Wordsworth and the Victorians

Abstract

Words worth belongs to a generation that re-invented posterity as the true judge of artistic worth, a truth beyond fashion and faction, the eternal justification of a misunderstood life.His exact contemporary H61derlin asked 'Wozu Dichter in diirftiger ZeitT , meaning, among other things, why be a poet in an age that does not know how to value poetry?Romantic poets invested very heavily in the future, and for that reason, leaving aside others, their reception makes a fascinating study, full of veneration, misprision, irony, bathos, creative imitation and unconscious symbiosis.