William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation by David Haney

William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation by David Haney

Recent critics view Wordsworth's incarnational rhetoric as the expression of an unfulfilled desire for representational adequacy. David Haney, however, argues that Wordsworth's interpretation of the Christian concept of incarnation engages historical contingency and mortality by emphasizing the translation of spirit into mortal, historical humanity. The incarnational analogy also provides an important locus for Romantic thought about the tension between the inherited Enlightenment epistemology based on instrumental reason in the service of representation and the desire for an alternative that would restore an ethical dimension to thought. Haney concentrates not only on familiar Wordsworthian texts such as The Prelude but also on less frequently read texts such as The Excursion. Beyond revising earlier interpretations of Wordsworth, Haney presents an alternative to the deconstructive and new-historicist interpretive models that have dominated recent criticism and explores the relationship between theoretical and literary meaning. Drawing on theoreticians such as Hans Gadamer, Charles Taylor, Emmanuel Levinas, and Stanley Cavell, Haney shows how Wordsworth's incarnational rhetoric cuts across the boundaries of poetry, philosophy, and theology, faces up to the violence and historical contingency that Romanticism is often accused of evading, and also develops out of that chaos a model for the production of meaning. William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation thus contributes to the dialogue between literature and philosophy, demonstrating the possibility of fruitful interaction between the competing hermeneutic and deconstructive heirs of Heidegger and recovering the depth and complexity of Wordsworth's incarnational thought in its philosophical, theological, and literary context.

“This is an important contribution to romanticism and literary theory”

—Donald G. Marshall, University of Illinois at Chicago

David P. Haney is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780271026411
ISBN 10	0271026413
Title	William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation
Author	David Haney
Series	Literature And Philosophy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Pennsylvania State University Press
Year published	1993-09-15
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.