1. Wordsworth’s Preface
Paper III: Literary Theory & Criticism
Student’s Name: Kaushal Desai
Class: M.A. Sem-1
Roll No. : 17
Year: 2013/14
Submitted To: Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University
2.
3. 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.”
5. 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.
6. Wordsworth “Preface to Lyrical
Ballads”
“Spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings…emotion
recollected in tranquility”
7. 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.
8. 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
9. Subject of poetry
Poetry was to deal with
The best subjects to
write about were
Language
The poems were to be
written as far as
Possible and as near as
possible to though
purified
10. 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
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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”