
Perhaps the best way to illustrate Wordsworth's point on the elimination of poetic diction is to examine the 1802 preface of Lyrical Ballads: Given that the common man did not speak using elevated vocabulary and figurative language, Wordsworth believed, given he wanted poetry to speak to all, that complete adherence to poetic diction needed to be dropped. Wordsworth's issue, essentially, with the use and adherence to poetic diction was the fact that it tended to alienate the common man. Up until Wordsworth's writing of the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads, the adherence to the poetic diction had yet to be seriously challenged. Poetic diction refers to the style of writing used in poetry (the linguistic style, vocabulary, and use of figurative language-normally metaphors). To begin, poetic diction must be defined. LITERATURENERD eNotes educator| CERTIFIED EDUCATOR James McKusick, Dean, Davidson Honors College, University of MontanaĮxecutive Director: Dr.What is William Wordsworth's theory of poetic of diction? Overseas: $40 we accept British sterling at the current exchange rate). Membership in the Association includes a subscription to The Wordsworth Circle($35.00 for 1 yr. While the discipline itself and the academic institutions where it is studied change, grow and diversify, the Association, the journal, and the summer conference provide an essential center for dialogue, review, and renewal, for developing the voices of the future, for assimilating contemporary concerns, for preserving the great literary and cultural resources we are heir to, and for extending the sense of community that Wordsworth envisioned.Īs an allied organization of the Modern Language Association, The Wordsworth-Coleridge Association sponsors two panels and a lunch at the annual meetings. The range of topics are equally eclectic: the authors, their works, lives, and times, and their afterlives in the critical tradition. The Wordsworth-Coleridge Association provides affiliation, services, and information to an international community of over 2500 members-senior scholars, editors, teachers, critics, historians, graduate students, librarians, authors, and non-academics in other professions.

Sharing the same ranging and eclectic interests as the journal, under the leadership of talented and resourceful elected officers, the association meets annually at the MLA convention to discuss topics of contemporary interest, often published in TWC to share with the growing and distant membership. In 1973, the Association and TWC were joined to provide members with a means of communication, a permanent administrative base, and an historical record.


American scholars who had attended the first session of the summer conference at Rydal Mount met during at the Modern Language Association convention to share the convivial spirit, the intellectual exchange, that sense of community that had developed in the Lake District. In spite of differences of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.Īmong the activities in 1970 commemorating the bicentenary of Wordsworth’s birth, three contributed to the renaissance of Romantic studies that we are now enjoying: the first issue of The Wordsworth Circle, the first meeting of the Wordsworth Summer Conference (as the Rydal Mount Summer School), and the first meeting of the Wordsworth-Coleridge Association (as the Rydal Mount Summer School Association).
