A lyrical Ballad

Assignment 1


Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798)


When we mention the word “Ballad” we think about a popular romantic song like The Beatles “Yesterday”. Ballads are popular as ordinary people can write a ballad, everyday people no matter what age, gender or class. In a ballad the emphasis seems to be concentrated on the narrative, a ballad also has short stanzas. The difference with a lyrical ballad is it is a form of poetry where the emphasis instead of being on the narrative emphasizes more on the emotion. The narrative in a lyrical ballad is there in order to develop the feeling of the poem, in Wordsworth’s case, in great detail.

Before ‘Lines written a few miles above Tinton Abbey’ was written people started seeing romanticism as old and failing as less people where interested in it. Romantics started to dislike the “old forms” and began making it into something that would appeal to a wider audience. Wordsworth shared the same views with ...