ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the gulf that opens up between the several prime architects of the Romantic Movement in England on matters concerning precisely such issues. It discusses the topic and the issues in it with reference to hermeneutics and explores a ‘Coleridgean reading’ of William Wordsworth in by making explicit reference to the Christian theological underpinning of his arguments in the Biographia. Wordsworth’s claim for poetry, which actually has surprisingly little to do with language per se, nonetheless takes the form of an appeal for a special kind of language. Wordsworth’s subtle inversion, whereby the external world perceived by the intellect becomes the ‘unintelligible world’ almost passes unnoticed, but it dictates the logic of the poem. Speech is only a dangerous thing in Wordsworth’s eyes in those instances in which it implies the inherent prejudices of judgement which are a product of human agency.
