Wordsworth - Summary of Preface to Lyrical Ballads

William Woodsworth

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.