Oh dear, I really am having second thoughts about saying what I am going to say below. Yes, as Peter says, we've been here, but...
Let's forget Wordsworth a moment. What i find in Jeffrey Side's thoughts is a genuine attempt to eek out some basics with regard to the 'split'. By doing this he gets up the noses of folk on both sides of the split, including of course those who don't think there really is a 'split' or that if there is it is a minor thing that doesn't really matter in the long run. Jeffrey's questions have relevance to my own concerns in this area - the difference being that he is a lot more daring and forthright in his targets. He delves into things in a way that invites those entangling knots that form in this kind of discussion about poetry, which then get pulled tighter and tighter.
I think that what he has to say about Wordsworth is important, but only if you share his view that there is a dichotomy and that it is relevant. If you don't share those views then don't argue with him, because then you will both be on a hiding to nothing (as we have seen before). Someone who actually shares his view that there is a problem and that it is relevant can then look objectively at what he says about Wordsworth.
Cheers
Tim
On 3 Jul 2015, at 20:12, Peter Riley wrote:
> It's good that a discussion is taking place here after so long, but it's one we've had before. I remember at least twelve years ago trying to persuade Jeff that his view of Wordsworth as the source of all that's wrong with modern poetry just didn't make sense, but I got nowhere. I wouldn't want to try it again.
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> PR
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> On 3 Jul 2015, at 19:13, Jeffrey Side wrote:
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> Gerard, but if you notice you will see that this extract belies what he is saying in it. The text itself is more or less a description of his thoughts regarding his advocacy of the imagination as a means to inspire his verse. It is not in itself a demonstration or application of the imagination in poetic form. It is a sort mimesis of his thought processes, and so could be said to be empiricist in the same way as mimesis of nature is.
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> Or to extend this slightly, he generally sees phenomena as a veil that hides a superior reality normally imperceptible to us. So in this sense, his descriptions of his thought processes about this “reality” could also be said to mimetic—but of the “unseen”
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> -----------------------previous post------------------------------------------------
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> Jeffrey
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> I'm more than doubtful that 'It can be demonstrated that Wordsworth's poetry relies too consistently upon a descriptive realist aesthetic derived from empiricist beliefs about subject/object relationships.'
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> Imagination -- lifting up itself
> Before the eye and progress of my song
> Like an unfathered vapour, here that power,
> In all the might of its endowments, came
> Athwart me! I was lost as in a cloud,
> halted without a struggle to break through;
> And now, recovering, to my soul I say,
> 'I recognise thy glory.'
> Prelude VI
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> Gerard
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> Gerard Greenway, editor
> Angelaki journal of the theoretical humanities
> www.facebook.com/AngelakiJTH
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