Lyrical Ballads have always been wedded to controversy. Though the judgments of the periodicals and the ensuing authorial reaction have long since been superseded by a plethora of scholarly interpretations, the debate still focuses on their elusive, paradoxical character. Are the poems traditional or experimental, a random collocation or an organised sequence? Patrick Campbell surveys the critical fluctuations of nearly two centuries while privileging recent approaches which have sought fresh perspectives on the volume - contextual, formalist and genre based, psycho-analytic, materialist, maverick.
Autorentext
PATRICK CAMPBELL is a Principle Lecturer in English at Middlesex Polytechnic, UK.
Inhalt
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART 1: LYRICAL BALLADS: THE CURRENT OF OPINION Contemporaneous Criticism: the Magazines
Victorian and Later Criticism: some Trends
PART 2: CRITICISM IN CONTEXT, 1797-8 The Social and Political Background
Biographical Considerations: Collaboration or Conflict?
The Philosophical Context
Literary Influences
PART 3: LYRICAL BALLADS: RECENT INTERPRETATIVE STANCES Formalist Approaches: 'The Bridle of Pegasus'
The Issue of 'Genre'
Psychoanalytical Perspectives
Marxist, Historicist and Problematic Readings
PART 4: LYRICAL BALLADS: CRITICISM OF THE MAJOR POEMS 'The Ancient Mariner'
'Tintern Abbey'
'The Thorn'
'The Idiot Boy'
PART 5: THE POET AS CRITIC: THE PREFACE (1800)
PART 6: PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES: THE 'OTHER' LYRICAL BALLADS Three Ballads
Two Laments
'Goody Blake and Harry Gill'
'Simon Lee'
Two Expostulatory Pieces
Two Credal Lyrics
Two Anecdotes
'The Nightingale'
PART 7: FROM ADVERTISEMENT TO ALBATROSS: UNITY OR DIVERSITY?
Bibliography
Index.