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 Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally proposed—Preface to the second edition—The ensuing controversy, its causes and acrimony—Philosophic definitions of a Poem and Poetry with scholia.During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself—(to which of us I do not recollect)—that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts.  In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to con...

Orientalism , Western scholarly  discipline  of the 18th and 19th centuries that  encompassed  the study of the  languages ,  literatures ,  religions ,  philosophies , histories,  art , and  laws  of Asian societies, especially ancient ones. Such scholarship also inspired broader  intellectual  and artistic circles in Europe and  North America , and so  Orientalism  may also denote the general enthusiasm for things Asian or “Oriental.” Orientalism was also a school of thought among a group of British colonial administrators and scholars who argued that India should be ruled according to its own traditions and laws, thus opposing the “Anglicanism” of those who argued that India should be ruled according to British traditions and laws. In the mid-20th century, Orientalists began to favour the term  Asian studies  to describe their work, in an effort to distance it from the colonial and neocolonial a...