The Lyric Impulse of Poems, in Two Volumes

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    Abstract

    This chapter explores the lyricism of Wordsworth?s 1807 collection, and considers how the lyric principle might ?console the afflicted?, and ?add sunshine to daylight?. Poems in Two Volumes extends Wordsworth?s sense of the poet as ?Teacher?, presenting ?new compositions of feeling? and ?widening the sphere of human sensibility?. Coleridge had already expressed concern that Wordsworth was squandering his greater calling on ?minor? pieces. But by analogy with the agricultural principle of rotation, those shorter poems provided the necessary variation to prevent the soil in which the great work might grow from becoming exhausted. At the same time his shorter pieces were nourished by a shared apparatus of purpose. What is at stake is the embodiment of the ?principle of joy? at the root of human hope itself, constituting a faith not dependent on religious doctrine, but summoned by perpetually renewed acts of seeing, thinking, and feeling.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth
    EditorsRichard Gravil, Daniel Robinson
    Place of PublicationOxford
    PublisherOxford University Press
    Pages221-236
    Number of pages16
    ISBN (Print)9780199662128
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished (VoR) - 1 Jan 2015

    Keywords

    • Wordsworth
    • poetry
    • lyric
    • play
    • grace
    • feeling
    • Coleridge

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'The Lyric Impulse of Poems, in Two Volumes'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this