Thursday, February 12, 2015

Wordsworth on personification

In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (London, 1800), Wordsworth suggests that "[e]xcept in a very few instances the Reader will find no personifications of abstract ideas in these volumes, not that I mean to censure such personifications: they may be well fitted for certain sorts of composition, but in these Poems I propose to myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men, and I do not find that such personifications make any regular or natural part of that language. I wish to keep my Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him" (xx-xxi).

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