Talk:She dwelt among the untrodden ways

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Since this poem is in the public domain, and only 3 stanzas of four lines, can we go ahead and just include it in the article? --JayHenry 04:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Was the reference to River Dove, Derbyshire inspired by any more than its rhyme with "love"? Does the last line invite the reader to contribute more emotion than is actually warranted in the line, raising issues of sentimentality? Is there in fact less here than meets the eye? There are several unexplored avenues, each worth a brief paragraph:
    • Hartley Coleridge's parody: how does well-aimed parody inform us about the features that characterize individual styles?
    • Cleanth Brooks' "formalist" analysis in "Irony as a Principle of Structure" (1949).
    • The first printing, which is in Lyrical Ballads needs more than just mentioning.
    • the multiple drafts might be mentioned
    • Wordsworth's "epitaphic" mode, as suggested in Jonathan Roberts, "Wordsworth, Epitaph and the Epitaphic", Literature Compass 1 (2003).

--Wetman 08:25, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for a framework for expansion. A trip to the library is called for. Ceoil 21:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that "To evoke the 'loveliness of body and spirit', a pair of complementary but opposite images are employed in the second stanza: a solitary violet, unseen and hidden, and Venus, emblem of love, and the first star of evening, public and visible to all." I think the images as written are totally complementary and similar. Wordsworth says she's fair like a star and then says, wait, not just any star. Lucy, like the Violet, is the star "half hidden from the eye." You need to get rid of superfluous and obfuscating details and see the fair Lucy in her own light when she's shining alone--when her light peeks through a cloudy sky just like the Violet comes into view from behind a mossy stone. If you have a myriad of stars, you'll not see Lucy. Venus, on the other hand, can shine and be noticed no matter how many stars are shining along side her. Delafinca (talk) 01:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]