis for his poetry and poetics, providing language, images, figures, and importantly, a paradigm of poetic genres. Working from three interrelated critical approaches - intertextuality, poetics, and metaphysics - Westbrook first analyzes Wordsworth's theory and practice as these reflect the New Testament doctrine of the Incarnation. Subsequent chapters consider Wordsworth's adaptation of biblical narrative forms - etymological tales, parables, and mystical allegories. Closing chapters examine some extraordinary linguistic innovations in Wordsworth's revisions of biblical apocalypse, techniques that permit the poet to express the ineffable and to reveal nothing.

• poem
• poet
• poetics
• poetry
• William Wordsworth
• Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'...a rich and rewarding study of Wordworth's art, carefully situated within established scholarship...' - Laura Dabundo, The Wordsworth Circle

DEANE WESTBROOK is Professor of English at Portland State University where she teaches courses in British romanticism, poetry, criticism, mythology, biblical literature, baseball and myth, nineteenth-century studies, and classical Greek civilization. Her published works include articles on Genesis, northern European mythology, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and a book, Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth.

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