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Redening Poetry: the Preface to Lyrical Ballads as Revolutionary Manifesto

Peter Hofstee

One of the most inuential and paradigm-changing texts of British literature is William
Wordsworths Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems, which was anonymously
published in 1798 in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and it is often labelled to have
determined the turning point from the Age of Sensibility towards the Romantic period. Due to
the fact that the poems in the volume radically dier in form, style and subject matter from the
established literary conventions and, equally signicant, these attributes are elaborately explained
and defended in the Preface, it can therefore be argued that Lyrical Ballads, together with its
Preface, is the Romantic manifesto of British literature. Considering the length and objective of
this essay, the emphasis will be put solely on the Preface1 itself, and the main aesthetic ideas
which Wordsworth puts forth. Moreover, the Preface being labelled as a manifesto implies that
the topic of discussion is perceived as a written declaration of a political, religious, philosophical
or literary standpoint (Gray 168), of which the main literary views, together with their
reception and, as a consequence, their implications for the Romantic period, will be taken into
account as the primary relevant aspects of this essay.
One of the core principles that Wordsworth sets out in his Preface, is to choose
incidents and situations from common life, in a language really used by men (NAEL 264),
showing things to the reader as they are. According to Wordsworth, this type of language is a
far more philosophical language (NAEL 265), in comparison to the more elevated diction
which was considered as the high literary standard during the Age of Sensibility and before. In
the text, Wordsworth criticises and altogether rejects the widely used poetic diction of
eighteenth-century poets, which entailed a traditional hierarchy of genres with the classical epic
poetry at the top of the scale. Moreover, the principle of decorum, according to Gray, reached
a peak of signicance during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Gray 82). Being well
aware of these growing senses of decorum and style, Wordsworth argues that by using simple
subject matter and plain, straightforward dictionwhich was considered to be on the lower
ranks of the poetic scalethe poet could transfer his emotions, feelings and mental responses
from the surrounding environment into a poem. In the words of Blank, Wordsworth attempts
to formulate a plain and emphatic discourse where the individual spirit can stand up to (Blank
368). In a sense, the poem then functions as a means to get the state of mind, thought or
message across. For the reader, this resulted in a sense of familiaritydue to its common
subject matterbut added with feelings of awe, reverence, wonder and perhaps even excitement,
which are the emotions that the poet himself experiences while writing the poem and, in
essence, eventually tries to convey to the reader.

1The extended edition of the Preface, which was used for the third edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in 1802,
will be used throughout this essay.
2 Peter Hofstee

These emotions are part of Wordsworths purpose of his poetry, that is, to illustrate the
manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement (NAEL 265).
Wordsworth, then, declares that all good poetry is the spontaneous overow of powerful
feelings (NAEL 265), a claim which arms the aforementioned process of conveying emotions
and pleasure to the reader. This assertion provides for the foundation of the smoothness or
lightness of the everyday language that Wordsworth employs.
In dening a poet, Wordsworth states that He is a man speaking to men, . . . endued
with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness (NAEL 269). It can be argued
that Wordsworth felt the need to defend himself for the fact that he is expressing his emotions
and showing his feelingsattributes which were considered to belong to the feminine gender.
In justifying his masculinity, he indirectly makes it apparent that, not only in the language and
style of his poetry but also in his denition of a poet, he deviates from the status-quo. In one of
the accompanying notes to the poem The Thorn, he states that words, a poets words, more
particularly, ought to be weighed in the balance of feeling and not measured by the space they
occupy on paper (NAEL 252). This claim incontestably reects the essence of the Romantic
movement. To the Romantic poet, emotion and feeling are of much higher value than the
objectivity of reason.
It might seem that the common subject matter and plain diction provide for a
representation of the things as they are. In fact, Wordsworth underlines the appearance of things
rather than the being of things. As McCracken notes, Wordsworth seems to contradictor at
least complicatehis own views in the Essay, Supplementary to the Preface, published in
1815, in which Wordsworth declares that the proper business of poetry is not with things, or
objects, in themselves, but rather with objects as they arouse a response in
subjects (McCracken 179). This may be concerned as a shift of emphasis rather than a
contradiction (179). Indeed, a sudden mental response is the perfect example of feeling and
emotion, while factuality is primarily concerned with reective and measured thinking.
Moreover, Wordsworths additional essay, building forth on the ideas set out in the Preface,
illustrates the fact that Lyrical Ballads with its Preface was published as an experiment (NAEL
263).
As can be seen in the preceding section, the essence of Romantic poetry centres around
the expression, or transmission, of the poets feelings and sentiments. As a consequence, the
lyric became a major Romantic form (NAEL 9) during the eighteenth century. A logical
development, given the fact that the lyric expresses the speakers feelings and thoughts
arguably not necessarily those of the actual poet himselfin a personal manner (Gray 164).
Moreover, it was a poetic form which was to be considered at the bottom of the poetic
hierarchy. Therefore, the lyric and romanticism inevitably embraced each other and took
Romantic literature as a whole to new unprecedented heights.
Up to the point of publication, these seemingly straightforward themes were regarded by
contemporaries as a lower form of poetry. Wordsworth himself also recognised this tendency, as
he acknowledges the fact that many critics will disapprove of his poetrya trend that formed
3 Peter Hofstee

one of the underlying reasons to write the Preface in the rst place. Wordsworths aesthetic ideas
were even regarded as derogatory, what resulted in judgements such as common, ordinary,
everyday and humble (NAEL 13), which were not meant as compliments at that time. On
the one hand, the seemingly simplistic natural views and poetic ideas were initially condemned
by the zeitgeist, for example by Lord Byron, who thought that Wordsworth was taking
literature in the wrong direction (NAEL 12). On the other hand, Wordsworth and Coleridge
did not face complete rejection, because the Lyrical Ballads sold out in two years (NAEL 244).
This is demonstrated by William Hazlitts reaction to one of the new poems read aloud by
Coleridge, who said: the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me (NAEL
244). As it turns out, Hazlitt had a prescient view.
Due to its radically dierent form, style and subject matter, combined with
Wordsworths innovative literary views and aesthetic ideas, such as depicting things as they seem
in contrast to as they are, Lyrical Ballads became a pioneering literary work. Together with the
rejection of the contemporary poetic diction and literary hierarchy, Wordsworth and Coleridge
encountered a mixed reception from the general public. Moreover, with its implications for the
Romantic periodin retrospect functioning as a starting point for that literary periodit gave
new meaning to the intrinsic phenomenon of poetry, employing the idea of using the poem as a
means to get feeling and emotion across, which results in familiarity for the reader. This serves
as an explanation for the popularity of Romantic poetry as a whole and the rise of the lyric as a
revalued genrein turn, indicating that the Lyrical Ballads with its Preface, proved to be an
excellent manifesto for Romantic literature.

Works cited

Blank, G. Kim. The Degrading Thirst After Outrageous Stimulation: Wordsworth as Cultural
Critic. The Journal of Popular Culture, 33 (2006): 3658
Gray, Martin. Dictionary of Literary Terms. Beirut: York Press, 200
McCracken, David. Wordsworths Doctrine of Things as They Seem. Wordsworth Circle, 4
(1982): 1798
Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems. Rpt. in The
Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. Gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 8th ed. New
York: Norton, 200 2637

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