The Walk: Notes on a Romantic ImageDalkey Archive Press, 2006 - 144 pages "The Walk," a meditation on walking and on the literature of walking, ruminates on this pervasive, even commonplace, modern image. It is not so much an argument as a journey along the path of literature, noting the occasions and settings, the pleasures and possibilities of different types of walking--through the country or city, during day or night, alone or with someone--and the literatures--the poems, essays, stories, novels, and diaries--walking has produced. Jeffrey C. Robinson's discussion is less criticism than appreciation: with an autobiographical bent, he leads the reader through Romantic, modern, and contemporary literature to show us the shared pleasures of reading, writing, and walking. |
Contents
Introduction Page 3 318 | 3 |
Walking and the Self | 17 |
The Walking Essay and the Compulsion to Collect | 29 |
Walking Romanticism | 35 |
Engagement | 46 |
Civilization and the Sacred | 55 |
The Walk as Comedy | 63 |
Walking and Solitude | 70 |
Night Walks | 77 |
The Urban Walker | 88 |
Journey Through a Degas Exhibit Metropolitan Museum | 105 |
The Bridge | 112 |
Common terms and phrases
A. A. Milne A. R. Ammons Aeneas Alice Meynell amour de soi Anthology Basho Baudelaire beautiful becomes begins beneath Benjamin body bridge Charles Baudelaire Charles Reznikoff circle civilization comfort crowd dancers desire dialectical distance Dorothy Wordsworth dream encounter energy erotic experience fantasy feel foot forgetting genre George Macaulay Trevelyan Going a Journey Grasmere houseless human Ibid idyll imagination inner John Keats Keats lake landscape legs lines literary London loneliness look Louis Aragon mind modern nature Night Walks objects one's painting Paris pass passion path perhaps pleasure poem poet poetic poetry Press prose Psyche reverie road Romantic Rousseau says seems sense sexual sidewalk social solitary sound spirit Stepping Westward street thing Thomas Thoreau thought tion trans tread trees turn urban Vergil vision visionary walker walking essay walking literature Walter Benjamin wandering William Hazlitt William Wordsworth woman Wordsworth writing York