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Chapter 4 Ballads and the Problem ofLyric Violence in Blake and Wordsworth Although the Preface to Lyrical Ballads has been raked over as thoroughly as any bit of prose in English, a passage that has attracted litde notice includes the single example of good poetry that Wordsworth actually cites.1 It is from the redoubtable "Children in the Wood;' and it shows why understanding Romantic lyric and its relationship to politics and history require attention to the Ballad Revival: Such verses have been triumphed over in parodies, ofwhich Dr. Johnson's Stanza is a fair specimen: - "I put my hat upon my head And walked into the Strand, And there I met another man Whose hat was in his hand:' Immediately under these lines I will place one of the most justly admired stanzas of the "Babes in the Wood": "These pretty Babes with hand in hand Went wandering up and down; But never more they saw the Man Approaching from the Town:'2 Johnson's stanza, Wordsworth asserts, "is neither interesting in itself, nor can lead to any thing interesting;' since its "images neither originate in that sane state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the Reader" (1:154). Wordsworth does not explain why, if Johnson's stanza can have no effect, he is troubling himself about it. He simply declares that because its source is not "sane;' it must be uninteresting both in essence and effect. This makes it one of the "arbitrary" texts that "subjects" readers "to infinite caprices upon which no calculation whatever can be made" and vio- Lyric Violence 137 lates the "formal engagement" between poet and reader (1:144, 1:122). In other words, Johnson abuses the interests of his readers by giving them the uninteresting facsimile of a truly interesting work. This language of arbitrariness and interest echoes the explosive debates of the 1790s, and it raises the question of what alternative politics is generated by Wordsworth's "experimental" poetry. Recent accounts have answered that question by treating the Preface's critical edge skeptically.3 Of course Wordsworth puts his poetry on the side of freedom against arbitrary rule; who would do otherwise? But by 18oo he is well into his apostasy. From reveling in the dawn of Revolutionary France and skewering the English ruling class in Adventures on Salisbury Plain, he has turned his back on radicalism. He supplants the "middle and lower classes ofsociety" identified as a linguistic source in the Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads with idealized rustics who speak "the real language of men:' and he opposes that "real language" to "frantic novels" and other mass-cultural debasements. This lays the ground for an aesthetic ideology in which the contingencies ofliteracy and economic upheaval are banished for a faith in Literature's power to reform middle-class readers eager to be reformed.4 These critiques, however, have only a partial understanding of the context in which Romantic lyric articulates its claims, particularly in response to the call of the popular. Alan Liu, for instance, argues that what impedes Wordsworth from recognizing History's collective force is his commitment to the "I" oflyric, constructed out ofa repeated encounter of personal Imagination with the nurturing and threatening force ofNature.5 It is significant, then, that the ballad-with its collective orientation-is one of the few genres that Liu does not consider in his brilliant study; the only Wordsworthian text from "The Great Decade" missing from his pages is Lyrical Ballads; and one of the few histories he does not tell is that of the Ballad Revival.6 For Wordsworth and other Romantic authors, the ballad, as transformed by the Ballad Revival, is a key to thinking History in complex ways.? In the case of the Preface, that history is slightly buried, since Wordsworth strategically leaves the real target of Johnson's stanza unmentioned; that is, Johnson uses "Children" to poke fun at Percy's long imitation ballad, The Hermit ofWarkworth (1771).8 Wordsworth actually agrees with Johnson's estimation of Percy's Hermit: Tricked out in antiquarian tinsel, it is among the "deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse" that help to reduce the public to "a state ofalmost savage torpor" (1:128).9 What Wordsworth objects to is the idea that a comparison with "Children in the Wood" is to Percy's detriment, rather 5] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 12:27 GMT) 138 Chapter 4 than the other way around...

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