16 -- Lyrical Ballads. Ballads. Lyric. (English 1a)

A first class on Wordsworth, which is really a class on ballads, from "The Twa Corbies" and "Lord Randall" to Beddoes's "Ghost's Moonshine" (as it is called) from Death's Jest Book.  The idea of the anonymous eerie third person otherness of the ballad, a spooky point of view on how we all become part of the spooky point go view.  Scott's "Proud Masie."  That balladic spookiness combined with the first person expressiveness of the lyric in the anonymous (in 1798) Lyrical Ballads. Payoff = a reading of "A Slumber did my spirit seal."