William Wordsworth
1.
Preface to Lyrical
Ballads.
a.
The nature of the introduction is to introduce
people to his poetry that is “materially different” than what was being
published at the time.
i. His
poems:
1.
Used situations from common life.
2.
Regulated the situations by using common
language.
3.
Put over them a “certain coloring of
imagination,” in which ordinary things should be presented to mind in an
unusual way.
4.
To make them interesting in a manner of
consistent with how we associate ideas in a state of excitement.
ii. Low
and rustic life were chosen:
1.
Elementary feelings co-exist in a state of
greater simplicity.
2.
The feelings are easier to communicate.
3.
The feelings are easier to comprehend.
4.
There is a distance from social vanity and rank.
5.
It’s more real than creating fictions.
iii. Thoughts
on writing:
1.
Triviality and meanness of thought is more
dishonorable to the writer’s character than exaggerations or arbitrary
innovation.
2.
All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
feelings.
3.
The purpose is to illustrate the manner in which
our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement.
4.
The best a writer can do is to be excellent at
all times. To fight against the forces that
blunts the discriminating power of the mind.
Speaks to sensationalism and brought on by rapid communication.
5.
Rejects the personification of abstract ideas
and uses common language to help remove him from doing so.
6.
Reduces diction back to the common language.
7.
The most striking language in a poem is written
in prose.
iv. Continued
of influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts when upon
reflection, discover what is important to men.
1.
This process and repetition connects our
feelings to important subjects.
v. What
is a Poet?
1.
A man speaking to man with more lively
sensibility, more enthusiasm, and tenderness.
2.
He has a greater knowledge of human nature and a
more comprehensive soul.
3.
Rejoices more than other men in the spirit of
life that is in him.
4.
Has a disposition to be affected more than other
men by absent things as if they were present.
5.
He has acquired a greater readiness and power in
expressing what he thinks and feels, especially those thoughts and feelings
that arise without immediate external excitement.
vi. The
poet is a translator between emulating the feelings of action or suffering and
finding the ‘exquisite’ language fitted for the real passion of the action.
1.
The poet considers man and the object around him
as acting and reacting upon each other as to produce an infinity complexity of
pain and pleasure.
2.
With certain convictions, intuitions, and
deductions man forms habits that become natural intuitions.
vii. The
man of science also enjoys knowledge. But
it is a person and individual type of knowledge that doesn’t form through
interactions with men.
viii.
The poet binds passion and knowledge.
Works
Cited
Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical
Ballads. 1800. Bartleby.com.
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