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Wordsworth's Ethics

Adam Potkay author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press

Published:4th Dec '12

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Wordsworth's Ethics cover

An extremely intelligent, scholarly, and humane study of Wordsworth's poetry. -- Seamus Perry, Balliol College All students of Romanticism as well as those of literature and moral philosophy will want to read this book, both for what it teaches and for the extraordinary erudition it models and shares. -- William Galperin, Rutgers University

The book will appeal to readers interested in the vital connection between literature and moral philosophy.Why read, Wordsworth's poetry - indeed, why read poetry at all? Beyond any pleasure it might give, can it make one a better or more flourishing person? These questions were never far from William Wordsworth's thoughts. He responded in rich and varied ways, in verse and in prose, in both well-known and more obscure writings. "Wordsworth's Ethics" is a comprehensive examination of the Romantic poet's work, delving into his desire to understand the source and scope of our ethical obligations. Adam Potkay finds that Wordsworth consistently rejects the kind of impersonal utilitarianism that was espoused by his contemporaries James Mill and Jeremy Bentham in favor of a view of ethics founded in relationships with particular persons and things. The discussion proceeds chronologically through Wordsworth's career as a writer - from his juvenilia through his poems of the 1830s and '40s - providing a valuable introduction to the poet's work. The book will appeal to readers interested in the vital connection between literature and moral philosophy.

This elegantly written book amounts to a defense of poetry... It is required reading in any case. Choice Generous, probing, and comprehensive. Wordsworth Circle Wordsworth's Ethics is a nuanced and carefully argued book that will command attention and respect from all romanticists... It is a great virtue of Potkay's book that without excessive reliance on the intentional fallacy, and with compelling new insights about important passages we thought we knew, its author is able to outline a system of thought that Wordsworth would almost certainly have endorsed. Modern Philology It is both a fine exposition of the workings of Wordsworth's verse, and a stirring defense of poetry, in an age in which the value of the humanities themselves is constantly being challenged. Cercles

ISBN: 9781421407081

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 23mm

Weight: 499g

272 pages