...with the very great exception of its musical form and its indwelling thought, so amply illustrating " the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement," its elements are present in. Dorothy's description, to which he no doubt turned. This is the locus...

...grounded his poetry in Associationalist psychology. He talks of "certain known habits of association," of "the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement," and takes as his poetry's task "to illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated...

...coloring of the imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and further, and above all, to make these incidents...not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature." It was to this conclusion that I had been driven by my own investigations into such Chinese poets as...

...various 'incidents and situations from common life'] . . . the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement" (Pref., 447). The poet seeks to reveal how and what, given our shared nature, we think and feel in various...

...men" to the problem of giving interest to incidents drawn from "common life" by "tracing in them . . . the primary laws of our nature: chiefly as far as...the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement."38 Wordsworth moves from a specific social experiment to a psychological generality: the...

...others to similar thoughtful study. Wordsworth presents his poetry as " an experiment " that traces " the primary laws of our nature: chiefly as far as...which we associate ideas in a state of excitement" as those laws reveal themselves in the utterances of subjects chosen from "low and rustic life" (LB...

...1801). Wordsworth's explanation is well known: the poems were to make the incidents of common life interesting 'by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature . . . Low and rustic life was generally chosen because in that situation the essential passions of...

...colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents...which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the...

...preface, William Wordsworth declares his intent to make the incidents and situations of common life "interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature" (Wordsworth and Coleridge 238-39). His claim for "interest" in his work, however, appears to stimulate...

...Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth. looks in one direction, proposing to make "the incidents of common life interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature" (ed. Owen, 156). Percy Bysshe Shelley looked the opposite way, regarding the poets themselves as lawgivers....