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Article: Impure Conceits: Rhetoric and Ideology in Wordsworth's "Excursion".(Review)
- Article from:
- Studies in Romanticism
- Article date:
- March 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Boston University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Alison Hickey. Impure Conceits: Rhetoric and Ideology in Wordsworth's "Excursion." Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Pp. xii+237. $39.50.
Readers expecting a book about The Excursion to amount to a wearying trudge past a monument of Wordsworth's declining career will be pleasantly surprised by Alison Hickey's Impure Conceits. Hickey takes a refreshingly enthusiastic approach to the poem, finding in its scenes, figures, and dialogues evidence of an ongoing investigation into the construction--and deconstruction--of meaning. In her view, the complexity of The Excursion has been overshadowed by "a specious either-or binarism" that inclines us to choose ...