The Time of Unrememberable Being: Wordsworth and the Sublime, 1787-1805

In a chronologically ordered close reading of a number of key texts, especially the Prelude of 1799, Klaus P. Mortensen demonstrates how Wordsworth transforms the common notions of the Sublime creating a deeply personal interpretation of the correspondence between subject and object, mind and nature. In this process Wordsworth turns to early childhood and discovers how his own powers of imagination were created and shaped in early experiences of nature prior to language and self-awareness - in "the time of unrememberable being," as Wordsworth names it in a fragment from 1798. Showing the growth of this idea in Wordsworth the book concludes by describing how it was shattered in 1804-1805, never again to regain its original power.