Using a college course on William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" as a case study, this book presents an alternative approach to teaching poetry. Divided into seven sections with 19 chapters, the book describes how students can develop and exercise an historical imagination in the presence of literature by examining a poem in its various contexts. The first section provides an introduction to the study, discussing two models of literary education (humanism and education for critical consciousness), presenting autobiographical information about the author, and examining two views of revision. Other sections of the book consist of: (1) "Wordsworth's "Ode": Examining Its Conviction" (four chapters providing a traditional analysis of the "Ode"); (2) "The History of the Ode" (four chapters examining the ode tradition from Horace through Wordsworth, and viewing Wordsworth's "Ode" in that historical context); (3) "Revision" (two chapters looking at Wordsworth's earliest versions and revisions of the "Ode"); (4) "Biography and History" (a chapter presenting biographical information about Wordsworth relevant to the "Ode"); (5) "Criticism from a Contemporary" (two chapters considering William Hazlitt's criticisms of the "Ode"); and (6) "Adolescence and Critical Consciousness" (three chapters examining students' reactions in terms of the adolescent experience). (A bibliographic essay is appended.) (MM)