Title: The Lucy poems : a case study in literary knowledge /
Authors: Jones, Mark, 1957-
Publisher: Buffalo : University of Toronto Press,
Year: 1995
Subjects: Wordsworth, William, Criticism and interpretation History.; Wordsworth, William, Characters Lucy.; Elegiac poetry, English History and criticism.; Women in literature; Death in literature.; Grief in literature.; Lucy (Fictitious character : Wordsworth)
Abstract: Though Wordsworth's 'Lucy Poems' are among the best-known lyric sequences in English, they did not exist as such in his day. 'Strange fits of passion have I known'; 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways'; 'I travelled among unknown men'; 'Three years she grew in sun and shower'; and 'A slumber did my spirit seal' were first gathered as 'Lucy Poems' by Victorian critics and editors shortly after Wordsworth's death. Mark Jones argues that the 'Lucy' grouping first took form as a simplification of Wordsworth's text, and that its persistence in modern criticism reflects primarily the literature institution's will to knowledge. Problematic in themselves and in their editorial history, the 'Lucy Poems' provide an excellent focus for a case-history in the modes of 'practical' criticism since 1800.
Contents: 1. 'Mysterious Silence': The 'Lucy Poems' as Provocations. 1. The 'Lucy Poems'? Wordsworth's Quasi-Grouping. 2. Poetic Dishabille: The Art of Disorder in Wordsworth's Corpus. 3. The Lyrics Apart: The Toils of Simplicity -- 2. Reading against Uncertainty: Nineteenth-Century Closures. 1. Criticism in Contexts. 2. 'Lucy Poems' Criticism and the Anxiety of Uncertainty. 3. Gathering Lucy. 4. Tales of Lucy: The Narratization of Lyric -- 3. Parody and Closural Criticism. 1. Parody of Interpretation/Parody as Anti-Interpretism. 2. Definition and Anti-Definition: Generic Indistinctness as Subversion. 3. Scholarly Containments: Parody as Communication in Anthology and Theory. 4. 'Two Voices are there': Parody's Self-Containment and Escape. 5. Parody, Alias Novelistic Allusion -- 4. Proving Grounds: Modern 'Theory' Polemics and the Use of 'A slumber'. 1. E.D. Hirsch, Jr, versus Relativism. 2. Objective Interpretation's Fine-Tuning. 3. Relativist Determinations -- 5. Lucy's Modern Meanings. 1. A Question of 'Nature'. 2. Nature and Symbol. 3. Nature as Traitor: Disenchantment Readings. 4. Deconstruction: The Nature of Language. 5. The Actual and Significant Lucy. 6. Conclusion: Objective Resistance and Critical Self-Discipline.