Słowo i więź. O etycznym wymiarze poezji topograficznej na podstawie utworów Jamesa Thomsona i Williama Wordswortha (tłum. D. Chabrajska)

Adam POTKAY

Department of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, P.O. Box 8795,Virginia, 23187-8795, USA , Stany Zjednoczone

Abstrakt

Listening offers a possible solution to the perceived ethical problems of the possessive «I» and its appropriative gaze. In English literature, one genre often associated with the appropriative gaze is the so-called «loco-descriptive poem» of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I argue, however, that in the major loco-descriptive poems of James Thomson and William Wordsworth an aesthetic of observation and control is offset by an ethic of listening and attachment. These poems dramatize the power of sound, including the sound of poetry, to attach us both to distinct environments and to the impersonal power of life.

 

The present article is part of Adam Potkay’s book Wordsworth’s Ethics, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore–London 2012 (forthcoming).

Słowa kluczowe:

ethics, ear, eye, music, loco-descriptive poetry, iconoclasm, William Wordsworth, James Thomson