theory of poetry quite unlike what had been
espoused previously. In the first generation of
romantic poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge were
reacting against the neoclassicism and elitism that
characterized much eighteenth-century literature,
values that were established early on by the work
of John Dryden (1631–1700) and Alexander Pope
(1688–1744) among others. These restoration and
neoclassical poets and many others who published
during their time wrote strictly for and about the
aristocratic class. Their works drew upon a body
of classical texts from ancient Greece and Rome,
with which both these authors and their courtly
readers were familiar. Hence, the termneoclassi-
cal, meaning a new classicism, described these
writers who were themselves so shaped by classical
literature and who resurrected and transformed
that ancient literature in creating their own. A
reader needed a classical education to understand
their works, and only moneyed people had that.
Middle- and lower-class individuals, if they were
literate at all, would have been hard pressed to
understand neoclassical poetry. It was compli-
cated grammatically, intricately layered with allu-
sions to classical mythology, and replete with
ornate and convoluted figures of speech.
Reacting against this courtly literature,
Wordsworth asserted a revolutionary idea:
Poetry ought to be written in the language spoken
by real people in their everyday lives, and it ought
to take its subjects from ordinary people’s actual
experiences. This new manifesto asserted the
importance of the common man, the value of
rural work and cottage experience, and the
beauty of the countryside. It privileged the widely
known world of agricultural labor and promoted
the rejuvenating benefits in escaping from the city
for walking tours in the countryside. This day-to-
dayness of simple rural life, Wordsworth main-
tained, brought people to an awareness of the
essence of things, to the true nature of life itself,
and to the spiritual essence nature manifests. This
communion with nature was democratically
available regardless of class or education, and
it was to be sought and appreciated over the
artificial world of powdered and self-indulgent
aristocrats. Wordsworth’s ideas were as revolu-
tionary to the established world of English and
European arts and letters as the ethics that fueled
the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)
and the French Revolution (1789–1799) were to
the worlds of the English and French courts.
Wordsworth challenged the neoclassical
assumptions about genre, subject matter, style,
and tone. He dismissed the eighteenth-century
assumption that types of poetry intrinsically form
a hierarchy, with epic and tragedy the highest
forms and comedy and satire among the lowest.
In this hierarchy, the neoclassicists placed short
lyric poems at the very bottom. Wordsworth
chose to write lyric poems, translating his demo-
cratic values into a literary choice that promoted
the lowest form as the best. He depicted peasants,
outcasts, and criminals, believing them to be wor-
thy subjects of poetry. Another neoclassical
assumption was that the language used ought to
be elevated, ornate, and complicated. The gram-
mar should be intricate and classical allusions
should occur frequently. Wordsworth threw off
these assumptions about style, choosing instead
the simple syntax of street people, often capturing
dialect and vernacular usage, which a classicist
would have disparaged as totally unsuitable to
poetry. Finally, the neoclassical poets privileged
the intellect over emotion and decorous, affected
behavior over impulsive or quick enthusiastic
response. But in Wordsworth’s view, it was
through subjective response and feelings that peo-
ple could be truly alive and in touch with the
spiritual energy in all created life. Rural life stimu-
lated these basic feelings, Wordsworth believed,
and through these feelings people could intuit an
elemental truth, directness, and innocence, which
were dulled or eclipsed altogether by city living and
upper-class refinement. In doing all of this, Words-
worth promoted the voice of ordinary people, and
he saw himself as their poet, writing for them about
their own experience.
By the time Frost began writing poetry in
the first decade of the twentieth century, Words-
worth’s principles were well established, indeedUNDERSTANDING A POEM REQUIRES
READERS TO CONSIDER THE LITERARY CONTEXT IN
WHICH THE POEM EXISTS, TO CHECK DEFINITIONS
OF THE WORDS USED IN THE POEM, AND TO
IDENTIFY THE ELEMENTS THAT CONVEY THIS
PARTICULAR POEM’S MEANING.’’Acquainted with the Night