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Annotated Bibliography

Primary

Heath, William, ed. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York, NY: Macmillan; Toronto, ON:

Collier-Macmillan, Rpt. 1973. A collection of selected poetry and prose of six major British poets

of the early nineteenth century in chronological order: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,

Shelley and Keats. The editor selected earlier editions of the works, after having corrected

certain printing and misleading errors, whilst retaining the original spelling and punctuation of

the authors’. He does so to avoid losing the rhythm of the original work, thus providing a closer

look at the poets’ workings of the imagination, contextual to its development. [Not held in the

Durham library collections]

Plotinus. Enneads. Trans. Stephen Mackenna and B. S. Page. 250 ACE. Evans Experimentalism. Ed. Jud

Evans. 1999. 5 Dec 2008 < http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/plotinus01.htm >. A

detailed account of Plotinus’s philosophical treatise as collected and edited by his student

Porphyry. It has come to form the foundation of Neo-Platonism, ushering in a complex idea of

the spiritual cosmos, its relation to sense perception and knowledge, and most importantly, the

mind. The power of the mind and its active involvement in the spiritual cosmos provides a

philosophical background for certain key Wordsworthean elements. [Not held in Durham library

collections]

Secondary

Davies, Paul. Romanticism & Esoteric Tradition. Studies in Imagination. Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne, 1998. A

critical book that liberates itself from a linear perspective of the use of Neo-Platonic, or even

Platonic, philosophy in Romanticism. It focuses, as the title suggests, on the ‘esoteric’ nature of
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romanticism, providing very fluid movement between literary theories of the romantic poet’s

consciousness and of his relation to the outside world. In that sense it breaks free from any

limitations either theory places on either subject, giving more room for making a deeper

connection between Romanticism and Neo-Platonism. [Not held in Durham library collections]

Durrant, Geoffrey. Wordsworth and the Great System: A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetic Universe.

London: Cambridge UP, 1970. Durrant offers an in-depth study of some of Wordsworth’s poems,

such as ‘Tintern Abbey’ and ‘Daffodils’. He, however, manages to trace the creative

development of Wordsworth’s poetical universe by placing his study of particular poems in a

universal framework. He provides more than a serialization of Wordsworth’s imaginative

journeys by giving us a more integrated view of metaphysical progression in Wordsworth’s

poetry. [DUL 827.5 WOR/DUR]

Foakes, R. A. The Romantic Assertion: A Study in the Language of Nineteenth Century Poetry. London:

Methuen, 1958. Foakes provides a more historical-cultural context to the literary movement of

Romanticism, and its strong focus on an inner consciousness achieved through self-intuition.

Although the reasons behind the stimulus for the movement prove to be of a more material

nature, it is this absence of the metaphysical that highlights the metaphysical nature of the

poet’s task of achieving that environment. From this perspective, Foakes spiritualizes the role of

the material background of the poet’s consciousness, which is helpful in giving a philosophical

understanding of the poetry even in connection with material elements. [DUL 820.82 FOA]

Grob, Alan. The Philosophic Mind: A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetry and Thought 1797-1805. Columbus,

OH: Ohio State UP, 1973. Grob takes a philosophical structure of mind, sense impressions, and

the external world, and further elaborates it in the context of Wordsworth’s use of that

structure. Rather than a Lockean categorization of sensation, one can detect a pulsating current,
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in Wordsworth’s sensationalism, between the mind and the external world, which signals to a

power beyond either existence. In other words, it gives the process of sensation an ontological

existence, which draws a parallel with the infinite nature of creativity and contemplation in

Plotinus’s philosophy. [DUL 827.5 WOR/GRO]

Hall, Jean. A Mind That Feeds Upon Infinity: The Deep Self in English Romantic Poetry. Rutherford, NJ:

Assoc. U Presses, 1991. The third chapter titled ‘Wordsworth: The Meditating Self’, looks at the

phases of development in the state of the self in Wordsworth’s poetry. It discusses how it needs

to move from a physically active-mentally passive state to a physically passive-mentally active

one, the movement being placed naturally in sync with chronological progression, for the

individual’s self to be ‘activated’ into being. This correlates with Plotinus’s idea of emanations,

how man falls into mental inactivity as he progresses into the physical world, but then yearns

towards the source of his being through mental activity. [DUL 820.82 HAL]

Hill, John Spencer, ed. The Romantic Imagination. Casebook Series. New York, NY: Palgrave-Macmillan,

1977. This collection of essays covers the role and nature of imagination in Wordsworth’s

poetry, among other poets. Of particular interest are Heffernan’s and Wellek’s essays that focus

respectively on the separation between the human mind and Divine Mind, and the unification of

that division in Wordsworth’s poetry. Both perspectives on the romantic imaginative bring forth

the Neo-Platonic nature of creative powers in Wordsworth’s use of the imagination. [DUL

