![]() ‘For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, poems to which any value may be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.‘The 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 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 the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.’ In other words, he does not invent imaginary worlds rather he directs our attention back to the real world in which we all live.The critics, however, were unconvinced by Wordsworth’s methods, and their opposition to his principles continued until the 1820’s, when his reputation began to grow.ĮXTRACTS FROM PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS This theory went completely against poetry of the day, which was very intellectual in approach and tended to shun personal emotion. The main assertion of the Preface was that the source of poetic truth was in the direct experience of the senses. ![]() He intended the Preface as a defense of his unconventional theory on poetry. The work met with critical hostility and so Wordsworth added his famous Preface to the second edition, which was published in 1801. ![]() Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798!) marked the beginning of the Romantic Movement in English poetry. ![]() Freshness and spontaneity were the new key ‘buzz words’ at the beginning of the 19 th. For the Romantic poet, imagination rather than reason, became central in shaping poetry. Poets such as Alexander Pope had composed poetry with an emphasis on elegant expression and emotional restraint. Wordsworth rejected, therefore, the traditions of the Augustan poets that preceded him. Wordsworth, unlike his predecessors, sought out his subject matter in the simplicity of rustic life, which he had grown to love as a child. The Romantic poets sought to reject artificiality they appear to be sincere to themselves and to their readers. He was one of a number of poets who composed in a new way and who treated subjects that had previously been shunned in poetry. Wordsworth was one of the earliest of the Romantic poets. Below are some extracts from this, but it would be worth your while to read the Preface for yourself to obtain a greater understanding of his work.) (He attempts to explain his theory of poetry and to defend it in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. He believed that his poetry was not an immediate response to the stimulus of beauty, but the welling up of feeling long stored in the heart, and brooded over, resulting in the ‘spirit of a landscape rather than the detail’. The essential part of his poetic work is almost entirely comprised in the period 1797 – 1807. His avowed aim was to make poetry out of the commonest experiences of life and in the language of the common man. Wordsworth was a poet who had a huge influence, not only on poetry, but on the whole thought of the 19 th century and beyond.
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