William Wordsworth and the Invention of Culture

This article considers the relation of ballad meter to blank verse in William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, drawing on its early reception history to suggest that modern criticism has overlooked an important intermetrical tension between these two poetic forms. I argue that this tension, which early readers often characterized using protoanthropological language, can be fruitfully understood against the concept of culture as it evolved toward its modern definition in the nineteenth century. I conclude by suggesting that approaching Wordsworth through the lens of culture yields a richer understanding of the poet's relation to the history of lyric.