Thesis…?
Ok, Spring break is far underway and here I am, pounding out a paper.
Here is my thesis for what will become a 10+ (most likely +) page paper. Let me know if you have any knowledgeable suggestions!
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge engaged in a lyrical experiment that would change the face of poetry. I explicitly use the term experiment, because, while they chose to do something radical and calculated—and to great effect—every attempt was always a risk, an experiment. They were, like the old seaman of The Rhyme of the Ancyent Marinere, in uncharted, foggy water. Some of the concepts they played with they “blessed them unawares”, and ultimately, while they could never know the true extent of it, history would reward their experiments with fame and following.
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Wordsworth and Coleridge experimented heavily with the simple beauty of nature, conversation, and with the voices and images of the real people who too often failed to find their presence in poetry. However, at the heart of this experiment is the concept of hospitality. What Wordsworth and—to a greater degree—Coleridge created was a prose based, conversational poetics whose en product is hospitality. Think of a a machine—in one end you place a concept or idea, take for example ‘nature’. This concept is then processed through the poetical mechanics of conversation: the machine designed and employed by Wordsworth and Coleridge. And out on the conveyer belt comes hospitality. Whatever they chose to substitute into the machine—be it nature, the voices of others, the figures of real people, or (as we will see) even their own private lives—hospitality is the end result (in one form or another), and conversation the means to that end.
