ABSTRACT
Wordsworth’s hyper-canonical poem evokes and performs the relational experience of attention in which its ethical dimension inheres. Various critics have concentrated on the principles on which the attention economy rests. Many studies underline a move from denunciation to downright pathologisation. Among many others, German phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels addresses the issue of dysfunctional attention and more especially the phenomena of fascination or sideration that are provoked by trauma. The chapter concentrates on a series of contemporary British narratives whose span makes for a more comprehensive and social application of attention in its relational, ethical impulse. Precariousness and dispossession of the self lies the ethical imperative of attention that it is the responsibility of contemporary narrative to (re-)present. The emotional density that phenomenologists comment on is a quality that is naturally accommodated by all literary genres and modes, from the lyrical poem to the romance through tragedy.
