ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the variety of the interest in folklore shown by William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge through an examination of their experience and use of the May Day festival. It is important to note here that analyzing the Wordsworthian encounter poem in the context of Habermasian social theory reveals that the poet places the common sphere in opposition to dominant culture, and that the private space of the common sphere is emphasized. In his early work, simple rural rituals challenge the sophisticated ceremonies that dominate the public sphere by appropriating symbols of authority. He does not offer the reliance on rural ritual that we see in Wordsworth's early work, falling back on an appreciation of culturally unmediated celebrations of nature as more certain and real. In his early work, the potency of rural ritual undermines aristocratic dominance of the public sphere and challenges bourgeois commercial values, associating the power of the festal with childhood.
