А language really spoken by men: Wordsworth’s theory of literariness and non-standard speech
А language really spoken by men: Wordsworth’s theory of literariness and non-standard speech

Summary/Abstract: Wordsworth’s theory of poetic language has been much misunderstood – in no small measure thanks to Coleridge’s celebrated but misguided critique of the ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’. Certain more recent critiques of the “language really spoken by men” have only helped cloud the real issues. This paper tries to disentangle a skein of critical threads by a reading of the key texts involved in the debate. Wordsworth’s essay on epitaphs is invoked in order to clear away some of the misunderstandings.

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