On William Wordsworth’s Ideas about the Language for Poetry——from the Perspective of Esthetic Paradigm Shift

Abstract

As one of the leading figures in British Romantic Literary Movement, William Wordsworth has not only created abundant famous poems, but also comprehensively expounded his Romantic poetic ideas, which has caused hot debates among his contemporary and later critics. By putting Wordsworth’s poems, his poetic ideas, his contemporary and later critics’ studies into the background of esthetic paradigm shift to observe, it can be concluded that his poems belong to the artefact esthetic paradigm shift, his opinions about the language for poetry belong to the sociological esthetic paradigm shift, the Romantic critics’ philosophical studies on his opinions about the language for poetry belong to the metaphysical esthetic paradigm shift, and the philosophical studies on his opinions about the language for poetry by later non-Romantic critics belong to the later formed theories. It has multiple meanings to apply the theories of esthetic paradigm shift to study Wordsworth’s opinions about the language for poetry: Firstly, it can enrich the studies about his relationship with language; Secondly, it can clear up the features of Classism and Romanticism; Thirdly, it can set up a fourfold model and find out some useful research methods for the study of esthetic paradigm shift; Fourthly, some rules of esthetic paradigm shift can be summed up, which could contribute to the further study on the rules of universal esthetic paradigm shift.