ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of commonness as it was applied explicitly and implicitly to the popular discourse of religious evangelism and to the diction of Wordsworth’s experimental poetry in The Lyrical Ballads. It explores senses of inclusiveness and accessibility embedded in the term ‘common’ and considers the contentious nature of the language adopted to achieve this communicative aim. The chapter considers relationship between the ‘common’ voice of Wordsworth’s ballad lyrics and that of religious revivalism, and shows how connection was reflected in the critical terms applied to Wordsworth’s poetic experiment in contemporary periodicals. Francis Jeffrey’s representation of Wordsworth’s literary experiment as a form of ‘dissent’ showed how he considered the poet to have departed from the polite tenets of literary taste, which constituted, for him, a betrayal of his education and vocation. Jeffrey’s aesthetic and ethical criteria were shaped by a Scottish Enlightenment culture of rational sensibility which influenced precise literary precepts based on standards of moderation and restraint.
