Understanding 'The Prelude'

Description

The essays in this book meditate deeply on Wordsworth's own theory of literature, and probe into questions that few critics have bothered to ask, yet which, when asked, seem very central indeed. Topics treated include The Sublime and the Beautiful; Literary Echoes in The Prelude; Wordsworth's Aesthetics of Landscape; Wordsworth's Imaginations; The Fancy;' The Poetry of Nature'; sight as' The Most Despotic of our Senses'; the Snowdon vision and 'The descent from Snowdon'; ' A Sense of the Infinite'.

Author

W. J. B. Owen is best known for his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1957), his three volume edition of The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (with Jane Smyser, 1974), Wordsworth as Critic (1969), Wordsworth's Literary Criticism (1974) and his edition of The Fourteen-Book Prelude for the Cornell Wordsworth (1985).