Wordsworth's Preface and the "The New Rhetoric"

FAIN: FT-13695-78

Don H. Bialostosky
SUNY Research Foundation, Albany (Albany, NY 12222-0001)

To develop a study of the intelligibility of Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads by tracing the relations between Wordsworth's arguments which Wilbur Samuel Howell has characterized as constituting "the new rhetoric." According to Howell, many rhetoricians of the 17th and 18th centuries brought the art of poetry within the domain of their consideration, and the arguments they made about it—especially those related to the plan versus the ornamental style—are the arguments with which Wordsworth was engaged. Study will also include the rhetorical treatises of Locke, Adam Smith and George Campbell.