Romantic Egotism: Reception of Wordsworth’s Early Poetry, Sensibility, and the Trope of Poetic “Revolution”
Eric K.W. Yu 
Abstract
This is a study of the reception of Wordsworth’s poetry, particularly the Lyrical Ballads (in collaboration with Coleridge) and Poems (1807), with reference to eighteenth century traditions of sensibility. Examining how it was received by its contemporary readers, this paper argues that the Lyrical Ballads represents no sudden, drastic Romantic “revolution.” Tracing the reception of Wordsworth’s Poems (1807) with respect to the politics of taste, this paper details the formation of Wordsworth’s “egotism” and discusses how “egotism” and “apostasy” are later transformed into a poetic “revolution” by some twentieth century Romanticists who developed William Hazlitt’s problematic account of the “Lake School” in a new, “visionary” direction. Highlighting the curious fate of reception, this paper tries to show that some basic assumptions underlying the “standard” picture of Romanticism need to be reconsidered in a historical light.
Keywords：Romanticism, Wordsworth, egotism, reception, sensibility, the trope of “revolution”