820.82 HIL]

Jamil, Tahir. Transcendentalism in English Romantic Poetry. New York, NY: Vantage P, 1989. The section

on William Wordsworth, presents the arguments of literary critics that have tried to describe

Wordsworth as falling into our out of the domain of philosophy, or one particular school of

philosophy. Jamil however presents certain ideas that raise Wordsworth above any formalized
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school of philosophy, whereupon he is said to have coined a transcendental structure of his own

that, beyond any impulse at philosophizing, is a simple, natural, response to the cadences of his

poetic self. This perspective is in concordance with Plotinus’s philosophy that, despite its formal

structure, does not enslave itself to any categories but rather only provides awareness to

esoteric processes natural to man’s spiritual development. [DUL 820.82 JAM]

Kabitoglou, E. Douka. Plato and the English Romantics: διάλογοι. London: Routledge, 1990. The

application of the Platonic framework on Wordsworth’s poetry denies the singularity of

existence, this denial being one of the natural outcomes of Neo-Platonic theory as well. It

focuses on the multiplicity of existence with the idea of unification and unity constantly

embracing it at all times. This idea of polarity and unification, and the retaining of these

oppositions, is integral to the Plotinian concept of the Infinite ‘One’ spilling over into the

Intellectual-Principle and the Soul, with multiple existents actively being unified within that state

of multiplicity. [DUL 820.82 KAB]

Moore, Edward. “Plotinus (204-270 C.E)”. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. James Fieser and

Bradley Dowden. 2007. 5 Dec 2008. < http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/plotinus.htm >. Moore

expounds Plotinus’s philosophy which is very complex in its description of the different

hypostases and the active relationship between each hypostasis. He tries to explain concepts

that seem to be outside the sphere of human understanding but by using more active concepts

like ‘potentiality of existence’ and ‘productive contemplative power’, he allows the reader of

Plotinus to shed the limitations of language and thought. As a result, the reader does not need

to provide a formal body to his or her thought but to assent to Neo-Platonic abstractions, made

more intelligible to us through the semantic framework provided in this article. [Not held in the

Durham library collections]

Piper, H. W. The Active Universe: Pantheism and the Concept of Imagination in the English Romantic

Poets. London: Athlone P; New York, NY: Oxford UP, 1962. This book allows us to envision the

separate worlds in the Romantic philosophy, the nature of the worlds, and the embodiment of

an alternating existence in man as a response to these alternate worlds. The ‘Two Universes’,

the first chapter of the book, ties in these different stations into the larger divine existence that

they emanate from, as a result, bringing a degree of divinity to these worlds, giving us the

familiar and popular notion in this genre of pantheism. This pantheism however is present not

only in a singular circuit, that the divine is in all things, but also traced in the circuit back, that all

things partake of the divine, which places it in the Neo-Platonic paradigm. [DUL 820.82 PIP]

Pistorius, Philippus Villiers. Plotinus and Neoplatonism: An Introductory Study. Cambridge: Bowes, 1952.

Pistorius structures Plotinus’s philosophy, not entirely in the format it was written in, but by

quoting from passages across the expanse of the Enneads that refer to specific concepts. By

doing so he is able to keep the focus of the reader on a concept long enough for them to absorb

the entire metaphysical schema at work behind it as he or she progresses through the Enneads.

This naturally allows more room in drawing parallels across disciplines since, as is the case

especially in Wordsworth’s poetry, the point of similarity is mostly through metaphysical

schema rather than vague ideas about concepts. [DUL 186.4 PLO/PIS]

Vogler, Thomas A. Preludes to Vision: The Epic Venture in Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, and Hart Crane.

Berkley, CA: U of California P, 1971. In focusing on the epic elements of the poets mentioned in

the title, Vogler outlines one of the central aspects of epic as the constant struggle of the

individual to discover himself in a moment of ‘visionary gleam’. By challenging oneself in a

Sisyphian mode of existence, where one dangles between hope and sheer inevitability of the

impossibility of an existence, the poet discovers himself precisely in this absurd situation. This
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struggle has its parallel in Neo-Platonic philosophy where the struggle to be one with the ‘One’

through an activation of individual being would result in a dissolution of being, so the individual

discovers himself in a conflicting state of existence. [DUL 820.82 VOG]

Wlecke, Albert O. Wordsworth and the Sublime. Perspectives in Criticism 23.Berkely, CA: U of California

P, 1973. Wlecke discusses the actual potency the mind possesses in ordering around the divinity

of the universe in subjectivity to its own existence. This power allows the mind to raise itself

above its external existence, where it may not necessarily comprehend the vast territory

surrounding it but where it can mediate itself to a point which is its highest level of

consciousness and in Neo-Platonic terms, its point of unity with the Intellectual-Principle. [DUL

827.5 WOR/WLE]