Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads : Critical Perspectives

Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads : Critical Perspectives
ISBN-10
0333522583
ISBN-13
9780333522585
Series
Wordsworth and Coleridge
Pages
176
Language
English
Published
1991
Publisher
Macmillan
Author
Patrick Campbell

Description

Lyrical Ballads have always been wedded to controversy. Though the judgments of the periodicals and the ensuing authorial reaction have long since been superseded by a plethora of scholarly interpretations, the debate still focuses on their elusive, paradoxical character. Are the poems traditional or experimental, a random collocation or an organized sequence? Patrick Campbell surveys the critical fluctuations of nearly two centuries while privileging recent approaches which have sought fresh perspectives on the volume - contextual, formalist and genre-based, psycho-analytic, materialist, maverick. The Ancient Mariner, Tintern Abbey, The Thorn and The Idiot Boy accorded individual treatment. The author then offers a personal interpretation of all the remaining poems and considers the vexed issue of the unity of Lyrical Ballads from a fresh perspective.

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