Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion

In this study of two creative minds, Lucy Newlyn offers a new version of the Coleridge-Wordsworth interaction during its most crucial years: 1797-1807. It is only on the surface, she argues, that each poet appears the other's ideal audience. Below the surface, radical differences led to misunderstanding. The key to Newlyn's new interpretation is in the poets' private language, for it is in echoes and allusions that their tacit opposition can be found.