Wordsworth and Word-Preserving Arts : Typographic Inscription, Ekphrasis and Posterity in the Later Work

By looking at the later Wordsworth's ekphrastic writings about visual art and his increased awareness of the printed dimension of his work, and by relating these innovations to Wordsworth's sense that he was writing for posterity, Simonsen calls attention to what is uniquely exciting about this neglected body of work, and argues that it complicates traditional understandings of Wordsworth based on his so-called Great Decade. Did Wordsworth really become a poorer poet after 1807, as most readers since the Victorians have maintained? Wordsworth and Word-Preserving Arts reopens this central question, and is the first critical study to give serious and sustained attention to two central aspects of the poet's later work: his ekphrastic writings about visual art, and his increased awareness of the printed dimension of his work. Using insights from the developing fields of interart studies in ekphrasis and textual criticism, Peter Simonsen argues that these aspects reveal Wordsworth as a much more interesting - because much more enduringly active - artist than is commonly thought. By calling attention to what is uniquely exciting about the later Wordsworth, and by arguing that this complicates traditional understandings of the poet based on his so-called Great Decade, Wordsworth and Word-Preserving Arts proposes a fundamental revaluation not only of the central poet of British Romanticism, but of the entire literary movement Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 List of Figures......Page 9 Acknowledgements......Page 10 List of Abbreviations......Page 11 Introduction......Page 12 1 The Return of the Visible and Romantic Ekphrasis: Wordsworth in the Visual Art Culture of Romanticism......Page 23 2 Typographic Inscription: The Art of ‘Word-Preserving’ in Wordsworth’s Later Inscriptions......Page 49 3 ‘If Mine Had Been the Painter’s Hand’: Wordsworth’s Collaboration with Sir George Beaumont......Page 80 4 The Sonnet as Visual Poetry: Italics in ‘After-Thought’......Page 113 5 The Book of Ekphrasis: Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems......Page 137 6 ‘The Marble Index of a Mind’: Frontispiece Portraiture and the Image of Late Wordsworth......Page 170 Notes......Page 196 Select Bibliography......Page 221 G......Page 224 R......Page 225 W......Page 226 Featuring seven in-text illustrations, this book offers an original focus on Wordsworth's later career and his conscious use of engraving, typography, visual arts, etc