Lyrical Ballads: 1798
- ISBN-10
- 1603810056
- ISBN-13
- 9781603810050
- Series
- Lyrical Ballads
- Category
- Poetry
- Pages
- 160
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2008-03-20
- Publisher
- Coffeetown Press
- Authors
- William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Description
The joy of reading Lyrical Ballads is watching two young poets experiment with poetic voice both against a form of poetry that had long become formulaic and predictable and against the social and political institutions that supported such established thoughts. William Wordsworth was only 28 and still unknown, while Samuel Taylor Coleridge, not yet 26, was more famous for his political speeches in support of the French Revolution than for the few poems he had published in London's literary magazines when the first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published anonymously in 1798. It was later taken over and expanded by Wordsworth in 1800, 1802, and 1805. The new editions republished most of the poems (though some of them were revised and in a different order), and it included several others and a long "Preface," which today stands as one of the foundational explanations of Wordsworth and Coleridge's mission to focus on the voiceless commoners who had been left out of the social and political sphere. Although Lyrical Ballads has mainly been studied for its revolution in poetics, this series will help readers explore how the collection's poetic ideas extend into the sociopolitical world. With the democratization of the poetic voice (the turn to everyday speech as Wordsworth explains in his "Preface"), Wordsworth and Coleridge were giving a poetic voice to England's social and political outcasts. But Lyrical Ballads is not an essay or a treatise. So today's readers should not expect a straight-out complaint of injustices against the established order. Instead, the very act of paying attention and listening to the collection's characters is a politically progressive act. The more progressive act of taking them seriously and making their complaints part of our social and political debate is nothing short of revolutionary.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Lyrical Ballads
By Michael MasonThis edition - based on the 1805 edition, but looking back on each of the previous publications - shows how this collection developed, how it was refined and added to by the authors.
-
Lyrical Ballads, and Other Poems, 1797-1800
By William WordsworthLyrical Ballads, published as a single volume in 1798, then in 1800 as a two-volume set including new poems, is widely regarded as having inaugurated the Romantic Revolution in poetry....
-
Lyrical Ballads: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
By R. L. Brett, A. R. JonesThis is a comprehensively revised second edition of a classic student text with the 1798 and 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads reprinted together.
-
Lyrical Ballads and other Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth (Also contains Their Thoughts On Poetry Principles and...
By William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor ColeridgeMost of the poems in the 1798 edition were written by Wordsworth, with Coleridge contributing only five poems to the collection, including one of his most famous works, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
-
Lyrical Ballads, 1800
By William WordsworthThe 1800 edition of Lyrical ballads consists of two volumes. The first contains most of the poems of the 1798 volume, though in a different order, together with a Preface,...
-
An Analysis of William Wordsworth's Preface to The Lyrical Ballads
By Alex Latter, Rachel TeubnerReaders find themselves drawn back to the essay repeatedly as they seek to untangle the ideas and contradictions within it.
-
William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (1798)
By Richard GravilNo further information has been provided for this title.
-
Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1800
By William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThis Broadview edition is the first to reprint both the 1798 and the 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads in their entirety.
-
Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Lyrical Ballads: Critical Perspectives
By P. CampbellPatrick 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, ...
-
Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems
By William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor ColeridgeThis volume contains all of "Lyrical Ballads" with Wordsworth's preface of 1800/1802, and a wide range of both poets' other work across their poetic careers.