ABSTRACT
For Stephen Prickett, Romanticism, at least as it is practised by Wordsworth and Coleridge, is better explained as an indication of religious revival than decline. For Wordsworth and Coleridge, a poem earns its title to that name if and only if the words of which it is composed are a human manifestation of the "living word" of God. The first thing to note about the diction of Don Juan is its self-consciousness. In Don Juan Byron deploys of a rich variety of words that refer to words; words such as claptrap, slang, jargon, rigmarole, tittle tattle. Wordsworth wants to rid the language of poetry of affectations, but for Byron language purged of affected phrases would not be language as it is really used by men. Wordsworth reserves his special scorn for those who believe poetry to consist of the elegant arrangement of those arbitrary and capricious habits of expression.
