The Pointe of the Pen

Originally a courtly art, ballet experienced dramatic evolution (but never, significantly, theprospect of extinction) as attitudes toward courtliness itself shifted in the aftermath of the French Revolution. As a result, it afforded a valuable model to poets who, like Wordsworth and his successors, aspired to make the traditionally codified, formal, and, to some degree, aristocratic art of poetry compatible with “the very language of men” and, therefore, relevant to a newclass of readers. Moreov