A critical study of the interpretive problems surrounding readings of one of
Wordsworth's best-known lyrics.
Wordsworth's "Slumber" and the Problematics of Reading engages in detail both
the nature and the implications of what can be called literary pragmatics. It
offers a new interpretation of Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal" as
well as "Strange fits of passion" and "She dwelt among untrodden ways," making a
major contribution to an ongoing interpretive debate concerning the first poem
and the theoretical issues to which is gives rise. It also provides new ways to
contextualize Wordsworth's so-called Lucy poems as well as Coleridge's
appropriations of them in 1799.
Caraher analyzes