Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Introduction:
In Preface to Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth expresses his opinion about the function of a poet and the subject matter of poetry. He rejects the classical concept in his attitude towards poet and poetry. He holds a romantic view in both the cases.
Much before William Wordsworth started writing,the early Romantic poets like James Thomson (1700-48),Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74),Thomas Chatterton (1752-70),Thomas Gray (1716-71),William Collins-59),William Cowper (1731-1800),George Crabbe (1754-1832),Robert Burns (1759-95), and William Blake (1757-1827) deviated from the neo-classic insistence on rules. However, Wordsworth is perhaps the only romantic poet who made his poetic experiences the locus of his critical discourse. Unlike Coleridge, he was not a theorist. Instead he unravelled before us the workings of the mind of the poet, and therefore, Wordsworth’s literary criticism ceases to be criticism in its most literal sense. It comes out as the matrix where the poet’s mind generates emotions and feelings with that much of intensity and passion required for transmitting them into poetic experience which forms the basis of poetic composition. From this perspective, Wordsworth’s Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800 can be seen as a poetic "manifesto," or “statement of revolutionary aims.”
William Wordsworth:
William Wordsworth was born on 7, April, 1770 in cokermouth, a town on the edge of the Cumberland into a lawyer's family. He studied at Cambridge and completed his graduation there. He was a leader of the Romantic Movement in England. Wordsworth was a major English romantic poet but not a critic. However his views on poetry are extremely important and can be found in the preface to the lyrical ballad 1802. He is the most representative poet of English literature. Wordsworth has written a series of poem collaboration of Coleridge entitled "Lyrical Ballad". He gave definition of 'poet' and 'poetry' in his "Lyrical Ballad". His first two collection of poetry would be published in 1793, five years after his first published poem. By the time of his death in 1850 he had produced some of English poetry's greatest work and influenced by future generation of poets.
Lyrical Ballads’ is a collection of poems generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. The Lyrical Ballads was a manifesto for a radically new approach to the writing of poetry. Wordsworth declared that the most important thing in poetry was the poet's ability to record his spontaneous feelings. Poetry, he said, was "emotion recollected in tranquility".
Wordsworth's Preface to To The Lyrical Ballads:
Wordsworth’s ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’ underwent a number of revisions till it had its present form. The Lyrical Ballads was first published in 1798. Wordsworth came to add a short Advertisement to it. He added a more detailed ‘Preface’ to the second edition of the Lyrical Balladsin 1800. It was extended and modified in 1802 edition of the Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth aim in writing the ‘Preface’ was not to give an elaborate account of his theory of poetry or to make a systematic defense of his point-of-view. He wanted to introduce his poems with a prefatorial argument He added the ‘Preface’ because he felt that his poems were different in theme and style, and therefore, he should not present them without an introduction. It is a well observed phenomenon that every new poet struggles to carve a niche. That is what Wordsworth tried to do with the help of the ‘Preface’.
Over the years, Wordsworth’s “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” has come to be seen as a manifesto for the Romantic movement in England. In it, Wordsworth explains why he wrote his experimental ballads the way he did. Unlike the highbrow poetry of his contemporaries, the late-Neoclassical writers, Wordsworth’s poems in Lyrical Ballads engage with the lives of the peasantry and are written in stripped-down, common language.
Wordsworth was alone in his effort; he penned the Lyrical Ballads with the help of his good friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. With friends like Coleridge, Wordsworth hopes to produce a new class of poetry, which will focus on “low and rustic life”—Wordsworth finds that the common people are less restrained and more honest because they are in constant communion with the beauty of nature. This new class of poetry will also use the language of the common people, as this language carries a certain universality and permanence, having none of the fickleness of poetic diction.
