"Lyrical Ballads" The Ultimate Critique
...he should be ranked with the best of living poets. “Lines written in Tintern Abbey,” written by Wordsworth, is the last poem of this memorable piece of literature. One anonymous critic notes that 1798 is “a year both in its self one of revolution and one full of consequences of a greater revolution, which took place nine years earlier.” In this critique, the author speaks about how the “Lines written near Tintern Abbey” transformed the meaning of science and art and has turned both into instruments of spiritual faith. Another one of the poems contained within “Lyrical Ballads,” “The Ancient Mariners,” was one of the four poems written by Coleridge. According to this critic, this poem “indisputably the most popular and superficially brilliant as well as the longest poem in the Lyrical Ballads,” is the reason why Wordsworth’s influence weighs more heavily in the result of the book than Coleridge’s. Coleridge’s four poems were not always perfectly healthy in form. However, who would deny that “The Dungeon,” another poem from this beautiful novel and a fragment from his play “Osorio” contains modern humanitarianism and healthy form? One can say that this anonymous critic thinks that Wordsworth’s literary influence is more enduring than Coleridge’s. In 1890, a British, anonymous author wrote an essay for “The Athenaum,” as a literary criticism towards “Lyrical Ballads.” In this essay, the author states that Wordsworth’s poems should be restudied, since they did not meet with the critical response they deserved. There have been many reprints of the Lyrical Ballads, none of which have captured the true feelings like the original version has done. “The original is rare and expensive, and is even more interesting to the student than to the book-hunter.” (Athenaum) The original volume has the early writings in their earliest states. The author speaks about the poems being altered and mixed up with others in later volumes. “The volume of 1798 is a whole and must be studied as such,” states the author. In essence the Lyrical Ballads should only be reprinted in its original form. “According to the American Review and Literary Journal,” in an essay contained within by an unknown author, “the humble style and sentiment in the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ deprives the poem of their potential impact.” This critic believes that there is no difference between poetry and prose and that some of the most interesting parts of a poem are the language well written. He says that Wordsworth proves this theory by excluding from his poetry “personifications of abstract ideas.” Wordsworth uses very little poetic diction, consisting of phrases and figures of speech. This critic argues that Wordsworth’s poems will not be acknowledged by those who love poetry. He states that “some of them appear to us too humble both in style and sentiment to be generally interesting.” However, he does admit that the poems are almost entirely free of complicated words of thoughts or expressions and that they may be read and understood with out any difficulty. He also agrees that Wordsworth experiment was successful because the middle classes of society could relate to the language used. The experimental use of the language of common individuals in “Lyrical Ballads” is criticized by Marjorie Latta B...