![]() ![]() ![]() 497), and Norman Fruman finds it necessary, even in the midst of a generally damning essay, to cite them as “by far the best of Coleridge's works” ( Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel, p. Raysor calls them “the finest critical essay in English literature” (p. The real agreements and disagreements between Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s views are more interesting than those to which Coleridge’s interpretation has called attention.Ĥ Coleridge's chapters on Wordsworth have won praise from his defenders as well as from his detractors and have persuaded most historians of criticism. The position he offers in opposition to the one he draws from the Preface closely resembles the one Wordsworth actually put forward there. Although intelligible meanings can be discovered for Wordsworth’s remarks about “the real language of men” and the lack of “ essential difference” between the languages of verse and prose, Coleridge’s exegesis reduces them to absurdity. It distorts Wordsworth’s account of his choice of subjects and his comments on poetic language. His discussion of the Preface repeatedly shifts the positions to which it objects and misleadingly distinguishes between what the Preface can legitimately be taken to mean and what it probably does mean. Although Coleridge’s interpretation of Wordsworth’s Preface has shaped subsequent understanding of Wordsworth’s meaning, Coleridge was out not to clarify but to refute Wordsworth. ![]()
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