Topic: William Wordsworth: Preface

Name: Jinal Parmar B.

Roll no: 16

Paper no: 3- Literary Theory and Criticism

Sem.:1 M.A.

 Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi

                          Department of English

                          M.K. Bhavnagar University

Introduction of William Wordsworth:--

                  William Wordsworth was born on 7^th April 1770 in Cokermouth, Great Britain. Wordsworth is considered the pioneer of the Romanticism in English Literature and he was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English Literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. He was a leader of the Romantic Movement in England. Wordsworth’s masterpiece, however, would be his largely autobiographical poem entitled “The Prelude”, which focused on the formative experiences of his times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as “the poem to Coleridge”. Wordsworth was Britian’s poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Preface to Lyrical Ballads:--

            ‘The Lyrical Ballads’ was published in 1798 under the combined authorship of Wordsworth and Coleridge. This collection of poems generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. In the ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’, Wordsworth at length, comments upon the functions and nature of poetry. Wordsworth famous pronouncement that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, and that it takes its origin from “emotion recollected in tranquility”, heralded the arrival of new school of poetry the Romantic school. Wordsworth lays special emphasis on powerful emotions and intense feeling, the qualities which the poetry of the preceding age lacked. Wordsworth started from an interest in life rather than in art.

            The word ‘spontaneous’ in Wordsworth’s definition does not mean ‘immediate’ or ‘sudden’; it implies ‘natural’ or ‘unforced’. The poet, possessing the capacity to reconstruct his earlier emotions and feelings is not solely concerned with the imitation of the external. His art externalizes the internal, and the feeling are the primary source of poetic creation. According to him poetry is the communication, not of ideas, but of emotions, and whatever knowledge the poet imparted through the emotions. The feeling are characterized as ‘powerful’, which implies their capacity to impart pleasure to the readers, and this pleasure is aroused only when the thought and feelings are justify associated with each other. Wordsworth’s statement is significant as it clearly indicates that he is not an advocate of aesthetic primitivism, but strongly advances the concept of spontancity having as its base the co-ordination of thoughts and feeling.

                 In Preface to the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth says: “The principal object 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.” This statement of Wordsworth forms the credo of his critical theories, and has been equal vehemence. The poems of the Lyrical Ballads, standing as a landmark in the history of English poetry, indicate a clear departure from the established tradition of the neo-classical age of Dryden and Pope.

            In the Preface is Wordsworth’s poetic manifesto. The most obvious point that Wordsworth makes in it writing the poems themselves, as well as to the subject matter or focus of the poems which resides in common, everyday scenes of rural life and folk.

“The principle object, than, which I proposed to myself in these poems, was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way.”

              Wordsworth expressed his views on the nature and language of poetry in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. His views are important as they mark a complete break from the poetic traditions of the neo-classical school. He set for himself and others a new theory of man, of nature, and of poetry. Defining the nature and function of poetry, Wordsworth says in the Preface that “poetry is the spontaneous over flaw of powerful feelings: it takes its origin, from emotions recollected in tranquility, “poetry, Wordsworth believes, is not dependent upon rhetorical and literary devices; it is the free expression of the poet’s thoughts and feelings.

              Wordsworth’s position in his later work grew closer to that of Coleridge. But the poetic doctrines elaborated in the preface solidly underlay Lyrical Ballads and were the spring board to the expanded philosophy of art throughout The prelude. The poet binds together both passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge. It is an immortal as the heart of man.