Lyrical Ballads
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ISBN:141913177X
Description
This collection of poems, first published in 1798 by friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inaugurated the Romantic movement and marks a watershed in English literary history. The volume of poems was conceived as a revolution in style and was described by the authors as an experiment in verse. Wordsworth and Coleridge were dissatisfied by the ornate, learned, and highly stylized poetry of the eighteenth century, and in Lyrical Ballads they sought to represent everyday life in plain, simple language. Consequently, many of their poems describe members of the lower classes—rustic peasants, poor shepherds, vagrants, and wanderers—in bare, earnest language. These wonderful, simple poems concentrate on several themes, including the inevitability of death, the beauties of nature, and mankind’s return to a primitive, natural state of innocence. In their honest characterization of fathers and sons, farmers and beggars, and the feeble and the young, the Lyrical Ballads volume represents not just a crucial shift in poetic tradition, but also a poetic style that is accessible to and enjoyable by all.
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Opening Lines (Experimental)
LYRICAL BALLADS, WITH OTHER POEMS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
By W. WORDSWORTH.
Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum!
VOL. I.
SECOND EDITION.
PREFACE.
The First Volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published, as an experiment which, I hoped, might be of some use to ...
Member review
5/5
Reviewed by justAnca on Jul 13, 2010
Entertaining and accessible
Entertaining and easy to read, especially for someone who is not so much into poetry and is not a native English speaker.
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Ratings for 'Lyrical Ballads' by Wordsworth, William
| justAnca | | Read review | 2010-07-13 |
| sidmary | | 2010-11-18 |
Lyrical Ballads
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