Cambridge Ideas - Strange Seas of Thought

We know about the experiments that have led to great scientific discoveries is widely recognised. But how much do we understand about the same processes in the arts? When the poet William Wordsworth died in 1850, few if none of the thousands of lines of poetry he left had escaped constant revision and alteration, and many of his most famous poems were never published. Cambridge researcher Ruth Abbott draws on the notebooks in which he left them to investigate the creative processes, attempts, and failures that go up to make great works of art.