The Idiot Boy

Title page of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads

"The Idiot Boy" is a poem written by William Wordsworth, a representative of the Romantic movement in English literature. The poem was composed in spring 1798[1] and first published in the same year in Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is considered to be a turning point in the history of English literature and the Romantic movement.[2] The poem investigates such themes as language, intellectual disability, maternity, emotionality (excessive or otherwise), organisation of experience and "transgression of the natural."[3]

"The Idiot Boy" is Wordsworth's longest poem in Lyrical Ballads (with 463 lines), although it is surpassed in length by Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It was the 16th poem of the collection in the original 1798 edition,[4] and the 21st poem in the 1800 edition, which added Wordsworth's famous Preface to Lyrical Ballads.[5]

  1. ^ Roe 2015, p. 47.
  2. ^ Greenblatt 2006, p. 8.
  3. ^ Nordius 1992, p. 180.
  4. ^ Coleridge & Wordsworth 1798, pp. 148–179.
  5. ^ Coleridge & Wordsworth 2007, pp. 55–86.