Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth
Lyrical
Ballads is important literary creation of English literature; it brings
substantial changes about the thinking process of the critical analysis of
literature. Poetry is the important literary genre, which has great
importance. Wordsworth is important figure of the literary domain. He is not
only a critic but also a great poet he represents the Romantic era and
poetry was dominant factor of that era, subjectivity was the main
characteristics, there were no unanimity about the analysis of poetic creation.
Wordsworth tried to define the concept
of the poetry. What is meant by the
word poet? What is a poet? And what language is to be expected from him?
The publication
of Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark moment for English poetry; it
leads to understand the concept and process of the poetry. According to the theory that poetry resulted
from the “spontaneous overflow” of emotions, as Wordsworth wrote in the
preface, Wordsworth and Coleridge made it their task to write in the simple
language of common people, telling concrete stories of their lives. According
to this theory, poetry originated in “emotion recollected in a state of tranquillity”;
the basic objectives behind the creation of the Lyrical Ballad to select the
incidents from the common life and compare it with day today life by putting
the colour of imagination. Wordsworth has used humble and rustic life because
it is to be finding in simplest form of the life. Rustic life is in elementary
stage of human feeling and emotions therefore we find primary coexist in a
state of greater simplicity. It is useful to contemplate the life which could
bring out something concrete for the further development of poetry creation
and human life. The occupation of rustic
people or countryside gives the clear and implicit picture of life which are
comprehended and durable therefore the feelings are more incorporated and
beautiful which remain permanent in nature. It is the critically commentary of
middle class and lower classes of society.
The poet then
surrendered to the emotion, so that the tranquillity dissolved, and the emotion
remained in the poem. This explicit emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the
pleasure of beauty over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changed the course of
English poetry, replacing the elaborate classical forms of Pope and Dryden with
a new Romantic sensibility. Wordsworth’s most important legacy, besides his
lovely, timeless poems, is his launching of the Romantic era, opening the gates
for later writers such as John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
Lord Byron in England, and Emerson and Thoreau in America.
n his 'Preface' to the 1798 edition of the Lyrical
Ballads Wordsworth presented his poetic manifesto, indicating the extent
to which he saw his poetry, and that of Coleridge, as breaking away from the
'artificiality', 'triviality' or over-elaborate and contrived quality of
eighteenth century poetry. The 'Preface' is itself a masterpiece of English
prose, exemplary in its lucid yet passionate defence of a literary style
that could be popular without compromising artistic and poetic standards. Yet
it is also vital for helping us to understand what Wordsworth and Coleridge
were attempting in their collection of verse, and also provides us with a means
of assessing how successfully the poems themselves live up to the standards
outlined in the 'Preface'.
The 'Preface' covers a number of issues and is
wide-ranging in its survey of the place of the Lyrical Ballads on the
contemporary literary scene. The topics covered include the following:
The Principal object of
the poems.
Wordsworth, in this extract, places the emphasis on
the attempt to deal with "natural" (rather than cosmopolitan)
man, arguing that such men live much closer to nature and, therefore, are
closer to the well-springs of human nature. Behind this we can see how much
Wordsworth owes to that eighteenth century preoccupation with "natural
Man", associated particularly with the writings of Rousseau. He sees his
poetry, in its concerns with the lives of men such as Michael, as an antidote
to the artificial portraits of Man presented in eighteenth century poetry. The
argument is developed when he outlines his reasons for dealing with "humble and rustic
life".
The
principle object, then proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and
situations from common life, and to relate and 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 situations and incidents interesting by tracing in
them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly
as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement.
For Wordsworth (and Coleridge) this choice of
subject matter necessarily involves a rethinking of the Language of
poetry. Note, however, that Wordsworth admits to some licence in "tidying
up" the language of "ordinary men". Does this affect the
persuasiveness of his theories about "natural men"? Humble and rustic life was generally chosen,
because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil
in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a
plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life, our
elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and
consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly
communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from these elementary
feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more
easily comprehended, and are more durable; and lastly, because in that
condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent
forms of nature.
Language is important devices to convey the idea , in
the creation of poetry language is plays vital role . Wordsworth has commented
on the language. This leads Wordsworth to an attempt to define poetry and its
effects on the reader. Wordsworth's project is an
idealistic one, and clearly Poetry, for him, has a vital role in educating the
mind and sensibility of his readers, a moral purpose. This quotation
illustrates how important this benevolent effect is for the reader. The
language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear
to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike and
disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which
with the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their
rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being
less under the influence of social variety, they convey their feelings and
notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language,
arising out of the repeated experience and regular feelings is a more
permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently
substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon
themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the
sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of
expression, in order to furnish food for fickle appetites, of their own
creation.
Inevitably, perhaps, the above leads Wordsworth
towards asking what is a Poet? His
answer illustrates the underlying assumptions about the poet as genius, as
special person, capable of re-articulating thought and feeling so as to educate
the reader. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feeling: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can 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. For
our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts,
which are indeed the representative of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating
the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover
what is really important to men, so by the repetition and continuance of this
act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if
we be originally possessed of such sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced,
that by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of these habits, we shall
describe objects, and utter sentiments of such a nature, and in such connection
with each other, that the understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in
some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.
He is a
man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility,
more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature,
and a more comprehensive soul, than one supposed to be common among mankind; a
man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than
other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate
similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe,
and habitually compelled to create them where he does not find them. To these
qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by
absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself
passions, which are indeed far from being those produced by real events yet
(especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and
delightful) do more nearly remember the passions produced by real events, than
anything which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are
accustomed to feel in themselves:- whence, and from practice, he has acquired a
greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and
especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the
structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
Wordsworth
is really genuine critic one who attempted comprehensively on the creation of
the poetry. His contribution in the field of literature remains worthwhile and
evergreen up to last day of the world.
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