Reviews
This elegantly written book amounts to a defense of poetry... It is required reading in any case.
Generous, probing, and comprehensive.
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.
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.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Audition and Attachment
2. Close Encounters I
3. Close Encounters II
4. The Ethics of Things
5. Music versus Conscience
6. Captivation and Liberty in Poems on Music
7. The
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Audition and Attachment
2. Close Encounters I
3. Close Encounters II
4. The Ethics of Things
5. Music versus Conscience
6. Captivation and Liberty in Poems on Music
7. The Moral Sublime
8. Independence and Interdependence
9. Surviving Death
10. The Poetics of Life
Envoy
Notes
Works Cited
Index