Stephen Maxfield Parrish
The Art of the Lyrical Ballads.
Harvard University Press, 1973. First edition. xvii/250 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 5.5" x 8.5", is bound in turquoise cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"Admirers of Wordsworth will welcome Stephen Parrish's reanimation of the issues that lay behind the revolutionary "Lyrical Ballads" of Wordworth and Coleridge. This book provides a fresh appraisal of the ballads as art and a fresh assessment of the critical principles governing them.
Mr. Parrish focuses on Wordsworth, regarding him as the bolder innovator and more formidable poet. Viewing the ballads as essentially experimental poetry that grew out of the controversies with Coleridge, he traces and analyzes Wordsworth's poetic intentions.
The author provides a full account of the controversial partnership of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The two poets shared many enthusiasms and dislikes, but their attempts at collaboration in 1797 brought out sharp differences and at the same time supplies a moving and convincing account of this important literary friendship.
Concentrating on the innovative aspects of Wordsworth's ballads, the author refutes many prevailing ideas about the poet and his work. He explores the distinctive experimental forms which Wordsworth chose to work in, from heightened material patterns to his special versions of pastoral. Mr. Parrish also clarifies the notoriously problematic Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads.""