"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 Though the judgments of the periodicals and the ensuing authorial reaction have long since been superseded by a plethora of scholarly interpretations, the debate still focuses on their elusive, paradoxical character.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 organized 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. "The Ancient Mariner", "Tintern Abbey", "The Thorn" and "The Idiot Boy" accorded individual treatment. The author then offers a personal interpretation of all the remaining poems and considers the vexed issue of the unity of "Lyrical Ballads" from a fresh perspective.
- ISBN10 0333522583
- ISBN13 9780333522585
- Publish Date 23 September 1991
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 16 December 2004
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Palgrave Macmillan
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English