How does Wordsworth portray real people in The Lyrical Ballads?
… favoured much more Anglo-Saxon words, for their gritty implications – appropriate for a publication in which most of the poems are focused around everyday people and situations. Unsurprisingly, these are very pastoral poems, many of which solely include narrative. Although this may seem mundane for such a famous poet, this was Wordsworth’s statement of protest against the style of the time, and his digression instead led to a new style of poetry in which living language is valued highly, as it allows a sense of man speaking to man, and is a more accessible style of poetry than his predecessors’. In Michael, a poem about a father and son who form an eternal bond (Michael, an eighty-year old shepherd, and Luke, his son), Wordsworth portrays the relationship between the two. The first indication we receive of the tight-knit paternal bond is the use of language when describing Michael’s care for Luke. …