Other than these larger ideas about poetry, Wordsworth also briefly digresses into the importance of meter. Wordsworth relates that he has chosen to write poetry and not prose because meter adds a certain charm to the work. Furthermore, the regularity of meter can help temper emotions that may grow to be too much if the work were written with the stylistic freedom of prose. Wordsworth ends the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” on the note that there is nothing more he can do except allow the reader to experience his ballads for themselves.
Aims of the Preface
• The primary object which Wordsworth proposed to propagate through the poems was to select incidents and situations from common life.
• The great innovation was to be in the language. The poetic diction of the eighteenth century, sought to substitute the selection of the language really used by men.The “Advertisement” included in the 1798 edition shows Wordsworth’s concern about the language of poetry. Wordsworth says that the poems in the volume are “experiments” since his chief aim is to see if the conversational language in use among the middle and lower classes of society can be employed expediently and fruitfully to write poems.
1, What is the basic difference between the poetic creed of 'Classicism' and 'Romanticism'?
Classicism and Romanticism
Classicism and Romanticism are artistic movements that have influenced the literature, visual art, music, and architecture of the Western world over many centuries. With its origins in the ancient Greek and Roman societies, Classicism defines beauty as that which demonstrates balance and order. Romanticism developed in the 18th century — partially as a reaction against the ideals of Classicism — and expresses beauty through imagination and powerful emotions. Although the characteristics of these movements are frequently at odds, both schools of thought continued to influence Western art into the 21st century.
Classicism
The name "Classical" was given to the Greeks and Romans retroactively by Renaissance writers. Artists and thinkers of the Renaissance, which literally means "rebirth," saw themselves as the heirs of that world following the Middle Ages. Its ideals continued to exert strong influence into the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In literature, Classicism values traditional forms and structures. According to legend, the Roman poet Virgil left orders for his masterpiece The Aeneid to be burned at his death, because a few of its lines were still metrically imperfect. This rather extreme example demonstrates the importance placed on excellence in formal execution.
Romanticism
Romanticism may be a somewhat confusing term, since modern English speakers tend to associate the word "romance" with a particular variety of love. As an artistic movement, however, it celebrates all strong emotions, not just feelings of love. In addition to emotion, Romantic artists valued the search for beauty and meaning in all aspects of life. They saw imagination, rather than reason, as the route to truth.
The treatment of emotion is one of the primary ways in which Classicism and Romanticism differ. The Romantics placed a higher value on the expression of strong emotion than on technical perfection. Romantics, however, were more likely to indulge in effusive emotional statements, as John Keats did in "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "More love! More happy, happy love!"
2, What is poetic diction? Which sort of poetic diction is suggested by Wordsworth in his Preface?
Poetic diction is the term used to refer to the linguistic style, the vocabulary, and the metaphors used in the writing of poetry.
The poetic diction is the essay as suggested by Wordsworth applies the “real language of men”. He has selected it to communicate and connect it with the other men and common people. He further adds that the selection of the common language can add “vivid sensation” and “pleasure” to the readers as each and every poem has its own “purpose” to share and evoke “pleasure” to the readers.
In addition to this, the selection of such poetic diction to impart the “incidents and situations from common life”. It is only possible for Wordsworth to impart these poetic themes in the poem only with the “real language of men”. He even stated that it will add a “certain colouring of imagination” on the readers so to evoke the ” state of excitement” which the common people share in their everyday lives. The “real language of men” will enable the other men can relate “the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement”.
Moreover, he argues that the “language of men” is refined when the “humble and rustic” elements are used as a setting in the poem. He states that these moment of materials ensure a “plainer and more emphatic language” which become simple and the feelings “coexist” that ensure in more comprehensive and easy to communicate “because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings”.
Lastly, he further argues about the poetic diction that the reduction of rhetorical devices in his poems has a typical reason. He tries to suggest that the reason behind it was to “bring my language near to the language of men”. He adds that the “pleasure” he imparted in the poems are very different from other sets of poetry and it is only possible to impart it only by the use of “language of men” to be the proper “object of poetry”.
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