Wordsworth's Ethics

A comprehensive examination that breathes new life into Wordsworth and the ethical concerns that were vital to his nineteenth-century readers.

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.

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Wordsworth's Ethics

A comprehensive examination that breathes new life into Wordsworth and the ethical concerns that were vital to his nineteenth-century readers.

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.

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Wordsworth's Ethics

Wordsworth's Ethics

by Adam Potkay
Wordsworth's Ethics

Wordsworth's Ethics

by Adam Potkay

eBook

$32.00 

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Overview

A comprehensive examination that breathes new life into Wordsworth and the ethical concerns that were vital to his nineteenth-century readers.

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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781421407586
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 11/01/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 745 KB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Adam Potkay is the William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of The Story of Joy from the Bible to Late Romanticism, winner of the Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association.

Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

William Galperin

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.

Seamus Perry

An extremely intelligent, scholarly, and humane study of Wordsworth’s poetry.

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