Mind in Creation: Essays on English Romantic Literature in Honour of Ross G. Woodman

The Mind in Creation celebrates the career of Ross G. Woodman, one of Canada's finest teachers and critics. During his more than forty-one years in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario he has profoundly influenced scores of graduate and undergraduate students. From his important early study The Apocalyptic Vision in the Poetry of Shelley (1964) through dozens of scholarly essays and papers, Ross Woodman has illuminated the English Romantics in ways that engage both the poetic and the critical imagination in the process that Shelley calls "the mind in creation." An astute contemporary critic and a major collector of Canadian art, Woodman has written on the poet and playwright James Reaney and the painter Jack Chambers.

The seven contributors to The Mind in Creation bring different critical perspectives -- including historical, textual, and deconstructive methodologies -- to bear on a variety of Romantic authors: Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Together, their essays offer a representative view of the diversity of Romantic studies, from Byron's use of history to Blake's theory of illustration. A retrospective essay by Woodman himself surveys the past and anticipates the future of Romantic studies in the twentieth century.

The Mind in Creation offers a uniquely Canadian perspective: the senior scholars and younger critics who have contributed to this volume -- some of them colleagues and former students of Professor Woodman's -- are all professors of literature at Canadian universities. The Mind in Creation brings together both traditional and innovative approaches to Romanticism in honour of a man whose prolific criticism and lifelong commitment to teaching literature have truly been acts of the mind in creation -- inspirational, exemplary, and lasting.

The contributors include: David L. Clark, Jared Curtis, J. Douglas Kneale, W.J.B. Owen, Tilottama Rajan, Ronald Tetreault, and Milton Wilson. The collection also provides a selected bibliography of Ross G. Woodman.