Romanticism vs. Neoclassicism
The “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” is, at its core, a manifesto of the Romantic movement. Wordsworth uses this essay to declare the tenets of Romantic poetry, which has distinctly different preoccupations from the Neoclassical poetry of the preceding period. The Neoclassical poets emphasized intellectualism over emotion, society, didacticism, formality, and stylistic rigidity. The last stage of Neoclassicism, before the onset of Romanticism, is known as the Age of Johnson. In this last stage, writers…
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Ordinary Life and Everyday Language
Throughout his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth emphasizes the importance of depicting ordinary life using everyday language in a poem. According to Wordsworth, using ordinary life as subject matter allows the poet to better explore human nature and reveal truth. This simple, prose-like language not only corresponds well with ordinary life—it’s closer to the way that normal, everyday people speak—but also is more universally intelligible: its simplicity and honesty create a sense of permanence…
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Poetry and Emotions
Emotions are of utmost importance to Wordsworth when it comes to poetry. “For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” he writes in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.” However, Wordsworth is careful to point out that depicting emotion requires prior thought and acquired skill on the part of the poet. The poet should be able to successfully observe and depict the thoughts and feelings that people have when they are in…
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Poetry, Nature, and Humanity
At the beginning of the 19th century, when Wordsworth was writing, England was moving towards industry and urbanity. Wordsworth believed that this sort of fast-paced, crowded lifestyle caused people’s minds to grow numb. Wordsworth wrote not for himself, but for the sake of his contemporaries, whose minds he believed were dull. He felt the need to use the subject of nature in his poetry in order to keep his readers emotionally alive and morally sensitive…
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