Poetics and Politics

Scholarship on Wordsworth has long been concerned with the relationship between his poetry and his politics. Poetics and Poetics contributes significantly to the ongoing discussion by breaking through the "either-or" assumption that underwrites most theses. Dr. Liu focuses on the poetry of Wordsworth in the late 1790s and the early 1800s, exploring both his critique of a heroic model of political interventionism and his promotion of an egalitarian model of poet-reader cooperation. In the context of Wordsworth's crisis of belief, this study shows how his poetic innovations constituted his daring and brilliant revaluation of his political commitment.