Critical Responses to Lyrical Ballads

Abstract

In this chapter I would like to take a look at the way in which Wordsworth and Coleridge have been received by critics over the period since the first appearance of Lyrical Ballads. One reason for this is to try to show how their reputations have grown while another is to present some alternative critical attitudes towards these poets and their work. None of them is final or conclusive but are offered, as indeed the comments in this book are, as a challenge and a stimulus to your own ideas. The chapter begins with a survey of the critical reception of Wordsworth and Coleridge during the past 200 years, and then focuses closely on the views of four critics in particular: I. A. Richards, Robert Mayo, Geoffrey H. Hartman and Paul de Man.