McAllister, David (2013) Living with the dead in Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads". Modern Language Review 108 (2), pp. 416-437. ISSN 0026-7937.
Abstract
This article examines the social presence of the dead in ‘Michael’ and ‘The Brothers’, arguing that they dramatize a significant paradigm-shift in the cultural history of death by identifying the moment when an unmediated relationship with the dead was replaced by a relationship governed by symbols. I contrast Wordsworth’s mournful view of this development with that of Hegel, who saw this ‘mere natural being’ as a lesser state, and its loss as a desirable fall into knowledge. Although each poem is concerned with the dead, neither is an elegy; they do, however, attempt to recuperate in poetry the loss of an idealized way of living with the dead.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Nineteenth-Century Studies, Centre for |
| Depositing User: | David Mcallister |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Jan 2013 17:31 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Aug 2023 12:32 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/5522 |
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