Blank Verse — Diction

Abstract

Wordsworth’s blank verse can be roughly divided into three types: narrative, descriptive and what may be called contemplative or reflective. No poem is written entirely in one mode and some contain all three. This division is rather different from what we shall find in Coleridge, whose blank verse is basically reflective, although it contains elements of description and even a small amount of narrative. All the poems to be examined were written in fairly close sequence, and one hesitates, therefore, to postulate a progression but there does appear to be some development. Certain features are common to all the blank verse but others vary according to the type, and the variation becomes more distinct in the later poems, ‘Michael’ showing the greatest differentiation among its various parts. The poems which are most accessible to linguistic analysis are, once again, those in Lyrical Ballads. Representative poems are ‘Tintern Abbey’ (July 1798), mainly reflective; ‘The Old Cumberland Beggar’ (1800), mainly descriptive; and ‘Michael’ (1800), which is generally considered to be narrative. ‘The Brothers’ (also 1800) must also be taken into account, although here the narrative is in the form of dialogue.