Wordsworth’s Preface
Paper III: Literary Theory & Criticism Student’s Name: Kaushal DesaiClass: M.A. Sem-1Roll No. : 17Year: 2013/14Submitted To: Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University
William Wordsworth
“I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed Delighted with the motley spectacle:
Gowns grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers: Migration strange for a stripling of the
hills, A northern villager.”
The Priest of Nature
Wordsworth on Nature
• Nature is the NURSE of the imagination
• Threefold understanding of nature:→ External nature: scenery → All of existence → A presence/divine life that informs the whole and every part. A quasi-divine ministering presence.
Wordsworth “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”
“Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…emotion recollected in tranquility”
Wordsworth & Coleridge
○ In 1798, two young English poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) published a book of poems called Lyrical Ballads.○ In 1800 an expanded edition was published, with a preface-a kind of poetic manifesto-by wordsworth. This is generally regarded as the official beginning of Romanticism in England.
Preface to Lyrical Ballads Main Ideas
• Poems are different• Manner in which we associate ideas in a state of
excitement• Low and rustic life• Poems have a purpose• Feelings more important than action• Poetry – the image of man and nature• Poetry gives pleasure• Poetry is universal
Subject of poetry
Poetry was to deal with The best
subjects to write about were
LanguageThe poems were to be
written as far as Possible and as near as possible
to though purified
Role of the Imagination
Imagination was to play a very important
role, which Wordsworth identified
with its capacity
Poetry as memory
the poet describes natural and simple
objects and peaceful landscapes
Task of the Poet
equal to other men in quality, the Poet
stands apart from them because of He is
in fact possessed
The Nature of Poetry
♦ Poetry is all-encompassing. It binds together human society, and it spans all
knowledge, and all time periods. Poetry is not just literature written in verse.
Poem’s Main Subject
♦ the nature of the imagination, and imagination’s relationship to nature.
The poem is about the mind’s dialogue with nature.
What Is a Poet?
• A poet:→ “is a man speaking to men”→ Knows a lot—“greater knowledge of human nature”→ Is tuned in to emotions—his own and others’: “a lively sensibility”→ Has a good memory and can imagine distant things as if they are present→ And has “greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement”
• Daffodils
Foremost Poems
• Rainbow
• “The Tables Turned”
• “The World Is Too Much”
• “Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey "
Us"
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Thank you…