Neoteric<\/em> means \u201cmodern; new; recent.\u201d It sounds like a new word, a neologism, because it is one you\u2019ve probably never heard before, but according to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, it entered the language in the \u201c1590s, from Late Latin\u00a0neotericus<\/em>, from Greek\u00a0neoterikos<\/em>\u00a0“youthful, fresh, modern,” from\u00a0neoteros<\/em>, comp. of\u00a0neos<\/em>\u00a0“new.” Although etymonline doesn\u2019t say so, terikos<\/em> is Greek for territorial, so given that, it seems that neoteric means \u201cnew territory.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking of \u201cnew territory,\u201d today is the 248th<\/sup> birthday of William Wordsworth. Wordsworth was, of course, one of the two founders of the Romantic Movement in English poetry, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth and Coleridge were friends who, for a brief time, lived quite close to each other in the Lake Country of western England. They talked about their idea of what poetry should look like, and they came out with a volume of poetry by the two of them, entitled Lyrical Ballads<\/em> (1798). Two years later, Wordsworth came out with a revised version of Lyrical Ballads<\/em> with just his name on it and with a Preface that reads like a manifesto.<\/p>\n In the Preface, Wordsworth writes: \u201cThe principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement\u201d (http:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/39\/36.html<\/a>).<\/p>\n Again he writes: \u201cThere will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men; and further, because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart, is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n And again: \u201cWhat is a Poet? to whom does he address himself? and what language is to be expected from him?\u2014He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him.\u201d<\/p>\n This is all new territory, at least in 1800. Wordsworth is reacting to the dying gasps of the NeoClassical movement in poetry that had dominated the 18th<\/sup> century. So while Wordsworth\u2019s poetry may not seem incredibly like new territory to us, reading it in the 21st<\/sup> century, in its time it was nearly revolutionary.<\/p>\n While the most famous poem of the Lyrical Ballads is the one we now call simply \u201cTintern Abbey,\u201d I\u2019m going to share one of the lesser-known ones, \u201cThe Dungeon.\u201d<\/p>\n And this place our forefathers made for man! With other ministrations thou, O nature! <\/p>\n In 1798, this kind of verse was definitely neoteric.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The image is William Wordsworth at 28 by William Shuter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul Schleifer Neoteric means \u201cmodern; new; recent.\u201d It sounds like a new word, a neologism, because it is one you\u2019ve probably never heard before, but according to www.etymonline.com, it entered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2737,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions\/2737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThis is the process of our love and wisdom,
\nTo each poor brother who offends against us\u2014
\nMost innocent, perhaps\u2014and what if guilty?
\nIs this the only cure? Merciful God?
\nEach pore and natural outlet shrivell’d up
\nBy ignorance and parching poverty,
\nHis energies roll back upon his heart,
\nAnd stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,
\nThey break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot;
\nThen we call in our pamper’d mountebanks\u2014
\nAnd this is their best cure! uncomforted
\nAnd friendless solitude, groaning and tears,
\nAnd savage faces, at the clanking hour,
\nSeen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon,
\nBy the lamp’s dismal twilight! So he lies
\nCircled with evil, till his very soul
\nUnmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed
\nBy sights of ever more deformity!<\/p>\n
\nHealest thy wandering and distempered child:
\nThou pourest on him thy soft influences,
\nThy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
\nThy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
\nTill he relent, and can no more endure
\nTo be a jarring and a dissonant thing,
\nAmid this general dance and minstrelsy;
\nBut, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
\nHis angry spirit healed and harmonized
\nBy the benignant touch of love and beauty.<\/p>\n