Slave Songs and the Lyric Poetry Traditions (original) (raw)

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2008

Abstract

Since the advent of Romanticism in the early nineteenth century, the fine line between “primitive” and “literary” poetry has become increasingly blurred. William Wordsworth’s “1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads” is probably the most frequently cited touchstone for modern conceptions of the lyric poem. In describing the goal of his revolutionary collection, Wordsworth felt it necessary to explain in the “Preface”: “It was published as an experiment, which I hoped might be of some use to ascertain how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally endeavor to impart.”1 “The real language of men” is a phrase whose implications have been argued for more than two hundred years. At the very least, lyric poetry is now widely accepted as conveying the voices of particular individuals, speaking in their own dictions (or dramatizing those of characters), addressing their own communities, and selecting from a wide range of “acceptable” forms or prosodic features employed either conventionally or innovatively. Since the time of Wordsworth, readers have tended to expect poetry to preserve the vivid animation of speech-in-conversation versus elevated diction, Latinate, and archaic phrases and to represent a personal utterance rather than an expression of the state or praise to a patron or nation.

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