Andrew Bennett challenges the popular conception of Wordsworth as a writer who didn't so much write poetry as compose it aloud or in his head (usually while walking, and preferably while ascending mountains). The act and idea of writing is in fact central to the themes and to the rhetorical texture of Wordsworth's poetry. This wide-ranging study considers various aspects of Wordsworth's compositional practice, including questions of revision and dictation, of monumental inscription and graffiti, of talking and thinking, and of the poet's own theory of composition, and examines the implications of a critical tradition that erroneously assumes that Wordsworth employed exclusively 'oral' modes of composition. For Wordsworth, acts of writing were important dimensions of his poetry and indeed of his sense of personal and poetic identity. Bennett contends that a sustained attention to the question of writing in Wordsworth produces compelling readings of the major poems.

Bennett's analysis of the act and idea of writing produces provocative readings of the major poems.
Reviews
"Wordsworth Writing signals a new and invigorating direction for Wordsworth studies and studies in Romanticism...Wordsworth Writing should be considered a touchstone for Wordsworth studies in the twenty-first century." -Brian Bates, Romantic Circles
"Intriguing, specific criticism that takes its time with the readings, and opens out new critical possibilities....this is a provocative work that makes us think again about familiar material, and which thereby opens up the possibilities of new grounds for critical debate." -Jonathan Roberts, The Review of English Studies
"Andrew Bennett's book, with its intelligent interweaving of French deconstructive theory and thoroughly British empirical scholarship potentially offers a new way forward, not only for Wordsworth, but for Romanticism... It is to be hoped that his book marks a turn in Wordsworth studies and that, in the same year as the first long phase of major editorial effort finally came to an end (with the completion of the Cornell series), a second phase of full critical and theoretical analysis of those materials has begun." -Sally Bushell, Romanticism
"Bennett implicitly raises significant questions about the poet's psyche...we glimpse new understandings of the possible workings of Wordsworth's brave but brooding soul." -Beth Darlington, Journal of British Studies
"The whole book is carried off with the dark charisma that distinguishes the best examples of the deconstructive method; and its appearance in the Cambridge series feels quietly momentous... it is good to read something that goes about things differently - and which grows, too, from so shrewd and keen an attention to the perplexed vitality of Wordsworth's language" - -Seamus Perry, The Wordsworth Circle



Book Information
ISBN 9780521181419
Author Andrew Bennett
Format Paperback
Page Count 268
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 400g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 15mm