Coleridge's Interpretation of Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Abstract

Although Coleridge’s interpretation of Wordsworth’s Preface has shaped subsequent understanding of Wordsworth’s meaning, Coleridge was out not to clarify but to refute Wordsworth. His discussion of the Preface repeatedly shifts the positions to which it objects and misleadingly distinguishes between what the Preface can legitimately be taken to mean and what it probably does mean. It distorts Wordsworth’s account of his choice of subjects and his comments on poetic language. Although intelligible meanings can be discovered for Wordsworth’s remarks about “the real language of men” and the lack of “essential difference” between the languages of verse and prose, Coleridge’s exegesis reduces them to absurdity. The position he offers in opposition to the one he draws from the Preface closely resembles the one Wordsworth actually put forward there. The real agreements and disagreements between Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s views are more interesting than those to which Coleridge’s interpretation has called attention.